Love’s Labour’s Lost
One teacher suggested that Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost had some of the most beautiful poetry Shakespeare wrote. I’ve changed my opinion about that, a little, as Richard II is almost all in verse.
Ran into a couple from church, back in San Antonio, and they claimed to have been attending Winedale, “since there was dirt on the floor (of the barn),” and regularly for almost thirty years. Their daughter was in a Winedale production in the late 80s?
During one interval, we talked about books about Shakespeare, and Love’s Labor’s Lost isn’t included in my usual go-to. Although there is some other discussion, I don’t travel with a copy of Bloom’s epic survey text or Marjorie Garber’s excellent text. Worse yet, I didn’t take time to look up material, a quick refresh for my own mind, what was said, then.
While I think I own a digital copy of the relatively recent Love’s Labors Lost movie, I didn’t get a chance to watch it, either.
Love’s Labour’s Lost
Winedale Shakespeare did this production differently. While borrowing from text, it was set in a 1976 UT Winedale setting, when the program was young. Musical references with heavy 70’s allusions abounded.
Most of the way through the play, the cast broke out in an abbreviated version of “London Homesick Blues,” famous from Jerry Jeff’s Viva Terlingua album, and as a sound track for Austin in 1976? Historically accurate.
Rousing, rollicking production, song, myth, and then, incorporated into the play itself, notes from old journals left behind by students in that Summer of 1976.
Good blend, spirited production.
Love’s Labour’s Lost
I’m of the mind that something akin to what they do at Winedale is very best way to “teach” Shakespeare. I can read the plays, listened to them over and over, but in production, live, on stage, especially in an intimate setting like Winedale, both the student — and the audience — has to get something out of it. Like the previous evening’s 1Henry4.
Love’s Labour’s Lost
From various material, all outlined above, there was a single recollection. Shakespeare tragedies end with the death of “great ones,” leading figures, historical royalty, something like that. Shakespeare comedy ends with marriage. But Love’s Labour’s Lost end with delayed marriage, marking it as a somewhat problematical, at least, in that it doesn’t hew to convention.
“Jack has not Jill,” I think is the quote.
Love’s Labour’s Lost
#Shakespeare
