On my way to writing about a Shakespeare play I got sucked in to Facebook where I discovered that most of my friends are against Black Friday or celebrated Chanksgiving or watch Terence Malick movies, or all three. Which shows my demographic to the extent that is possible. Also, I saw that McSweeney’s has out an interview with Lena Dunham and Judy Blume, “two cultural icons,” which I would love to read, though I flinch every time Lena is described as an icon as well as every time she is described as a feminist icon. I would lie down in the mud to help ease a crossing for Lena Dunham — that is how greatly I love her — but don’t you have to be at least middle aged before you can be an icon? Or maybe thirty? Like isn’t time put in a part of being an icon — and is she “feminist” simply because she’s a woman? I hate how people use that word.

I dunno, but I digress anyway because what I wanted to write about was Love’s Labour’s Lost and how it is an anthem to women and loving women, and I liked that a lot this week — I am Chankgsiving grateful for it. Which actually means that the Facebook/Judy Blume/Lena Dunham thing wasn’t really a digression.

So LLL has the thinnest of plots (which is not my idea, but David Bevington’s whose edition I am reading) — thin even for a Shakespeare play: four men swear off women, food and sleep in order to be scholars. Four women come to visit and the men break their oath. The women toy with them which extends things for several scenes. Later, they will probably get married (though this isn’t for sure b/c they have to wait twelvemonth.) There are two misdirected letters — standard Shakespeare fare — but the effect on the plot is minimal. The language is full of puns even for Shakespeare (again, Bevington) — whole bits of it are really hard to read — couplet after couplet punning on words like sheep and light and calf and price. It’s the kind of stuff you could spend a whole afternoon parsing, reading it over and over and looking at the notes, student homework type stuff. Worthwhile for sure.

But the real payout is the character of Berowne, who must be the original thinking lady’s sex symbol. I am truly not clear why he is not famous for this in geeked-out literary circles like mine. He’s easily the smartest and coolest character in Shakespeare, I think. He’s a scholar and a logician and a true heart, in touch with his feelings, articulate, having quite a lot of mercy for others and a wry wit. And he’s not a killer, or a anxious son, or at confused about his sexuality. He’s the ultimate anti-Hamlet — he’s a-ok with himself and makes his pro-love, pro-joy point once, beautifully and with a flourish at the end and moves on.

Here he “reasons against reading” to Ferdinand, King of Navarre, whose the author of the celibacy/abstemious oath:

To seek the light of truth, while truth the while
Doth falsley blind the eyesight of his look.
Light seeking light doth light of light beguile;
So, ere you find where light in darkness lies,
Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.

That is to say, if you are excessive in your search for truth, you become blind to it. Or, even more succinctly, lighten up if you want to learn anything. I love that phrase “Light seeking light doth light of light beguile.” I love how it captures that necessary weightlessness that you need to find inspiration — and joy — and all the good things — I love the light in it.

And then there’s the speech that must be famous, though I have not heard of it — the one that contains the neatest, most Pauline friendly repudiation of fundamentalism that I’ve found yet in literature.

Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselvs,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.
It is religious to be thus forsworn,
For charity itself fulfills the law,
And who can sever love from charity?

But back to the cultural icon/women rule thing. I guess you could call this a feminist play because the women have the power, or you could call it an antifeminist play because they are completely objectified as distractions and coy, toying creatures by the men — which is why I like Shakespeare, because it is always both — but you can’t get away from the glory of these lines — from the same speech by Berowne.

From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes
That show, contain , and nourish all the world.

Which is sort of how I feel about both Judy Blume and Lena Dunham — who sparkle all the right fire into the world for me and do so by being explicitly, defiantly female. And if that makes us all “feminist” well, good then. I’ll take it.