Page:Love's Labour's Lost (1925) Yale.djvu/145

Love's Labour's Lost Charlton's deductions to some fancied evidences in the play of hostility to Sir Walter Raleigh and his associates, arrive at 1593 for the year of writing: 'We give it as our belief, and no more, that Love's Labour's Lost was written in 1593 for a private performance in the house of some grandee who had opposed Raleigh and Raleigh's "men"—possibly the Earl of Southampton's.'

I venture to suggest briefly some reasons for thinking that the probability of an early version of Love's Labour's Lost, written not later than 1590 and standing very near the beginning of Shakespeare's dramatic work, remains unimpaired. Mr. Charlton agrees that Shakespeare's use of topical names (Navarre, Berowne, Longaville, Dumaine) is a concession to English interest in contemporary events in France. This interest, he maintains, really began with the sending of an expeditionary force to the aid of Henry of Navarre in July, 1591, while 'the summer and autumn of 1592 marked the highest level of English public interest in the French wars.' It seems clear, on the other hand, that if Shakespeare gave his sentimental students these topical names out of consideration for public interest in their namesakes, he could only have done so before the public, or he himself, had yet