Day 27: Your favorite couplet

[a_t_rain]

And to begin, wench, so God help me -- la!
My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw.
-- Love's Labour's Lost, 5.2.414-15

All right, so that one doesn't make a lot of sense out of context. In the speech which this couplet concludes, Berowne has renounced all the fancy language of love poetry ("Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, / Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation, / Figures pedantical"). Instead, he promises, "Henceforth my wooing mind shall be expressed / In russet yeas, and honest kersey noes." And so the last couplet consists of blunt, one-syllable words of Anglo-Saxon orig- -- oh crap, was that French in there?

And because in LLL, as in most of Shakespeare, Girls Always Know Better, Rosaline points out that there is a crack and flaw in his vows: "Sans 'sans,' I pray you."



For four acts, this is a ridiculously formal, stylized play. It starts with the young, idealistic King of Navarre and three of his lords swearing an oath to spend three years living like monks in pursuit of Higher Learning. Enter the Princess of France and three of her ladies. Of course the lovers pair off, tidily, inevitably, and almost indistinguishably from each other. There are constant puns, many of them multilingual. There are literary in-jokes. There are reams of poetry, mostly sonnets of dubious literary merit. Oaths are sworn and broken almost immediately. Love letters go astray. Ladies exchange favors and trick their suitors into swearing eternal devotion to the wrong person. (In the Quarto text, a number of speeches are simply headed "Lady," as if it doesn't matter which lady.)

And then in the last act, during the course of THE LONGEST SCENE IN SHAKESPEARE, things start to break apart: individual personalities begin to emerge, and real pain and sorrow starts to enter this world. The obvious shift in tone comes with the announcement that the Princess's father has died. But even before that, we're becoming aware that the constant play of wit has victims, like poor Sir Nathaniel the curate and Holofernes the pedant, who get mocked off the stage in their attempt to portray the Nine Worthies. (The Princess is consistently gracious to the amateur actors; the men are not.) It's a scene about growing up; about learning to trade wit for compassion, courtly polish for imperfection, idealism for reality. And kind of amazingly, that couplet captures the whole shift in nineteen words.



Day #1: Your favorite play
Day #2: Your favorite character
Day #3: Your favorite hero
Day #4: Your favorite heroine
Day #5: Your favorite villain
Day #6: Your favorite villainess
Day #7: Your favorite clown
Day #8: Your favorite comedy
Day #9: Your favorite tragedy
Day #10: Your favorite history
Day #11: Your least favorite play
Day #12: Your favorite scene
Day #13: Your favorite romantic scene
Day #14: Your favorite fight scene
Day #15: The first play you read
Day #16: Your first play you saw
Day #17: Your favorite speech
Day #18: Your favorite dialogue
Day #19: Your favorite movie version of a play
Day #20: Your favorite movie adaptation of a play
Day #21: An overrated play
Day #22: An underrated play
Day #23: A role you've never played but would love to play
Day #24: An actor or actress you would love to see in a particular role
Day #25: Sooner or later, everyone has to choose: Hal or Falstaff?
Day #26: Your favorite couple
Day #27: Your favorite couplet
Day #28: Your favorite joke
Day #29: Your favorite sonnet
Day #30: Your favorite single line

Comments

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

Aaaaand, now I want to see Love's Labor Lost done really well again (I love Kenneh Branaugh, but his musical version was weird.). Do you have any movie version recs of this?

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Yes! I just watched the DVD of last year's Globe production (http://www.opusarte.com/en/loves-labours-lost.html), and it's really good. Sadly, it doesn't seem to be Netflixable (yet, anyway -- it's a brand-new release, so maybe it will be).

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

Thanks!