Episode 18 - Love's Labour's Lost

<p>It is the humble opinion of your hosts that Shakespeare starts coming into his own as a truly innovative playwright in Love's Labour's Lost. Up until this point, the plays have been fairly straightforward in presentation, structure, and subject matter; in LLL, all of that is played with, to great effect. Starting with this play, Shakespeare starts showing the sense of playfulness as a writer, experimenting with his craft, that marks some of the great works that follow.</p> <p>A conventional love story on the surface--four noble men fall in love with four noble women; hilarity ensues--bucks the trends of comedy (there's no marriage at the end) and comments on its own production ("That's too long for a play") and does so with tremendous flair and wit that Shakespeare is well-known for today, but which must have been terrifically fresh when the play was first written and performed in the middle-1590s. Join us as we chat about the fun themes presented in this innovative play! Marriage Counselling</p> <p>In today's bickering session, we debate the question of whether or not Love's Labour's Lost is a comedy or... something else?</p> <p>Other Notes</p> <p>The 2000 Kenneth Branagh film has been pretty thoroughly scrubbed from the internet, but we did locate a German trailer for the dub of the film:</p> <p><a href='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53hDoUMvZhk'>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53hDoUMvZhk</a></p> <p>As well as this audio from the original trailer, mixed up with a webseries that seems loosely based on the same events as the play: <a href='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVuR945tOqk&feature=emb_logo'>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVuR945tOqk&feature=emb_logo</a> </p>