Hands: Love's Labour's Lost is an early play with a tableau structure, clumsy in the beginning but flowing once the whole world of village and courtier is established. The language again is early--experimental, but understandably real to those who speak it. A great deal depends upon the actors. It is a truism that a director has done 80 percent of the production by the time the casting is finished. I was lucky. The 1990 cast included John Wood, Ralph Fiennes, Simon Russell Beale, Paterson Joseph, Amanda Root, Carol Royle, Alex Kingston, Lloyd Hutchinson, and David Troughton--all capable of bringing idiosyncratic emotional depth to reading the dictionary.
Shipman: Musicality, the rhythmical interplay of the text, the constant games of wordplay and combative wit combine to define the experience of hearing this play. The language of Love's Labour's Lost requires that particular attention be paid to rhythm, melody, and timing. It is an intricate song and dance of words and interpersonal action. I found that the language stirred action and thus the KCSC production was full of movement. There was a sense that the characters and the action swept through the playing space--the text and the context mobilizing the actors. Time seemed to fly. There was a kind of building momentum that could only be interrupted by the arrival of Marcade. I cast very large and masculine men as Navarre and his friends. Their interplay was sometimes very physical so that they were nimble physically as well as verbally. Even their commitment to the ideals of Navarre's "little academe" was undertaken in a visceral manner, and yet the music of the interactive dialogue had to be maintained. I did make certain cuts in the text and with them some of the obscure references were eliminated. But, I find that when actors know and understand clearly what they are saying and what is being said to them and when they engage with the text actively, the meanings become quite clear, and even when the audience did not understand the exact frame of reference, they were able to understand the gist of it and certainly the intent of the character who spoke the words. Additionally, songs and instrumental music were an integral element in our production. A traveling musician character was ever-present, leading into and out of the scenes and accompanying all of the songs included throughout the text.
The poems and sonnets used in the wooings are tricky, aren't they? Sometimes they seem deliberately bad, sometimes not. For the more sophisticated members of Shakespeare's original audience, versed in all the Petrarchan love poetry of the age, a lot of the fun would have come from this. Trickier for a modern audience who are unfamiliar with the poetic conventions that Shakespeare is working both with and against?
Hands: The same is largely true of the competitive poems and sonnets. We know from performance which is gold and which pinchbeck. In any case there is invariably a commentary to guide us--whether it is Berowne's ribald observations on his fellows' efforts or the collective sigh that greets the best (Berowne's sonnet to Rosaline), read by Sir Nathaniel and heard by Holofernes, Costard, and Jaquenetta. Part of Shakespeare's genius was his ability to combine thought with feeling--what T. S. Eliot called the association of sensibility. In the theater the audience can take one or the other, or--if the actor is good enough--both.
Shipman: I believe that the wooing poems are intended to be as ridiculous as the actors can make them. These are opportunities for lovers to show themselves as clowns. Their verses, though not as outrageous as Don Armado's, are quite as silly. Certainly the characters are gushing in the first throes of intense infatuation. Their verses, good or bad, are less important than the circumstances of the scene. The fact that the king, Longaville, and Dumaine are unknowingly exposing themselves for their questionable poetry, their susceptibility to love, and their oath breaking in a single act makes this scene potentially hilarious. As they, in turn, are "caught out," we revel in their public exposure and subsequent chagrin and we fully endorse the practical Berowne's justifications and the king's new "plan of action." Audiences love it, whether they are aware of the stylistic references or not. We have different audiences today. but the situation is a comically classic one that we love to savor.
8. Terry Hands' 1990 production: the king (Simon Russell Beale, left) and Berowne (Ralph Fiennes) consider the vow to abjure female company for the sake of academic study.
It's his most courtly and self-consciously "poetic" play, but also--when you really pick away at the double entendres--one of his rudest. Did that high/low juxtaposition help shape your production?
Shipman: Absolutely. I have heard this play described as lyrical and full of elegant poetry. Rhymes, yes. Plenty of verse, yes. And the place is at Navarre's court. But I do not experience the text as lyrical or courtly. I find it laced with testosterone, fully satirical in its point of view as it illuminates the blindness of youth and the follies of "love." In this play the clowns become lovers and the lovers become clowns. It's a game. It's fun. Politeness is a facade and wit is often quite rude. The base and the noble interact. Verse and prose can be spoken by either. It is informal in its seeming formality. The images and metaphors that leaven the script reference games, sports, warring and battles, hunting and pursuit. In this play, perhaps, the challenge is everything--an end in itself. It is all about the game--word games, games of disguise and the sport of falling in love. Sport is rough and competitive and played to win. If and when love is gained, the "game" is over, but I think it is significant and perhaps hopeful when Berowne responds to the one-year waiting period set by the women at the end of the play by saying, "That's too long for a play." Is he also saying, "We'll have to get serious and work at it because we can't keep the play or the game going that long"? Time will bear it out in the end. There is plenty of room for cynicism, but we can hope and imagine that at least some of the lovers end up marrying in one year's time.
Berowne is a jewel of a role, isn't it? What kind of discoveries did you and your actor make about his language--and maybe his nimble, improvisatory gifts? Some people have been tempted to see him as a Shakespearean self-portrait ...
Hands: It is possibly as difficult to date a Shakespeare play as it is to interpret one. But somewhere around the composition of Love's Labour's Lost Shakespeare was either writing, or at least thinking of, plays like Titus Andronicus or even Richard III. Is it altogether fanciful to imagine that he himself was facing a career choice? Whether to be a "court jester" like Berowne (and later Benedick [in Much Ado About Nothing]) the purveyor of wit and poetry to the aristocracy, or a major player in one of the new Elizabethan playhouses? It is to all our benefit that he chose the latter.
Shipman: Berowne is a realist, an observer, one who stands outside--usually immune to the follies of those around him. His wit derives from this ability to see the world as it is and to use humor as his response to it. He masks himself behind his wit. It is the tool of his detachment. That is until he meets his match in Rosaline. The actor (Ray Virta) I was fortunate enough to cast in the role was a natural wit and clown, able to move adroitly between the subtleties and the broader aspects of the character and the text. Mr. Virta gave the character realistic form and substance based on the text and his own instincts. He was immensely helpful during the rehearsal period, especially when I was making cuts to move the action along. He seemed to have a deep understanding of who Berowne, the man, is. He knew that Berowne's rhetorical flourishes and game-loving wit had to be about who he is and how he lives in the world. One of Ray's mantras is "sound is sense." His pursuit of Berowne and his interpretation of the character began then with the sounds of his text.
Technically (not least as a living demonstration of the meaning of the phrase "dramatic irony"), the multiple overhearing scene, in which the men are successively caught out professing the love they purport to disdain, is utterly brilliant--how did you stage it?
Shipman: Staging this scene was quite a challenge since it was presented in the round with very little by way of structural elements in the setting. The audience was seated on risers viewing the action from four sides. Each of the gentlemen hid, in his turn, within sight of the audience, but with the illusion t
hat they were all hidden from one another. As each of the gentlemen arrived in the courtyard, his predecessor quickly found a clever hiding place. Berowne hid aloft (we imagined he had climbed a tree), moving up through the audience to the top corner of one of the risers. Navarre secreted himself behind one of the slightly oversized benches, which had been shifted to the outer edges of the space for this scene. Longaville slipped into one of the voms, or, if possible, into a vacant seat in the audience--hiding behind a book (his poetry journal). From these hiding places, the subsequent reveals flowed easily.
"Women on top": is that what it boils down to? There are certainly some very strong female parts ...
Shipman: Shakespeare's plays are full of strong female characters. In his comedies, they are often more savvy and realistic than their male counterparts. The princess and her ladies are portrayed as rather sophisticated, witty, and somewhat worldly. Their repartee is both as biting and as well played as the men's. They are brought back to reality by Marcade's news, but it is clear to me that their response to the gentlemen's final proposals would have been similar had they not received the tragic news. Although they too become enamored with the young men and fully enjoy the "chase," they are convinced that all the pleasurable love sport was no more than that--sport. It is ironic that the would-be scholars in search of living life through idealizing Reason are completely unreasonable in their expectations of love and commitment at the end of the play. The women know better, as women often do ... or do they?
In Shakespeare's writing of the script, he sometimes referred (in the speech headings) to Holofernes simply as "Pedant" and Don Armado as "Braggart": does that suggest that the comic characters are simply "types"? One way of playing this kind of comic role is with a sort of Jonsonian monomania--find the "humor," the quirk, and milk it for all it's worth. Or should all the characters be somehow "rounded"?
Hands: Despite his friendship with Ben Jonson, there is rarely anything Jonsonian in Shakespeare's writing. Jonson's characters don't change--the situation does. Shakespeare's characters, on the other hand, constantly develop. Holofernes and Don Armado--whether called "Pedant" or "Braggart"--are different people by the end of the play.
Shipman: Part of the fun of these stock-type characters is their illusions of themselves. The Pedant and the Curate fancy themselves possessed of "great learning." Don Armado cherishes the illusion that he is an accomplished swordsman and soldier, and that he is an intimate of the king. Costard is a classic clown. These are givens in the script. However, for my taste, three-dimensional characters are always more involving. We absolutely worked to achieve this in our production. We might look at almost all of the characters in this play as "types." More central to the telling of the story, I think, is the acknowledgment and exploration of the many masks and self-delusions that abound. Just about everyone is operating under some illusion about him-or herself veiled in hidden agenda, masked, disguised--giving an impression perhaps, but born of self-delusion. Berowne realizes the king's enterprise is a gamble, but goes ahead anyway--he hides behind the illusion of wit. The princess hides behind the illusion of her own power, wit, and importance. Navarre and his followers seek the illusion of fame/eternal life. Boyet finds his illusion of worth in his manipulations of the courtships and his biting wit. The French ladies delude themselves in their blind attraction to unready partners. They become lost in a game that they wish were not a game and they perhaps hope will have a surprise ending. Moth masks his disdain for his master and lives dishonestly, as he gives the illusion that he is wise and a "truth teller." Jaquenetta is the only person physically altered by the experience, or is she simply creating the illusion that Don Armado is the father of her child? How could the most impotent of characters be the one real begetter in this play, which is the epitome of a false pregnancy? Love's Labour's Lost is dream/illusion versus realty--the ultimate reality being death.
What did you do with the pageant of the Nine Worthies? Structurally, and with its onstage audience, there are resemblances to "Pyramus and Thisbe" in A Midsummer Night's Dream. But it's tougher to get the audience into this one, not least since not many of them will know anything about the Worthies.
Hands: The pageant of the Nine Worthies reveals not only the unworthiness of the performers, but unworthiness within the aristocratic audience commenting upon them. It is a typical Shakespearean tribute to his chosen profession and a reminder to the young aristocrats that generosity is learned not born.
Shipman: Is it important that an audience know the mythology behind "Pyramus and Thisbe" in order for them to enjoy the Mechanicals' rendition of their story? Is it not the silly and lovable clowns who make us laugh at their vain attempts at putting on a play of their own devising? In Love's Labour's Lost, the Nine Worthies pageant never quite gets off the ground for it is a device that provides a playground of wit for the onstage audience. What is most important, I believe, is that the "Worthies" be as ridiculously costumed and portrayed as possible and that their performance be as broad and yet sincere as it can be. Their function is to be the object of the playful (and often acerbic) derision of the men as they show off their witty repartee. We used the central hexagonal platform as the Worthies' stage, with the onlookers seated or standing at the outer edges of the play area. The pageant played "in the round," just as our play did. Although I cut some of the lines and with them some of the more obscure references, the scene was left virtually intact. As we worked on it, we discovered that this scene needs to be simply staged, to move quickly, and that rhythm is of the essence. The interplay between the courtiers and the clowns and the rapid-fire exchanges must be precisely timed. As I worked on it, I began to wonder whether the numerous interruptions that the presenters of the pageant undergo might even be a foreshadowing of the "interruption" that ultimately ends the play.
Monsieur Marcade, messenger of death. He changes the tone, doesn't he? How harsh was your ending?
Hands: "The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo"--but not cruel. The lovers are all young and a holiday romance needs testing in the real world before it can be built upon. Love's Labour's Lost has a wistful ending--they must all wait a year. For their labors to be won would require more testing, more suffering, more learning. In the same way that we have Twelfth Night (or What You Will) might we not once have had Loves Labour's Won (or As You Like It)?
Shipman: Monsieur Marcade brings with him the harsh realities of the outside world. Life and death happen and the seeming love (as each of the ladies points out in her own way) is, at the moment, of the twofold variety--head and loins, but lacking the final ingredient of the heart. There has not been time for threefold love to develop. The women are all too well aware of this from the start, but might have been swept away if not for Marcade and his news. I think the darkness of the ending is intended. In our production, Marcade was the last character to leave the stage, a looker-on of the characters and the audience. The lovers were not without hope for the future, but it was not a certainty either that they would be reunited after a year's time. When we listen to the song of the Owl and the Cuckoo that ends the play and recognize the necessity of the separation of the couples, we realize that this ending is not at all arbitrary or out of sync with the rest of the play. Reality is harsh after the illusions of the ideal so easily attained.
APPROACHING LOVE'S LABOUR'S: REFLECTIONS BY GREGORY DORAN
Gregory Doran, born in 1958, studied at Bristol University and the Bristol Old Vic theater school. He began his career as an actor, before becoming associate director at the Nottingham Playhouse. He played some minor roles in the RSC ensemble before directing for the company, first as a freelance, then as associate and subsequently chief associate director. His productions, several of which have starred his partner Antony Sher, are characterized by extreme intelligence and lucidity. He has made a particular mark with several of Shakespeare's lesser-known plays and the revival of works by his Elizabethan and Jacobean contemporaries. He directed Love's Labour's Lost for th
e RSC in 2008, with David Tennant in the role of Berowne.
Sometimes the difficulty of directing Shakespeare on the stage is to match the thrill of reading him on the page. In a play like Macbeth it is hard to capture in production that hurtling pace, the intense sense of danger and darkness, the contaminating touch of evil. With a play like Love's Labour's Lost the challenge is precisely opposite.
The play on the page can seem almost impossibly impenetrable in places. You sometimes feel as if you are simply not being let in on the joke; as if there are a number of real people being satirized, of whom you know nothing, and therefore don't understand the references. This may of course be the case. Scholars have suggested a great variety of specific individual people who may or may not be the butt of the humor in the play. I find the theories all fascinating. Is Armado really Walter Raleigh? Is Holofernes meant to be John Florio, the translator of Montaigne? Is the entry of the lovers dressed as Muscovites a satirical reference to the arrival of the Russian embassy in London to woo Lady Mary Hastings on behalf of the Czar, Ivan the Terrible? The theories are all intriguing but in the end don't really help the actors achieve their performances.
The play's big challenge is the language. These are young people who delight in oracy, the desire to express yourself through language. They prize verbal dexterity, they enjoy scintillating banter. Holofernes and Sir Nathaniel are absurdly impressed by their own pretentious cleverness, whereas Costard has a natural gift of the gab, and when he and Moth get together they burst into what seems to me to be the equivalent of Elizabethan rap, which leaves the poseur, Don Armado, with his deliciously mangled eloquence, speechless. Getting the actors to appreciate and relish the thrill of those verbal tennis matches is the most important work in rehearsal.
John Barton says it's a great actors' play, and he's right. It's a great company play with lots of appetizing roles. If you have a good cast most of your work is done. It doesn't seem to me that the work of the director on this particular play is interpretative. It's really very straightforward. It doesn't want to be overdesigned, or have too much concept applied to it (as Adrian Noble says, it doesn't need concept in the Teutonic sense with a capital K and an umlaut). And yet to pitch the playfulness of the piece, to allow it to rise with lightness and air, takes a lot of work. As any master chef will tell you, a souffle is one of the hardest dishes to bake.