A Rite of Passage in Shakespeare’s LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST: 5.2.786-806

In the last scene of Love’s Labour’s Lost, after the news of the death of the King of France reaches the Princess, she immediately decides to return to her country, leaving King Ferdinand of Navarre behind. Although death disrupts the conventional ending of the comedy with a marriage ceremony, the idea of a happy union still lurks behind the Princess’s bargain with Navarre following the interim. Before their union, Navarre is asked to temporarily retire to a hermitage for one year and a day during the Princess’s mourning period (5.2.786-806). Ostensibly, at the heart of this contract lies a period of waiting for the postponed marriage in retreat. Concerning the closure of the play, “where the disruption invites us to find – not just witness – clarification,” G. Beiner claims that “[f]inding clarification is our task” (54). Accordingly, critics are at pains to explore the abrupt ending of the play deficient in terms of comedy conventions. What emerges here is that their interpretation ranges from the analysis of problematic generic form to topical readings of the play. Alternatively, a close reading of the Princess’s lines in 5.2.786-806 suggests that she initiates a rite of passage at the end of the play. This article intervenes in the Princess’s speech and pinpoints three stages of the passage implied in her lines. On the basis that comedy concludes with marriage rituals, Love’s Labour’s Lost is glossed unconventional. The debate about the ending of the play highlights that this play is fraught with a generic problem since the play dislocates and postpones the traditional ending. That is the reason why the play is regarded as “a failed comedy” (Chaney 41). The lack of comic resolution attaches a sense of incompleteness to the audience in that it represses “the desire for fulfillment of audience expectation rather than on anything in the text” (Montrose 157). Likewise, Amy L. Smith argues that the ending, “rather than reminding the audience that they have just watched a performance of a comedy, [...] reminds the audience that they have not” (17). H. https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2023.2214675