Love's Labour's Lost. The spelling of the title is that of the third Folio. The earlier Folios have Loues Labour's Lost. The first Quarto has on the title-page Loues labors lost, but as running-title Loues Labor's lost. 'Labour's' was evidently intended as a contraction of 'Labour is.' Meres, however, referred to the play as Loue labors lost, clearly regarding 'labors' as the nominative plural. Likewise the play is known in France as Les Peines de l'Amour Perdues and in Germany as Verlorene Liebesmüh.
I. i. 12. Navarre shall be the wonder of the world. The opening speech of the King shows the influence of Marlowe's versification in its special sonorousness, alliteration, and exhilaration. Compare with the present line Marlowe's Dido, l. 730: 'Lest I be made a wonder to the world.'
I. i. 14. Still and contemplative in living art. Quietly contemplating the art of perfect living. The line alludes to the common mediæval distinction between the contemplative and the active life. Mr. J. S. Reid (Iowa Philological Quarterly, July, 1922) suggests that 'living art' refers particularly to the Stoic term, ars vivendi, ethical (as distinguished from physical and logical) philosophy.
I. i. 62. feast. Theobald's emendation for the 'fast' of the early editions.
I. i. 67, 68. If study's gain be thus, and this be so, Study knows that which yet it doth not know. If the benefit of study consist only in the development of casuistry, then there is no such thing as knowledge: instead of discovering the true, study merely merges the true and the false.
I. i. 73. Which, with pain purchas'd, doth inherit pain. In which the final result of painful striving is only further pain.
I. i. 80–83. Study me how to please the eye indeed, By fixing it upon a fairer eye, Who dazzling so,
