Love and Desire
Love is the central theme of this comedy. First, the entire plot revolves around the various rites and rituals associated with courtship. The pursuit of courtship provides ample opportunity for the characters to talk endlessly about how smitten they are or how they are committed to swearing off love when things do not go well. What really turns love into a theme rather than a mere plot device, however, is the various ways that love is viewed by the characters. At different points along the way, love is reckoned to be a distraction from what is truly important, a plague, and a powerful foe capable of placing one under its authority. Despite these negative connotations, however, nearly every character in the play is desperately pursuing love with all their heart, suggesting the paradoxical nature of love and desire.
Repression of Natural Impulses
The play begins with King Ferdinand of Navarre proclaiming that the path to success involves committing to study at the expense of desire. Essentially, the King is suggesting that wisdom and knowledge can only thrive through the rejection of natural impulses like lust and sensuality. Underlying this proclamation is a critique of the court, which is portrayed as a haven for insincere attempts to throttle those impulses under the cover of hollow vanity. That Ferdinand is the first one to break his oath suggests that the oath was only a thinly veiled attempt at an artificial notion of propriety and intellectualism.
Language
Shakespeare is famous, of course, for writing dialogue that works on several levels at once, overflowing with allusions, double entendres, and raunchy puns. The dialogue spoken throughout Love’s Labour's Lost takes that characteristic of the Bard to one of its most elevated levels. Practically, every speech contains at least one example of Shakespeare’s obsession with wordplay. But this playful approach to language is not just for show; speeches contain puns and paradoxes that lead to misunderstandings and confusion over intent, showcasing how language can function as its own plot device. The sheer amount of wordplay and wit that appears throughout the play is one of the reasons for the mixed critical reception: some find it overwrought, while others see the complex dialogue as a triumph for the relatively novice playwright.
Gender
The play introduces the theme of gender from the very beginning, with the King and his lords swearing off women entirely just as the Princess of France arrives with her ladies-in-waiting. The King believes that women are threats to the intellectualism that the court is trying to establish, but he and the lords are nonetheless driven to pursue the French ladies. Meanwhile, the women of the play are not simply objects of affection but clever players in their own right, ultimately duping the men into expressing their sincere love for the correct lady. By the end of the play, the gendered assumptions characters made early on have been inverted and reconciled.
Fantasy
Many have argued that the world of Love's Labour's Lost is a precursor to the more overt fantastical settings of Shakespeare's later comedies, more specifically A Midsummer Night's Dream. While this play is absent the natural setting and the playful fairies, Love's Labour's Lost still challenges the relationship between fantasy and reality. Notably, the King's notion that love and desire can be eschewed for intellectualism is a fantasy in itself, as it quickly dissolves with the arrival of the Princess and her ladies. Furthermore, the Princess – originally in Navarre for a political mission – quickly abandons that purpose as she, too, gives into love's impulses. This suspension of all conviction in the name of the love lends the play a fantastical quality as it appears to neglect the passage of time and real-world concerns. It is only with the grave announcement that the King of France has died that the play returns its characters to reality.
Deferral and Delay
While delays in resolution were a common plot device to complicate early modern comedies, Love's Labour's Lost makes unique use of deferrals and delay among its characters. The misunderstandings that arise over who loves whom delays the union of the four couples until the very end of the play. However, whereas most comedies would end with at least one marriage, this play ends on a note of further deferral, as the Princess declares that the women will all return to France for a year. This resolution emphasizes the play's focus on the suspension of desire in the name of propriety and temperance.
Intelligence
Intelligence and the pursuit of knowledge is the catalyst for the oath taken by the King and his lords at the beginning of the play. Indeed, throughout the play characters exchange witty quips and clever dialogue with one another, emphasizing their commitment to outwitting one another and appearing the most intelligent. Holofernes and Sir Nathanial are both learned men who represent traditional education and intelligence; they often incorporate Latin phrases into their scholarly speech. But these characters are also presented as absurd men, and are easily outwitted by Mote, the lowly page. This dynamic suggests that an overcommitment to intelligence over all else can actually detach one from reality, common sense, and respectability.
