“Appertaining to thy young days”: The End of the Academe in Love’s Labour’s Lost

Abstract

The remoteness of early modern literary language represents a crisis in the educational status of Shakespeare; the crisis calls for innovation. How can teachers present the Shakespearean text, especially an allegedly “festive” comedy, in ways that engage the attention of contemporary students? This essay proposes one such reconnection. Adolescence is said to be a period of intellectual emergence into adulthood because decision making is immature and underdeveloped. For this reason, many college students are still supervised by adults or surrogate adults, such as college teachers. The goal of helping college students to be more independent, capable and in control of their own environment is warmly recognized by child development experts. Shakespeare studies, however, stand aloof from this developmental commitment, imagining that students enjoy reading historically remote texts even if this postpones attention to immediate concerns such as financial competence, emergent sexuality, and social skills that underlie personal and professional success. The life skills examined in this paper are not randomly chosen. The adolescent characters of Love’s Labour’s Lost are explicitly identified as novices in financial transactions, safe sexual relations, and conversational effectiveness. These three life skill areas are the subject of a proposed new curriculum which combines traditional interpretive practices with learning centered on practical competencies that contemporary high school and college students desire to acquire.