For this production of Shakespeare's
Love's Labor's Lost, I thought it best to look into some of the background of the play itself. Apparently the play is pivotal in the theory of there being a lost Quarto of Shakespeare's plays, including
Love's Labor's Lost and
Romeo and Juliet. The most crucial of the evidence presented is that of the title page of the play in the first quarto.
As the page says, "Newly corrected and augmented" implying that there is a previous copy somewhere else. On a side note, this is the first time Shakespeare's name was printed acknowledging him as a playwright. The page also shows that the play had previously been performed for the Queen the previous Christmas. Due to many inside jokes in the play, it is rumored that the play was likely written for a private audience, so don't feel bad if you don't get a couple of the jokes.
For further reading on the subject, a little more than a third of the way down. The date is 1598.
