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William Shakespeare: Love's Labor's Lost (Paperback, 2018, Penguin Classics)

Love's Labour's Lost by William Shakespeare

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Love's Labour's Lost is basically about wordplay; the romance and comedy are weirdly good, but what's great about this is that you read it and just know that Shakespeare is flexing on everyone else's grasp of the English language. Even the characters get confused by his 780° turns of phrase. You desperately need an annotated version of this to understand all the weird layers of puns, references, malapropisms, and metaphors he piles together.

This was my first Shakespeare comedy, and it definitely earned that title. The desperate blundering of the King's courtiers (and how quickly they give up on their vows of celibacy) and the way the Princess and her courtiers fuck around with the men brings up so many laugh-out-loud funny situations. The side characters are also a lot of fun; Costard especially just doesn't seem to understand most of what's being said to him (not that I blame him, see the above flexing on the English language), and it causes all sorts of problems for everyone. The minor characters here provide fun ways to throw additional wrenches into the already problematic courtship of the main characters.

The TL;DR is that this is fantastic as long as you have either hefty footnotes or a god-like understanding of English. Luckily, there are lots of ways to get the former.