History Theatre / LovesLaboursLost

* SpoilerTitle: Wait, you mean all the courting didn't work out? Who could have seen that coming?

* AltumVidetur: Used ''frequently'' (mostly from Holofernes), often with a GeniusBonus or two. (In fact, all those obscure references--meant for its target audience of Elizabethan college students--have lead to the play's obscurity in modern times, as it's rarely chosen by directors for performance.) Moth lampshades this trope:
--> "They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps."

* PurpleProse: Don Armado writes and speaks in a combination of this trope, AltumVidetur and DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment. It's an incredible thing to behold. As mentioned above, this is possibly an allusion to euphuism, a patterned prose style popularized by John Lyly in the 1580s.

%%* CoolOldGuy: Boyet (although, like all Elizabethan [[CoolOldGuy Cool Old Guys]], also something of a DirtyOldMan)

%%* BetaCouple: And a Gamma, and a Delta, and an Epsilon, and... "More sacks to the mill!"
%%* CaptainObvious: Don Armado.

%%* HurricaneOfPuns

%%* LoveLetterLunacy: Played for laughs.

%%* MilesGloriosus: Don Armado

%%* MouthyKid: Moth.
%%* NoLovesIntersect

%%* RashEquilibrium

%%* ServileSnarker: Moth to Don Armado.

** Particularly Don Armado and Holofernes.

%%* ShowWithinAShow: The "Nine Worthies"

%%* TreeCover

-->"They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps."

* BetaCouple: And a Gamma, and a Delta, and an Epsilon, and... "More sacks to the mill!"
* CaptainObvious: Don Armado.

* CoolOldGuy: Boyet (although, like all Elizabethan [[CoolOldGuy Cool Old Guys]], also something of a DirtyOldMan)

* LoveLetterLunacy: played for laughs.

* MilesGloriosus: Don Armado

* MouthyKid: Moth.

* ServileSnarker: Moth to Don Armado.
* SesquipedalianLoquaciousness: Particularly Don Armado and Holofernes

* ShowWithinAShow: The "Nine Worthies"

* BelatedHappyEnding / EarnYourHappyEnding: The lovers farewell each other at the end of the original play, but the film continues after this with a silent newsreel footage montage of the characters undergoing World War II, and after the war is over, it is shown that most of the characters have survived and all of the lovers are happily re-united.

* PragmaticAdaptation: See AdaptationDistillation.

* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: Nearly every word spoken by Don Armado, Holofernes and Nathaniel. ''Especially'' Don Armado. Some scholars view this as evidence of the influence of the euphuistic style John Lyly, the first English novelist and a dramatist in his own right.

* AltumVidetur: Used ''frequently'', often with a GeniusBonus or two. (In fact, all those obscure references--meant for its target audience of Elizabethan college students--have lead to the play's obscurity in modern times, as it's rarely chosen by directors for performance.) Moth lampshades this trope:

* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: Nearly every word spoken by Don Armado, Holofernes and Nathaniel. ''Especially'' Don Armado.

* HurricaneOfPuns

* InMediasRes
* IWillWaitForYou

* {{Malaproper}}

* NoLovesIntersect
* PaperThinDisguise
* PurpleProse: Don Armado writes and speaks in a combination of this trope, AltumVidetur and DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment. It's an incredible thing to behold.
* RashEquilibrium

* TreeCover

* AdaptationDistillation: Most of the original play was cut. Not necessarily a [[TropesAreNotBad bad thing]].

* UsefulNotes/WorldWarII

* LoveLetterLunacy: played for laughs.

* ChromaticArrangement: Each of the four main couples has an associated color for the woman's dress and the man's buttonhole or tie: red for the King and the Princess, blue for Berowne and Rosaline, green for Longaville and Maria, and orange for Dumaine and Katherine.

* GenderFlip: Holofernes is transformed into Holofernia, played by Geraldine McEwan.

* CrowdSong: "No Business Like Show Business"

* TheMusical: featuring songs from classic 1930s musicals, which can be found [[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0182295/soundtrack here]].
* PragmaticAdaptation: see AdaptationDistillation.

* SettingUpdate: WorldWarII

* WorldWarII

* WhoIsThisGuyAgain: Ferdinand, King of Navarre. Who's never actually called "Ferdinand" except in dialogue tags and stage directions, so you can watch the entire play and never find out his first name.

-->--'''DorothyLSayers'''

->''"And why anyone should say that ''Love's Labour's Lost'' is a bad play, the Lord He knoweth; for to my mind it is one of the most ''réussi'' things of its kind ever made ... it is all pure [[FairyTale fairy-tale]]; and some of the loveliest lines in the lyrical-witty mode ever written."''
-->-- '''DorothyLSayers'''

''Love's Labour's Lost'' is one of Creator/WilliamShakespeare's earliest plays, possibly his first comedy. The King of Navarre and his attendant lords make a vow to devote themselves to scholarship and put away interest in women for three years -- just before the Princess of France and her attendant ladies arrive for a visit. HilarityEnsues.

It's not among Shakespeare's most popular plays. This may be largely due to the style, which has been described as "flamboyantly intellectual", full of wordplay and references to contemporary scholarly interests, many of which have not dated well. The script is 90% poetry and jokes and 10% plot. Also, for a romantic comedy it has a romantically unsatisfying ending, with all the lovers separated, to (maybe) be reunited in the future.

This latter point probably fed the popularity of the rumour that Shakespeare wrote a now-lost sequel titled ''Love's Labour's Won''[[note]]at least two records exist of a "Love's Labours Won" by Shakespeare, though it's also speculated this may be an alternative title of an existing work - possibly "Much Ado About Nothing", "Taming of the Shrew" or "The Merchant of Venice"[[/note]].

--> They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.

''Love's Labour's Lost'' is a comedy by Creator/WilliamShakespeare. The King of Navarre and his attendant lords make a vow to devote themselves to scholarship and put away interest in women for three years -- just before the Princess of France and her attendant ladies arrive for a visit. HilarityEnsues.

It's not among Shakespeare's most popular plays. This may be largely due to the style, which has been described as "flamboyantly intellectual", full of wordplay and references to contemporary scholarly interests, many of which have not dated well. Also, for a romantic comedy it has a romantically unsatisfying ending, with all the lovers separated, to (maybe) be reunited in the future.

This latter point probably fed the popularity of the persistent rumour that Shakespeare wrote a now-lost sequel titled ''Love's Labour's Won''[[note]]although at least one record exists of a "Love's Labours Won" by Shakespeare, it is thought now to be the title of an existing work - possibly "Much Ado", "Taming of the Shrew" or "The Merchant of Venice"[[/note]].

* ChekovsGun: Berowne mentions in Act I scene 1 that the Princess's father is "decrepit, sick, and bedrid." His illness never comes up again until he dies a few minutes from the end and screws up everything.

There was a film adaptation in 2000, directed by and starring Creator/KennethBranagh as well as Nathan Lane, Allesandro Nivolla, Alicia Silverstone, TimothySpall, and Adrian Lester.

There was a film adaptation in 2000, directed by and starring KennethBranagh as well as Nathan Lane, Allesandro Nivolla, Alicia Silverstone, TimothySpall, and Adrian Lester.

* WorldOfHam: Done on purpose, as a sendup of classic musicals from the 1930s.

''Love's Labour's Lost'' is a comedy by WilliamShakespeare. The King of Navarre and his attendant lords make a vow to devote themselves to scholarship and put away interest in women for three years -- just before the Princess of France and her attendant ladies arrive for a visit. HilarityEnsues.

This latter point probably fed the popularity of the persistent rumour that Shakespeare wrote a now-lost sequel titled ''Love's Labour's Won''[[hottip:*:although at least one record exists of a "Love's Labours Won" by Shakespeare, it is thought now to be the title of an existing work - possibly "Much Ado", "Taming of the Shrew" or "The Merchant of Venice"]].

* ImAManICantHelpIt: In his EstablishingCharacterMoment at the beginning, Berowne gives a whole speech about this as his "excuse" for possibly breaking his oath. As he predicts, this trope turns out to be true of all the other guys in the play as well.

* PaperThinDisguise

* {{Exposition}}: Done in the form of a newsreel several times throughout the movie, in order to cover some of the information cut from the original play.

* {{Exposition}}: Done in the form of a newsreel several times throughout the movie, in order to cover some of the information cut from the original play. YourMileageMayVary on whether or not this is an improvement.

* BrattyHalfPint: Moth.

This latter point probably fed the popularity of the persistent rumour that Shakespeare wrote a now-lost sequel titled ''Love's Labour's Won''.