The Importance of Being Marcade

Summary

Den Gott des Ganges und der weiten Botschaft,

die Reisehaube u'ber hellen Augen,

den schlanken Stab hertragend vor dem Leibe

und flugelschlagend an den Fussgelenken.

It is a disconcerting fact that what nowadays appear to be the main problems attaching to Loves Labour’s Lost arise out of ill-advised attempts, over the past hundred years, to attribute to Shakespeare a rather uncharacteristic preoccupation with satirical allegory whose interpretation has produced a diversity of mutually antagonistic hypotheses. Once we accept that these major problems may be nonexistent and the minor ones, though insoluble, negligible, the residue is a straightforward, intensely vigorous yet gently sardonic comedy; a tour-de-force in which Shakespeare is able, through sheer technical dexterity, to sustain a dialogue involving no less than eight characters, of whom two or three are sufficiently heightened for the initiative to shift hither and thither and from whom there emerges a comic hero, Berowne, whose vitality surpasses that of any of his successors, Benedick alone excepted.