Love's Labor's Lost: Irony 5 key examples

Costard, a foolish clown, often confuses similar sounding words. Throughout the play, Shakespeare plays with Costard’s confusion for comedic effect, as the clown tries and fails to affect an educated, sophisticated persona. As he’s dragged away, Costard mourns the “sour cup of prosperity.” Perhaps he’s thinking of the word “adversity” (or “misery,” “calamity,” etc.). He suggests “affliction” may smile on him once again, which suggests that he has confused it with a positive noun (perhaps “prosperity,” “luck,” or even “justice”). 

The audience is well aware of Costard’s errors in speech, while Costard remains blissfully oblivious. The irony in this scene is amusing, but also points to the greater theme of the limits of speech. Costard is also the character who delivers Armado’s letter to Rosaline by mistake, and Berowne’s letter to Jacquenetta. Costard’s trouble with expressing himself, as well as his poor delivery of these love letters, references the play’s anxieties around miscommunication and the ambiguity of language.

The audience can see Berowne, Longaville, and the king, but they are all unaware of one another.  Berowne, hearing the king approach, hid; the king, hearing Longaville approach, hid as well. Apparently alone, Longaville asks himself whether anyone else has gone back on their promise to forego women for three years. Berowne replies—for the audience’s ears only—that he could comfort Longaville easily with two other cases (himself and the king). Their behavior makes them a "triumvirate" of felons in love’s prison.

This instance of dramatic irony is used to great comedic effect and also illustrates the lack of control these men have in the face of love. Their feelings have left each of them (temporarily) isolated, unable to make sense of their situation or to see themselves clearly within it. This scene presents a reversal of the conditions at the beginning of the play, when the men sought to free themselves of love through study. The illusion of control is shattered for each man individually and—as they meet one another—collectively as well. 

Scholars believe the role of Rosaline was probably meant to be played by a woman with dark features. This is reflected in the jibes the men offer in these lines. Dumaine says that coal-covered chimney sweepers are jealous of her. Longaville adds that even coal miners are now considered beautiful; the king adds that Ethiopians are proud of their complexion now. In a final blow, Dumaine says ironically that candles are unnecessary now, since darkness is now considered light.

The racist mocking of Rosaline’s “dark” features is obviously problematic. Dumaine’s use of irony speaks to a general air of reversal in this scene. Dumaine jokes that Rosaline’s “dark” features are now considered “light,” aligning “light” with fair features, goodness, and beauty. This line hearkens back to the king’s earlier reference to the Devil (“Black is the badge of Hell”). A shift in aesthetic preference is linked to a moral evolution, change, or decline.

Further, this is the scene in which each lord is revealed to have compromised their oath to Ferdinand by falling in love with one of the Frenchwomen. After encountering the beauty of the ladies of the French court, each one of these men has undergone a kind of moral compromise. They are saved from full hypocrisy only by Berowne’s rhetorical skills. In a sense, the lords have all decided that “dark is light,” ironically choosing to pursue the very thing they have sworn off. Love, previously maligned, is defended as passionately as Rosaline is here. In this way, Dumaine’s poor joke falls in line with the tone and import of the scene. 

Berowne believes that the princess is actually Rosaline, because the princess is wearing a mask and a pearl he sent to Rosaline as a gift. Berowne proceeds to flirt with the princess, inviting her to speak with him in private (“One word in secret”).  He accuses her of injuring him with her resistance (“Thou grievest my gall”), and she agrees to speak with him.

The same situation is repeated with Dumaine and Maria (who is pretending to be Katherine), Longaville and Katherine (who is pretending to be Maria), and Ferdinand and Rosaline (who is pretending to be the princess). The men each promise their love to the wrong women.

The audience’s knowledge that the Spanish noblemen are disguised as Russian ambassadors and that the women are disguised as one another adds several layers of comedy to this scene. This instance of dramatic irony also adds stakes and further drama to the courtships on stage, as the audience tries to puzzle out which characters really know what’s going on. 

The use of dramatic irony also makes the audience aware of the cleverness of the French ladies. The Spaniards came to the field in disguise, believing that they could quickly trick and win over the three women. However, as the princess teases Berowne, her wit and couth are on full display. She and her ladies successfully fool the Spaniards and even convince them to pledge their love to the wrong women. In this way, dramatic irony is used to undercut gendered stereotypes and subvert expectations of female characters in the play.

Berowne is well-read enough to know that no one in Love’s Labor’s Lost has achieved a fairy-tale ending. He comments that their “wooing” has not ended like an old play, because the men do not have their brides. He also jokes that the women have made their efforts into a "comedy."

Berowne’s comments themselves are ironic, in that a character in a play is remarking upon the structure of the play itself (some critics would call this “meta-commentary” or a “meta-theatrical” statement). Shakespeare uses Berowne to gesture directly toward the structure and aims of Love’s Labor’s Lost.

Over and over again, Love’s Labor’s Lost undercuts audience and character expectations around courtship and love. Berowne and the other noblemen expected the women to be easily duped by their Russian ploy and easily captured by their love poetry. In turn, the Frenchwomen expected a lack of sincerity and commitment from their Spanish suitors. In a final, unexpected reversal, an unforeseen event (the death of the king) has pulled the women and men away from one another just as their courting was becoming serious. 

However, genuine, honest conversation between the noblemen and the French women only begins in the wake of the ladies' departure. The men and women in the play only come to a compromise around love (that they will all marry after a year) when all of their expectations are stripped away. Berowne’s remarks here help point to the statement Shakespeare’s play is making by eschewing a traditional ending.