—Act V, scene iii, lines 36-38
Virginius was a plebeian soldier who, according to legend, lived about 450 b.c. (a generation after Coriolanus). His beautiful daughter, Virginia, attracted the attention of Appius Claudius, a patrician who was then the most powerful man in Rome. Appius Claudius planned to seize the girl by having false witnesses testify that the girl was actually the daughter of one of his slaves and was therefore also his slave.
The distracted Virginius, seeing no way of stopping Appius Claudius, suddenly stabbed his daughter to death in the midst of the trial, proclaiming that only through death could he save her honor.
Titus Andronicus states the situation erroneously, by the way. Virginius' daughter was not "enforced, stained, and deflow'red." She was merely threatened with that.
Saturninus says that Virginius was justified in his action, whereupon Titus promptly stabs Lavinia to death. When Saturninus angrily demands the reason for that action, Titus says she has been raped by Chiron and Demetrius, and that they in turn have been killed and baked into a pie which the Empress is at that moment eating.
Titus then stabs and kills Tamora; at which the Emperor Saturninus stabs and kills Titus; at which Lucius stabs and kills Saturninus.
A Roman Lord now asks Lucius what has brought Rome to this civil war and assassination:
—Act V, scene iii, lines 85-87
Sinon is the Greek who persuaded the Trojans to allow entry to the wooden horse ("the fatal engine") and made the final sack of the city possible (see page I-210).
Lucius and Marcus, between them, now tell all the wrongs done the Andronici by the Emperor, the Empress, her sons, and Aaron. They even show Aaron's baby as proof of another kind of wickedness.
The appalled Romans hail Lucius as the new Emperor and call in Aaron for punishment. Lucius orders that he be buried breast-deep in the earth and allowed to starve to death.
Even now, Aaron refuses to crawl, and one can't help but feel a kind of sneaking admiration for his defiance. He says, ferociously, after having heard his doom:
—Act V, scene iii, lines 185-90
It is a fitly grisly speech to end a grisly play that opens with:
(1) the dead body of one of Titus' sons, then continues with
(2) the sacrifice of Tamora's son, Alarbus, by Lucius,
(3) the stabbing of Mutius by his father, Titus,
(4) the stabbing of Bassianus by Chiron and Demetrius,
(5) the rape and mutilation of Lavinia by Chiron and Demetrius,
(6) the mutilation of Titus by Aaron,
(7) the execution of Martius and
(8) Quintus, by order of the Emperor,
(9) the stabbing of the Nurse by Aaron,
(10) the hanging of a Clown for small offense by Saturninus' order,
(11) the throat-cutting of Chiron and
(12) Demetrius by Titus,
(13) the unwitting cannibalism of Tamora,
(14) the stabbing of Lavinia by Titus,
(15) the stabbing of Tamora by Titus,
(16) the stabbing of Titus by Saturninus,
(17) the stabbing of Saturninus by Lucius, and finally,
(18) the projected death by slow starvation of Aaron.
Part III. Italian
14. Love's Labor's Lost
There are fifteen of Shakespeare's plays which deal with English history or English legend. If I adhered to strict chronological sequence, these would follow here. If I did that, however, the division between the two volumes of this book would fall inconveniently in the middle of those plays. I am consequently leaving the fifteen English plays to make up in toto the second volume.
We will conclude this first volume then with a dozen romances which are placed in Renaissance Italy and surrounding regions, and which are, for Shakespeare, contemporary. There is no clear historical background and even where some reference can be pinpointed to this or that year, this is not significant and will not do as a method of deciding the order in which the plays should be presented.
In this final part of the volume, then, the plays that remain will be placed in the order in which (it is thought) Shakespeare wrote them.
And of these Love's Labor's Lost is possibly the earliest. Along with The Comedy of Errors it has sometimes been dated as early as 1588, though dates as late as 1593 are possible.
The play doesn't seem to have been intended for wide public popularity, and may have been written for private performance. One possibility is that it was intended for a celebration at the home of the Earl of Southampton (see page I-3). If so, the play must have been an astounding success, for Southampton then became Shakespeare's generous patron.
If Love's Labor's Lost were indeed written primarily for the entertainment of a coterie of men interested in art, that would explain the over-elaboration of much of the style. The play was a satire on pedantry, and its complicated verbiage and intrusive Latinity would appeal to the sense of humor of the educated. Both the elaborateness and the Latinity have tended to diminish the popularity of the play considerably in later times.
The play opens with a King and his three companions on stage. The King is announcing his decision to retire for three years (along with his companions) to a sober and austere study of philosophy. He is very optimistic about the effect this will have, for he says:
—Act I, scene i, lines 12-13
The speaker is, according to the cast of characters, Ferdinand, King of Navarre.
Navarre does not exist as an independent kingdom on our maps today (or on the maps of Shakespeare's time, for that matter), and most people would be at a loss to point out where it might ever have existed. It is not a mythical land, however; it is no Ruritania. It once did exist indeed, and in medieval times it constituted a sizable region about the western end of the Pyrenees. Mostly, it lay to the south and west of that range in what is now north-central Spain, but some of its territory lay to the north in what is now southwestern France.