Love's Labour's Won

From Freepedia

Love's Labour's Won (or Loue's Labour's Wonne) is an unknown play written by William Shakespeare before 1598. It is unknown if this play has been lost, or if the title was just an alternate name for a known play.

It is known that it was a comedy (according to Francis Meres's Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury). Meres also lists Shakespeare's other comedies:

"Ge'tleme' of Verona, his Errors, his Love's Labour's Lost, his Love's Labour's Wonne, his Midsummer Night's Dream, & his Merchant of Venice : for Tragedy his Richard II. Richard III. Henry IV. King John, Titus Andronicus and his Romeo and Juliet."

So it is known it is not one of these.

For a period of time it was thought to be The Taming of the Shrew; however, in 1953, Pottesman discovered the August 1603 booklist of the stationer Christopher Hunt which listed:

"Marchant Of Vennis, Taming Of A Shrew, Loves Labor Lost, Loves Labor Won."

Certain scholars have suggested it might be an alternative title to Much Ado about Nothing. Others have suggested that the play may continue the adventures of the King of Navarre, Berowne, Longville, and Dumaine, whose marriages were delayed at the end of Love's Labour's Lost.

Envisionment

In Fall 2005, a speculative envisioning of what Love's Labour's Won would have been will debut at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA. Written and directed by Dorothy Louise, the play (entitled Love's Labour's Wonne) is based on the following premise:

'At the end of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, news of the death of the Princess's father halts four couples on the road to matrimony. Everything stops, including the entertainment prepared for the festivities, as the Princess prepares to return home. The couples agree to meet again in a year and a day and disperese to a song of spring and winter. The play implies a sequel, and apparantly there was one, of which only the title, Love's Labour's Wonne, has survived-at least, so far. Scholars speculated the title might simply be an alternative for a surviving play, such as Much Ado About Nothing, until, in 1953, a list of titles turned up that included all the possible alternatives, as well as Love's Labour's Wonne. So the play did exist. Maybe this is it.'

Image:Shakespeare2.jpg	The works of William Shakespeare
Tragedies:	Romeo and Juliet | Macbeth | King Lear | Hamlet | Othello | Titus Andronicus | Julius Caesar | Antony and Cleopatra | Coriolanus | Troilus and Cressida | Timon of Athens
Comedies:	A Midsummer Night's Dream | All's Well That Ends Well | As You Like It | Cardenio (lost) | Cymbeline | Love's Labour's Lost | Love's Labour's Won (lost) | Measure for Measure | The Merchant of Venice | The Merry Wives of Windsor | Much Ado About Nothing | Pericles, Prince of Tyre | Taming of the Shrew | The Comedy of Errors | The Tempest | Twelfth Night | The Two Gentlemen of Verona | The Two Noble Kinsmen | The Winter's Tale
Histories:	King John | Edward III (attributed) | Richard II | Henry IV, part 1 | Henry IV, part 2 | Henry V | Henry VI, part 1 | Henry VI, part 2 | Henry VI, part 3 | Richard III | Henry VIII
Other works:	Sonnets | Venus and Adonis | The Rape of Lucrece | The Passionate Pilgrim | The Phoenix and the Turtle
See also:	Shakespeare on screen | Titles based on Shakespeare