Poetry Month 3: A Monologue from LOVE'S LABOR'S LOST

We continue Poetry Month with a bit of a switcheroo. We're going back further in time to Elizabethan England and the lyrical pastoral comedies of William Shakespeare. Though As You Like It and Much Ado about Nothing are better plays, Love's Labor's Lost has its moments, particularly the beautiful speech given by Lord Berowne in Act 4, Scene 3 of the play.

While Kenneth Branagh did an excellent job in his film adaptation (a musical, the monologue led into a Gershwin tune), I offer my rendition of the speech. The play concerns a group of men who join the King of Navarre for three years of fasting from women and full of study. This plan, however, is foiled by the arrival of a group of ladies arriving with the Princess of France. Finally, Berowne has had enough and delivers a monologue that celebrates God's masterpiece, the woman.

We now go to the King of Navarre's park as the lovesick Berowne shows Ferdinand and his students the folly of their attempts in the face of love...