lunedì 15 marzo 2010

 

Shakespeare's comedy Love's Labour's Lost begins in a solemn manner. The young king of Navarre and his three trusted gentlemen friends enter into a binding agreement: to achieve wisdom, to reach the summit of knowledge, for three years they will live as recluses in the palace, dedicating themselves exclusively to study.

 

It is a remarkable educational program: to complete this, the four are committed to being ascetics in eating, not caring about clothes, and especially, not to succumb to the lure of love. For this reason, no maiden will have access to the building. Actually one of the four, Biron, has some doubts about the value of the project: " As, painfully to pore upon a book / To seek the light of truth; while truth the while / Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look.” However, he accepts the rules.

 

Unfortunately (fortunately) on that same day an emissary from the King of France arrives, and the king of Navarre cannot avoid receiving them. The delegation is composed, of course, of four girls, the young French princess and her three lady attendants. The comedy turns at once into a fireworks display of jokes, innuendo, and salacious parleys. Shakespeare makes fun of the language of gallant and empty love poetry, the pedantic phrases of pundits, the sloppy speech of teachers, that deceit which all of us can fall into.

 

The fact is that each of the four fall in love with a lady. One after another appears on the scene complaining of having secretly betrayed their oath to devote themselves exclusively to study and they read poetry passages dedicated to their beloved. None of them knows that another, unknown, is listening. And so, each one finds themselves quickly exposed. What to do: to go against their feeling to save honor or to violate their oath to save their love?

 

It is Biron who gives the decisive word. What was the purpose? To learn. But how do you learn? They thought that the way was to hit the books, removing every aspect of reality from the horizon which could disturb their study. But this could only produce an abstract knowledge, a bookish record. In fact, their words were flat, like those copied from others. Instead, words are illuminated by truth and beauty when they are dictated by a feeling which wholly engages them: love.