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  • Title: Love's Labor's Lost (Quarto 1, 1598)
  • Editor: Timothy Billings

  • Copyright Timothy Billings. This text may be freely used for educational, non-profit purposes; for all other uses contact the Editor.
    Author: William Shakespeare
    Editor: Timothy Billings
    Not Peer Reviewed

    Love's Labor's Lost (Quarto 1, 1598)

    called Loues Labor's lost.

    As bombast and as lyning to the time:
    2740But more deuout then this our respectes,
    Haue we not been, and therefore met your Loues,
    In their owne fashyon like a merriment.
    Dum. Our letters madame, shewed much more then iest.
    Long. So did our lookes.
    2745Rosa. We did not cote them so.
    King. Now at the latest minute of the houre,
    Graunt vs your loues.
    Quee. A time me thinkes too short,
    To make a world-without-end bargaine in:
    2750No no my Lord, your Grace is periurde much,
    Full of deare guiltines, and rherefore this,
    If for my Loue (as there is no such cause)
    You will do ought, this shall you do for me:
    Your oth I will not trust, but goe with speede
    2755To some forlorne and naked Hermytage,
    Remote from all the pleasurs of the world:
    There stay vntill the twelue Celestiall Signes
    Haue brought about the annuall reckoning.
    If this Austere insociable life,
    2760Change not your offer made in heate of blood.
    If frostes and fastes, hard lodging, and thin weedes,
    Nip not the gaudie blossomes of your Loue:
    But that it beare this tryall, and last Loue,
    Then at the expiration of the yeere,
    2765Come challenge me, challenge me by these desertes:
    And by this Virgin palme now kissing thine,
    I wilbe thine: and till that instance shutt
    My wofull selfe vp in a mourning house,
    Rayning the teares of lamentation,
    2770For theremembraunce of my Fathers death.
    If this thou do deny, let our handes part,
    Neither intiled in the others hart.
    King. If this, or more then this, I would denie,
    To flatter vp these powers of mine with rest,
    2775The sodaine hand of death close vp mine eye.
    Hence herrite then my hart, is in thy brest.
    Bero.