The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 14.0704  Thursday, 10 April 2003

[1]     From:   Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Wednesday, 09 Apr 2003 16:01:40 -0400
        Subj:   Re: SHK 14.0690 Re: Love's Labour's Wonne

[2]     From:   Bob Grumman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Wednesday, 9 Apr 2003 16:47:27 -0400
        Subj:   Re: SHK 14.0690 Re: Love's Labour's Wonne


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Wednesday, 09 Apr 2003 16:01:40 -0400
Subject: 14.0690 Re: Love's Labour's Wonne
Comment:        Re: SHK 14.0690 Re: Love's Labour's Wonne

The 1603 bookseller's inventory is not absolutely conclusive that LLW
was not The Shrew, although I do not believe it was.  The Shrew play
listed in that inventory is "The Taming of A Shrew", which would seem to
be the so-called ur-Shrew.

 But if "A Shrew" is a pirated and inaccurate version of Shakespeare's
comedy, which is one of the alternative hypotheses which many scholars
are coming to believe, it is just a bad quarto of "The Shrew, so WS's
work; and LLW is not likely to have been the same play under a different
name.  Also, it is probable that "The Shrew" was written before LLL, so
it unlikely to be LLW (but this may be reasoning backwards from the
assumption that LLW was a sequel to LLL).  Kittredge is emphatic that
"surely .. [The Shrew] cannot be the mysterious Loves Labour's Won"
(Kittredge's Complete Works p. 325 [1936 ed.]).  He suggests that it was
AW/EW, but I think this is also unlikely, especially as it appears that
AW/EW was almost certainly written after 1598.

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Bob Grumman <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Wednesday, 9 Apr 2003 16:47:27 -0400
Subject: 14.0690 Re: Love's Labour's Wonne
Comment:        Re: SHK 14.0690 Re: Love's Labour's Wonne

>[the] suggestion that the mysterious play Love's Labor's Won
>mentioned by Meres refers to The Shrew was disproved

not disproved--shown to be unlikely

>when
>a booklist of August 1603 for the stationer Christopher Hunt
>was discovered in 1953 by S. Pottesman listing:
>'Marchant Of Vennis, Taming Of A Shrew, Loves Labor
>Lost, Loves Labor Won.'  See T.W. Baldwin, Shakspere's
>'Love's Labor's Won': new evidence from the account
>books of an Elizabethan bookseller. (Carbondale, Ill.:
>Southern Illinois Univ. Pr., 1957) vii, 11-15, 30-31.
>
>Sincerely,
>Stephen Miller

Yeah, I remember this now.  I conveniently forgot it when suggesting
Shrew was Loves Labours Wonne.  I still think it's the best candidate.
The bookseller's Shrew is *A* Shrew.  Perhaps Shakespeare's Shrew was
originally titled Loves Labours Wonne to distinguish it from *A* Shrew,
whether the latter was by Shakespeare or not.

I know, very strained.  But so are all the other arguments for other
plays as Loves Labours Wonne--and for a lost play as Loves Labours
Wonne.

--Bob G.

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