Abstract
Although the Princess of France in Love’s Labour’s Lost may seem not to be based on a historical character, she presents a number of intriguing similarities with Elizabeth I. Both of them are female rulers in male-dominated societies; they derive their authority from their father (albeit indirectly in Elizabeth’s case); they actively refuse marriage despite being courted by eligible suitors. Even more importantly, Shakespeare underlines the Princess’ double difference in Navarre, as a woman and as a foreigner, to indirectly evoke the queen of England and offer a reflection on the nature of queenship. In her relationship with Elizabeth, the Princess may be defined by the Derridean notion of différance, as the comedy simultaneously plays on their similarities and differences.
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Notes
- 1.
William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, ed. H.R. Woudhuysen, Arden 3rd Series (London: Methuen, 1998), 1.1.25–6.
- 2.
André Du Laurens, A Discourse of the Preservation of Sight, trans. Richard Surphlet (London, 1599), 12.
- 3.
Speech given on November 12, 1584, quoted in Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Katharina M. Wilson (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 541.
- 4.
See for instance Mary Thomas Crane, “‘Video et Taceo:’ Elizabeth I and the Rhetoric of Counsel,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, 28.1 (1988): 1–15, 2; Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977).
- 5.
Love’s Labour’s Lost, 5.2.158–72, 246–7.
- 6.
Mary Thomas Crane explains the ambiguity of Elizabeth’s motto in her article. For a study of Elizabeth’s speeches, see, for instance, Frances Teague, “Queen Elizabeth in Her Speeches,” in Gloriana’s Face: Women, Public and Private, in the English Renaissance, eds. S.P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne-Davies (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992), 63–78.
- 7.
The role of seduction in the Elizabethan court has long been studied, in particular by Frances Yates in Astrea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1999 [1975]), 29–120; Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth; Louis Montrose, The Subject of Elizabeth: Authority, Gender and Representation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 73–113; Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005 [1980]), 165–178.
- 8.
The Schoolhouse of Women is one of the many pamphlets that form a part of the querelle des femmes in England, continuing the continental debate on the nature of women. Edward Gosynhill, however, answered The Schollhouse himself with the philogynistic Mulierum Paean (1542).
- 9.
Quoted in Half Humankind: Contexts and Texts about Women in England 1540–1640, eds. Katherine Usher Henderson and Barbara F. McManus (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 138.
- 10.
William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 2, ed. James C. Bulman, Arden 3rd Series (London: Bloomsbury, 2016) 161.
- 11.
Speech given at Tilbury Camp on August 9, 1588, in Queen Elizabeth I: Selected Works, ed. Steven W. May (New York: Washington Square Press, 2004), 77.
- 12.
See for instance Anna Riehl, The Face of Queenship: Early Modern Representations of Elizabeth I (New York: Palgrave, 2010), in particular 10, 112, 150–4.
- 13.
Lisa Hopkins, Writing Renaissance Queens: Texts by and about Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2002), 25.
- 14.
Mary Beth Rose, “The Gendering of Authority in the Public Speeches of Elizabeth I,” PMLA 115.5 (2000): 1077–1082, 1079–1080.
- 15.
David Steinsaltz, “The Politics of French Language in Shakespeare’s History Plays,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 42.2 (2002): 317–34, 324.
- 16.
See Stanley Wells, “The Copy for the Folio Text of Love’s Labour’s Lost,” The Review of English Studies 33.130 (1982): 137–47, 143.
- 17.
See Aurélie Griffin, “La guerre des sexes dans Love’s Labour’s Lost” in Cycnos, ed. Christian Gutleben (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015), 131–145.
- 18.
Griffin, “La guerre des sexes,” 139.
- 19.
Steinsaltz, “Politics of French Language,” 329–30.
- 20.
LLL 1.1.110 (it was of course also used in English); 5.1.79, 143; 5.2.415–16.
- 21.
William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, 154 189n.
- 22.
William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, ed. William C. Carroll (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, The New Cambridge Shakespeare, 2009), 90 186n.
- 23.
Patricia Parker, “Preposterous Reversals: Love’s Labour’s Lost,” MLQ (1993): 457.
- 24.
Both Woudhuysen and Carroll use the spelling “Berowne,” while the editors of The Complete Works use “Biron.”
- 25.
Albert H. Tricomi, “The Witty Idealization of the French Court in Love’s Labour’s Lost,” Shakespeare Studies, 12 (1979): 25–33, 29.
- 26.
See, for instance, William P. Haugaard, Elizabeth and the English Reformation: The Struggle for a Stable Settlement of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968); Susan Doran, Elizabeth I and Religion (London: Routledge, 1994); A.N. McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I: Queen and Commonwealth 1558–1603 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 23–31.
- 27.
H.R. Woudhuysen, Introduction to Love’s Labour’s Lost, 38–9.
- 28.
See for instance Frances Yates, Astrea, 29–87; Susan Frye, Elizabeth I. The Competition for Representation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Louis Adrian Montrose, “Celebration and Insinuation: Sir Philip Sidney and the Motives of Elizabethan Courtship,” Renaissance Drama 8 (1977): 3–35, and “‘The Perfect Paterne of a Poet’: The Poetics of Courtship in The Sheapheardes Kalender” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 21.1 (1979): 34–71; David Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002 [1984]), in particular 97–139; Linda Shenk, The Image of Elizabeth I in Politics and Poetry, (London, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
- 29.
Jacques Derrida, “Différance,” in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982), 3–27, 3.
- 30.
See, for instance, Nathaniel’s comment about the aptly named Dull: “He hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink” (LLL 4.2.25).
- 31.
Holofernes transforms oral into written language on stage when he draws attention the difficult pronunciation of some words: “I abhor such fanatical phantasimes, such insociable and point-devise companions, such rackers of orthography, as to speak ‘dout’ sine ‘b’, when he should say ‘doubt’; ‘det’ when he should pronounce ‘debt’—d, e, b, t, not d, e, t. He clepeth a calf, ‘cauf’; half, ‘hauf’; neighbour vocatur ‘nebour’; ‘neigh’ abbreviated ‘ne’. This is abhominable, which he would call ‘abominable’. It insinuateth me of insanie. Ne intelligis, domine ? To make frantic, lunatic” (5.1.16–25). William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, 226–7.
- 32.
Jacques Derrida, “Différance,” 6.
- 33.
Jacques Derrida, “Différance,” 6.
- 34.
Jacques Derrida, “Différance,” 6.
- 35.
Jacques Derrida, “Différance,” 6–7.
- 36.
Frances Meres lists a “Love labours wonne” in his list of Shakespeare’s comedies; Palladis Tamia, or Wits Treasury (London: 1598), 282.
- 37.
See T.W. Baldwin, Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Won: New Evidence from the Account Books of an Elizabethan Bookseller (Carbondale: University of Illinois Press, 1957). William Carroll provides a summary of the debate surrounding Love’s Labour’s Won in the Introduction to his edition of the play, 39–40.
- 38.
John N. King, “Queen Elizabeth I: Representations of the Virgin Queen”, Renaissance Quarterly 43.1 (1990): 30–74, 32.
- 39.
Jacques Derrida, “Différance,” 7.
- 40.
Jacques Derrida, “Différance,” 8–9.
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———. 1998. Love’s Labour’s Lost, ed. H. R. Woudhuysen. Arden 3rd Series. London: Methuen.
———. 2005 [1986]. The Complete Works, ed. John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor, and Stanley Wells, 2nd ed., 307–335. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2009. In Love’s Labour’s Lost, ed. William C. Carroll. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2016. King Henry IV, Part 2, ed. James C. Bulman. Arden 3rd Series. London: Bloomsbury.
Steinsaltz, David. 2002. “The Politics of French Language in Shakespeare’s History Plays.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 42 (2): 317–334.
Strong, Roy. 1977. The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry. London: Thames and Hudson.
Teague, Frances. 1992. “Queen Elizabeth in Her Speeches.” In Gloriana’s Face: Women, Public and Private, in the English Renaissance, ed. S.P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne-Davies, 63–78. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Tricomi, Albert H. 1979. “The Witty Idealization of the French Court in Love’s Labour’s Lost.” Shakespeare Studies 12: 25–33.
Wells, Stanley. 1982. “The Copy for the Folio Text of Love’s Labour’s Lost.” The Review of English Studies 33 (130): 137–147.
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Griffin, A. (2018). The Princess of France: Difference and Dif(fé)rance in Love’s Labour’s Lost. In: Finn, K., Schutte, V. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Shakespeare's Queens. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74518-3_21
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