THE MAIN PLOT of Love’s Labour’s Lost, concerned with the vow of Navarre and his lords to study for three years and to see no woman, may perhaps have been suggested, however faintly, by Pierre de la Primaudaye’s L’Academie francaise which Bowes translated in 1586: but in this book women were not specifically banned. The characters of the underplot have affinities with the Commedia dell’ Arte. Some, rather vague, historical parallels have been offered connecting Ferdinand of Navarre with Henri of Navarre, and others for the Princess’s embassy. Certainly the names of Berowne, Longaville, and Dumain were connected with Henri’s fight for the French crown, Biron and Longueville being his supporters, and the Duc de Mayenne his opponent.1
The researches of Professor M. C. Bradbrook, Dr F. A. Yates, and others have shown that the play contains a good deal of topical satire, although there is no general agreement about the identification of the different characters. Holofernes, for example has been thought to be a satirical portrait of Chapman (Acheson), of Thomas Harriot (Dover Wilson), of Florio (Warburton), of Richard Lloyd (Lefranc) and of Gabriel Harvey. Armado has been identified with Ralegh, Harvey and Antonio Perez.2 One agrees with Dr Anne Barton that3
contemporary references of this kind if and where they exist, are ultimately less important than the nature of the play as a complex and quite autonomous work of art.
It is best to consider Holofernes as a pedant and Armado as a miles gloriosus. Their contemporary identifications are obscure and shifting, partly no doubt because the play underwent revision and updating.
The plot, meagre as it is, was probably Shakespeare’s invention, whatever hints he picked up from fiction or contemporary history.