life ... define the happy prospect." ³. Arthos' assertion appears to fly in the face of both
Berowne's complaint, "Our wooing doth not end like an old play; / Jack hath not Jill: these ladies'
courtesy / Might well have made our sport a comedy,"⁴and the fact that only Don Armado is ac-
cepted by the woman he has been wooing, whereas all other men are "sentenced" to various harsh
labors to redeem themselves before they may even approach the women again and, perhaps, start

the courtship de novo at the end of one year and a day.What "victories?" I am compelled to chal-
lenge John Arthos. Berowne himself states his doubts and misgivings a second time, saying
twelve months and a day are "too long for a play,"⁵in response to Navarre's more sanguine reac-
tion to the Princess' terms. What support is there for taking the title as "joking"? Few, if any, of
my female students would support Mr. Arthos' assertion today. Obviously, any approach that

promises to integrate the perceived disparate thrusts of Love's Labor's LOstidentified by so
many critics, while disabusing us of the kind of misinterpretation documented in the dated reading

represented by Mr. Arthos' Introduction, I believe, warrants a hearing.
I recently re-discovered a passage in a notorious Elizabethan book of social commentary that ap-
pears to explain why Shakespeare may have felt comfortable weaving together the three threads of
the various affectations mentioned above into the fabric of his comedy. He and his contemporaries
may, indeed, have seen unity in what modern readers perceive as disjunction. The work I perused
has always been known, but--perhaps--has been dismissed too readily because it is so strongly at
variance with our own attitudes. When I saw the text before, I remember, I, too, read Phillip

Stubbes' Anatomie of Abuses in England⁶(1583) blinded by a distinguished line of dismis-
sive commentary and my own modern biases. Stubbes was to me a hopeless Puritan zealot, a voice
from the fringe of that era. However, when I re-read The AnatomieafterI had worked my way

through all the Statutes of the Realmand Tudor Royal Proclamationtrying to regulate
social behavior under Queen Elizabeth, I had to concede that the notorious Stubbes did not vary
much, if at all, from the official sentiments mirrored in those Elizabethan public policy documents.
Moreover, when I discovered and studied the Elizabethan Homily of Apparel, the product of
Queen Elizabeth's bishops, I realized that there was congruence beginning with their premises and
ending with the same striking metaphors, identical quotations from Scripture, etc. In other words,
I now am convinced that Stubbes is very much a voice in the choir of the mainstream of
Shakespeare's time. His views should not be dismissed as the writings of a marginal voice. For

3_{Intro.duction to LLL, The Complete Signet Classic Shakespeare, p. 398}
4_(V.ii.872-4)
5_V.ii.875.
6_{Stubbes, Phillip. The Anatomie of Abuuses( 1583); reprinted by J. P. Collier as vol. 10 of Miscellaneous}
Tracts Temp. Eliz. and Jac. I. I am aware of Collier's dubious editorial practices, bur t do not believe his
penchant for foregeries extended to this work.

cpb@gac.edu: CRC 98 Paper2January, 1998