Love’s Labour’s Won is a lost play credited to William Shakespeare by contemporaries. It was supposed to be composed around 1598 and released by 1603. Unfortunately, no copies are known to have survived.
How Did Love’s Labour’s Won Play Was Lost
Love’s Labour’s Won is mentioned for the first time in Francis Mere’s Palladis Tamia, or Wits Treasury (1598), where he praises several Shakespeare plays: ‘for Comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love Labours Lost, his Love Labours Won, his Midsummer’s Night Dream, and his Merchant of Venice.’
In August 1603, stationer Christopher Hunt listed the play and numerous other known works as printed in quarto. However, no quarto or folio copy of Shakespeare’s comedy has been discovered.
Only half of Shakespeare’s plays were printed during his lifetime, and we would have lost some of his greatest famous plays, including The Tempest, Macbeth, and Twelfth Night, if not for the First Folio in 1623, compiled seven years after Shakespeare’s death by his teammates John Heminges and Henry Condell.
Disputes About the Lost Play
Scholars have debated for years whether Love’s Labour’s Won is a legitimate lost work or a sequel to his comedy, Love’s Labour’s Lost, or an alternate title to a recognized Shakespeare play, such as Much Ado About Nothing.
Theories About the Lost Play
According to one idea, Love’s Labour’s Won is a lost sequel to Love’s Labour’s Lost, describing the continued adventures of the King of Navarre, Longaville, Berowne, and Dumain. Their marriages were postponed at the end of Love’s Labour’s Lost.
The ambiguity of Love’s Labour’s Lost finale supports the sequel notion. In addition, the weddings that traditionally end Shakespeare plays (but are rarely performed) are postponed for an unexpected reason, paving the door for a sequel.
Another theory holds that Love’s Labour’s Won was a pen name for a well-known drama. This can be why it was not originally printed under the name of Love’s Labour’s Won in the First Folio of Shakespeare’s entire theatrical works in 1623, an omission that the sequel needs to explain.
A popular theory maintained that Love’s Labour’s Won was an alternate title for The Taming of the Shrew, penned several years earlier and conspicuously absent from Meres’ list.
However, in 1953, Solomon Pottesman, a London-based ancient book trader and collector, uncovered the stationer Christopher Hunt’s August 1603 book list, which shows lists as printed.
The original quote reads as “marchant of vennis, taming of a shrew, knak to know a knave [unknown author], knak to know an honest man [unknown author], loves labour lost, loves labour won.”
Conclusion
Except for a few references in historical texts, no trace of the play remains. And if this script is discovered, it will be one of the most valuable discoveries in literature.
References
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/william-shakespeare/