Which of the following plays is a social satire dealing with the fashion and fads of the day?
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Option 3 : Love's Labour Lost
The correct answer is Love's Labour Lost.
- Love's Labour's Lost is one of William Shakespeare's early comedies, believed to have been written in the mid-1590s for a performance at the Inns of Court before Queen Elizabeth I.
- It follows the King of Navarre and his three companions as they take an oath to abstain from the company of women for three years in order to focus on academic pursuits. However, they soon become infatuated with the Princess of France and her ladies, and this makes them break their oath.
- There is no clear source for the plot of the play. Some critics have commented that the plot derives from "a now lost account of a diplomatic visit made to Henry in 1578 by Catherine de Medici and her daughter Marguerite de Valois, Henry's estranged wife, to discuss the future of Aquitaine", but this is by no means certain.
- The play's sophisticated wordplay, pedantic humour and dated literary allusions is a reason for relative obscurity. The play is extremely topical, and audiences who watched the play in later years even during Shakespeare's lifetime did not appreciate the jokes because Shakespeare was exclusively satirizing the prevailing fads of the day.
- Thus we can say that Option 3 is the correct answer.
- The four main male characters are all loosely based on historical figures; Navarre is based on Henry of Navarre (who later became King Henry IV of France); Berowne (Biron) on Charles de Gontaut, duc de Biron; Dumain on Charles, duc de Mayenne; and Longaville on Henri I d'Orléans, duc de Longueville.
- Most scholars believe the play was written 1594―1595, but not later than 1598. Love's Labour's Lost was first published in quarto in 1598 by the bookseller Cuthbert Burby.
- Antony and Cleopatra is quite clearly based on the historical love story between the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra and the Roman leader Antony. It was a romantic tragedy of epic proportions, with little opportunity to criticize the social evils of the times.
- As You Like It is a cheerful romantic comedy, where the characters all seem to want to go live in the forest. It is a romantic story with a happy ending in the pastoral tradition, so it did not have any opportunity to criticize the fashions and fads of the day.
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