Love's Labour's Won

thumb|300px|The only known published reference to Love's Labour's Won in Palladis Tamia

Love's Labour's Won was a lost play, attributed by contemporaries to William Shakespeare, written before 1598 and published by 1603, though no copies are known to have survived. Scholars dispute whether it is a true lost work, possibly a sequel to Love's Labour's Lost, or an alternative title to a known Shakespeare play.

Evidence

The first mention of the play occurs in Francis Meres' Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598) in which he lists a dozen Shakespeare plays. His list of Shakespearean comedies reads:

<blockquote>for Comedy, witnes his Gẽtlemẽ of Verona, his Errors, his Loue labors loſt, his Loue labours wonne, his Midſummers night dreame, & his Merchant of Venice</blockquote>

The August 1603 book list of the stationer Christopher Hunt lists the play as printed in quarto among other works by Shakespeare:

<blockquote>marchant of vennis, taming of a shrew, ...loves labor lost, loves labor won.</blockquote>

Theories

Shakespeare scholars have several theories about the play.

Sequel to Love's Labour's Lost

One theory is that Love's Labour's Won may be a lost sequel to Love's Labour's Lost, depicting the further adventures of the King of Navarre, Berowne, Longaville, and Dumain, whose marriages were delayed at the end of Love's Labour's Lost. In the final moments of Love's Labour's Lost the weddings that customarily close Shakespeare's comedies are unexpectedly deferred for a year without any obvious plot purpose, which would allow for a sequel. Critic Cedric Watts imagined what a sequel might look like: