Love's Labour's Won, alternatively written Love's labour's wonne, is the name of a play written by William Shakespeare before 1598. However, it is not known if this play has been lost, or if the title is an alternative name for a known play.
The Elizabethan author Francis Meres lists several of Shakespeare's plays in Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598). His list of comedies reads as follows:
This tells us that Love's Labour's Won was a comedy an...
more
Love's Labour's Won, alternatively written Love's labour's wonne, is the name of a play written by William Shakespeare before 1598. However, it is not known if this play has been lost, or if the title is an alternative name for a known play.
The Elizabethan author Francis Meres lists several of Shakespeare's plays in Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598). His list of comedies reads as follows:
This tells us that Love's Labour's Won was a comedy and that it was not one of the other plays listed.
For many years, it was assumed that Love's Labour's Won was an alternative name for The Taming of the Shrew, which had been written several years earlier and is noticeably missing from Meres' list. However, in 1953, one Solomon Pottesman, a London based antiquarian book dealer and collector, discovered the August 1603 booklist of the stationer Christopher Hunt, which lists as printed in quarto:
This implies that The Taming of the Shrew and Love's Labour's Won were separate works.
Many scholars...
less