The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. Edited and introduced by William C. Carroll, this edition of Love's Labour Lost features a lively account of the play's performance history from 1632 to the present day. Stage and screen productions of the late twentieth century receive particular attention and a range of international performances are also explored. New trends in the scholarly criticism are discussed in the introduction, as are the play's sources and historical contexts. Carroll's text is freshly edited from the First Quarto, published in 1598, and presents a highly readable modernised edition of Love's Labour Lost; a play known for its unorthodox ending and extraordinary use of language.

'… this edition's helpful notes and introduction make sense of the more alien aspects of this sparkling play, where even the most intellectually stumbling character can pronounce the word 'honorificabilitudinatibus'.' Elizabeth Scott-Baumann, University of Oxford
'… the New Cambridge edition is to be celebrated for the high quality of its scholarship, and especially for its discussion of the play's performance history, which contains fascinating descriptions of radically different productions … Carroll's elegant, enthusiastic, generally chronological discussion of the play's stage history brings to life its verbal brilliance and striking last scene …' English Studies

William C. Carroll is Professor of English at Boston University.