Love’s Labour’s Consequences: The Detriment of Romance in Ma

In Macbeth, love is the source for dark ambition and deadly motivation which leads ultimately to madness and destruction. Love in Love’s Labour’s Lost however, is directly opposite than that in Macbeth and is seen as a repressor of drive and determination, but also eventually causes lies and deception in a much less sinister fashion. The idea of love in both

This association of the female gender as being somehow weaker or as debasing to male strength can also be found in Macbeth with the seemingly ruthless Lady Macbeth. Despite the impression that she is destructive in her own right, it must be noted that it is her, not her seemingly weak willed husband who succumbs to the derailing effects of guilt with her ensuing madness. Her disadvantageous natural weakness as a woman does not allow her to overcome her own conscience merely through the success of kingship as Macbeth does, despite the fact that the murders committed were at the hands of her husband and the murderers. Despite the Lady’s initially calm demeanour towards Macbeth’s remorse following the assassination of Duncan, it is her who falls apart with her “slumbery agitation” (Act 5, Scene 1, 9-10) and eventual suicide. Meanwhile, Macbeth questions why he should “play the Roman fool, and die on mine own sword?” (Act 5, Scene 10, 1-2), illustrating his natural instinct as a male to end in battle with his pride.

The King of Navarre, Biron, Longueville, and Dumaine can all be seen as holding control over the women of Love’s Labour’s as they are the ones to call the shots on almost all aspects of their interactions. It is they who decide to forgo all relations with the opposite sex during their term of scholarship, and then it is the King who decrees the law “that no woman shall come within a mile of my court” (Act 1, Scene 1, 119-120), issuing a penalty of having their tongue cut out for any woman who disobeys the order. This displays an unrivalled amount of control not only over the free actions of women but in the arena of law where impractical rules concerning female subjects are indisputable and can be drawn up on a whim.

The intellectual dominance of the male scholars is apparent and illustrated in Act 5, Scene 2, when Jacquenetta approaches Holofernes and Nathaniel and requests them to “be so good as read me this letter” (line 83), acknowledging her own illiteracy and sub ordinance to the learned men. Although these men are not of royal or noble lineage, they take their privileged education as superiority over the woman. Jacquenetta is told to

“[s] tay not thy compliment, I forgive thy duty” (130-131), as though she needs to be pardoned or given permission to leave the premises. It is quite doubtful that if it were a man leaving in a hurry that he would be dismissed in the same manner as the wench.

In a much less dramatic parallel, the women of Love’s La

Some topics in this essay:
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