Love Comedy Plays from Great English Playwrights
William Shakespeare, William Congreve, and Colley Cibber
Feb 9, 2009
Valentine's Day is in the air, and love is everywhere. Speaking of a comedy play with the word love in its title, Shakespeare's famous Love's Labour's Lost instantly comes to mind. Perhaps not as famous but two of his compatriot English playwrights also wrote love comedy plays: Love for Love by William Congreve and Love's Last Shift by Colley Cibber.
Love for Love
Love for Love is a comedy play by English playwright and poet William Congreve, published in 1695.
Valentine is a fashionable man whose extravagance led him into debt. He is about to go broke. His father, Sir Sampson Legend, agrees to pay the debts only if Valentine will sign his inheritance away to his youngest brother, Ben, a sailor.
He agrees but realizing his near ruin pleads to no avail, and he even feigns madness to avoid from signing. Angelica, whom Valentine has been courting, intervenes and uses her charm to draw a marriage proposal from Sir Sampson and gets possession of the bond.
Believing that she will marry his father, Valentine agrees to sign in despair. Angelica then reveals her plot and tears up the bond. Meanwhile, Ben is annoyed at his father's plan to marry him off to an unworthy country girl. The plot involves minor characters' diversions to the comedy, including Valentine's servant Jeremy.
Love's Last Shift
Love's Last Shift is a comedy play by English actor and playwright Colley Cibber, first performed in 1696.
Playboy Loveless, having deserted his wife Amanda after a mere six months of marriage, returns from abroad penniless to resume his philandering life in London.
Amanda schemes to win him back by disguising herself as a stranger. She conducts a playful intrigue, then appeals on his better nature to change his ways.
Love's Labour's Lost
It's a comedy play by William Shakespeare, first performed c. 1594.
The three ladies of the Princess of France -- Rosaline, Katharine and Maria -- tell the men wooing them that they must wait and undergo test to prove that their love is true. The men, Berowne, Longaville and Dumain, are three Lords of Ferdinand, the King of Navarre.
The king and his lords decide to isolate themselves for three years vowing that they will keep no women company during the test time. However, when beautiful women arrive on a diplomatic mission, the men immediately fail to keep their test. The ladies discover the situation and the lords realize that they really love the ladies. Before they eventually accept them, the ladies banish them to a hermitage for another year.
The comedy is prolonged with playful complications. To add more humour to the play, Shakespeare has included minor characters.
Readers may want to check these two love quotes articles: Love Quotes from Great Writers and Passion and Love Quotes from Great Thinkers
Sources:
Goring, Rosemary, editor. Larousse Dictionary of Writers. New York: Larousse, 1994
Ousby, Ian. The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993
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