Love's Labour's Lost and Italian Newsletters

Love's Labour's Lost and Italian Newsletters

Overview

This packet compares Love's Labour's Lost with the Italian newsletters in:

• /Users/kenf/Database/Italian_Letters_Transcriptions/Italian_Letters_Transcriptions.md

The strongest result is that the newsletters provide supporting context for the play's French / Navarre geopolitical field and its broader ambassadorial-news environment.

The newsletters are less helpful for the play's comic pedantry and less specific than Neville's own letters on compliment and conference.

Verified Sourced Facts

• PRO 30_50_70_2_001.jpg repeatedly references Nauarra, France, Lorraine, Lyon, and English involvement.
• PRO 30_50_70_2_002.jpg links Nauarra, Lorraine, Paris, French royal letters, and English ships carrying munitions.
• PRO 30_50_70_2_003.jpg again tracks the forces of Nauarra through Lorraine and Champagne.
• PRO 30_50_70_2_011.jpg places ambassadors at court and also records aid going to the Rè di Nauarra.
• PRO 30_50_70_2_009.jpg records resident ambassadors and Lyon/Auvergne letter traffic.
• PRO 30_50_70_2_023.jpg records orders to avoid engaging directly with Nauarra.
• No current newsletter witness has yet been shown to supply a distinctive structural feature in the play comparable to the avvisi logic demonstrated for Othello.

Ken Feinstein Twitter and Blog Information

• The Neville project has long treated French and continental political context as important to Love's Labour's Lost.
• This packet narrows that broad intuition by tying it to direct avvisi witnesses where possible and by recording the parts the avvisi do not currently explain.

Quoted Source Text

PRO 30_50_70_2_001.jpg

li Tuischi di Nauarra erano finalm.te passati in Ciampagna

and:

il Re di Nauarra che domina la Campagna se é auiccinato a confini di lorena

PRO 30_50_70_2_011.jpg

in Corte erano gionti Amb.ri di Toscana e di Loreno

and:

andauan p congiungersi col Rè di Nauarra

PRO 30_50_70_2_023.jpg

fuggissero l' attacarsi con Nauarra

Citations

• /Users/kenf/Database/Italian_Letters_Transcriptions/Italian_Letters_Transcriptions.md
• /Users/kenf/folger_shakespeare/chunked/loves-labors-lost/act-01_scene-01.txt
• /Users/kenf/folger_shakespeare/chunked/loves-labors-lost/act-02_scene-01.txt
• /Users/kenf/folger_shakespeare/chunked/loves-labors-lost/act-05_scene-02.txt
• /Users/kenf/Neville Book/18_Other_Plays_Analysis/Loves_Labours_Lost_Italian_Newsletters/NEWSLETTER_WITNESSES.md
• /Users/kenf/Neville Book/18_Other_Plays_Analysis/Loves_Labours_Lost_Italian_Newsletters/SCENE_BY_SCENE_COMPARISON.md

Notes on Access

• Strongest scenes:
• Act 1, Scene 1
• Act 2, Scene 1
• Act 5, Scene 2
• The avvisi are strongest on:
• Navarre as a live political node
• France / Paris / Lyon / Lorraine as a dense report-world
• ambassadorial and court-news texture
• The packet is presently best used as:
• supporting context
• source mapping
• groundwork for a later source-baseline comparison
• The avvisi are currently weak on:
• Aquitaine
• Holofernes-style comic diction
• nonce-word and pedant comedy