Hannah Richardson
TMA 101 section
4/2/12
Love
and Logic in Loves Labors Lost
One of the themes from Love’s
Labors Lost is the contrast that Shakespeare is making between intelligence and
learning, and love. Throughout the play, the characters try to use intellect to
get out of situations and also to woe the ones they love. The entire play is
built from the oath that is made for the sake of learning and the sacrifices
that each of the men make, but then, they find a way to get out of it by using
logic. Love’s Labors Lost is contrasting logic and love and how they are used
to support each other or to conflict against each other.
At
the beginning of the show, the men get together to sign their contract in which
they will fast, hardly sleep and also stay away from woman for three years for
the sake of their intellectual pursuits. They all agree but one, Berowne, who
logically states that the King will have to break the oath because a woman will
be visiting him very soon. The King responds, “ She must lie here on mere necessity.”
The king is logically disregarding his own degree and Berowne is successfully
overpowering the Kings attempt to enlarge his intellect by using his own logic
against him. Berowne says that he is “forsworn on mere necessity.” The irony of
it all is that the King is only wanting to gain more intellect because he
thinks that it will “Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, live
regist’red upon our brazen tombs.” Which is in essence saying – intellect will
bring us fame, fortune and make us legend. So just as their search for
intellect is a fool’s errand, so is their love.
When
the women show up to join the party, they are already talking of the men and
suggest that they “are all in love. That every one her own hath garnished with
such bedecking ornaments of praise”(60). The ladies have come for love and are
ready to begin. But the men have a different and opposite task that they have appointed
for themselves, the intellect. At this point in the play the men are the
intellect and the woman are the love. They each represent the two struggling
sides of humans. The emotional side that is ruled by passion, and, is at times,
at odds with the logical side which is ruled by reason. Loves Labors Lost looks
at both of these seemingly conflicting sides of humanity and places them in two
groups of people who have both but are trying to fight it.
The
Princess is the first to use both love and logic to get what see wants. For her
“Good wits will be jangling; but gentles agree: this civil war of wits were
much better used on Navarre and his book- men: for here ‘tis abused” (64). They
are playing with words with each other, but the Princess tells them that they
need to save their wits for the king’s men so they can win their men from their
oath. Their adttendent comes back to tell the Princess that the King is in love
with her because “all his behaviors did make their retire to the court of his
eye, peeping thorough desire”(64).
He can tell the king is in love by the way his desires are in his eyes,
and that his eyes are those of a man in love. Love is now making its way in and
destroying the poor king and his logic. Love is something that is powerful
enough to overrule logic, especially if the logic was slightly unreasonable in
the first place.
Intellect
and intelligence also come into play with the character Moth, who is obviously
not very bright. It is due to him that the love letters that were written to
two different girls end up in the wrong hands. Holofernes and Nathaniel also
play a part in the battle of wits that is happening with in the play. As they
discuss, Dull is contrasted to them by the way he responds to what they are
saying and how he is trying to copy them in their intellectual prowess. Intelligence
plays a key role in the play. The way people speak to one another and the way
they are contrasted to those who are of little intelligence contrasts love and
logic again, but in this case, subtly calling love something that is of lesser
intelligence then logic, while at the same time, turning the logic into two
stuffy and know it all intellectuals.
Both love and logic are under condemnation and ridicule by Shakespeare.
Finally,
love and logic come head to head when all the men learn of the love they each have
for the women of the Princess’s party.
Each of the men is miserable in their oaths and wants the others to be
likewise, which would mean all of them breaking their oaths. They want “sweet
fellowship in shame”(80), but when they find out about one another, they
condemn each other for breaking the oath that they had made. Berowne makes his
logically call for them to break the oath by saying “For when would you my
lord, or you, or you, have found the ground of studies excellence without the
beauty of a women’s face…..For where is any author in the world teaches such
beauty as a woman’s eye?” (92). He is saying that all the study that they need
is in a woman’s eyes, and that true studying is when one studies a woman that
he loves.
The
battle of love and reason is one that is fought every day, and Love’s Labors
Lost is a perfect example of how the two conflict and also how they can come
together to be resolved. Having too much of one can be a bad thing, because
either can be used to the benefit of one, but having them equally can be
helpful and good.
