Is love’s labor no longer lost?

       It is a story of two beautiful women – one lowborn and one of high birth – and two men – one of modest birth and full of honor – the second an aristocrat of the blackest heart. The story features tangled relationships, women disguised as men, intrigue laced with tragedy and comedy.

Could anyone but Shakespeare have written these lines?

I do not see that fervour in the maid
Which youth and love should kindle. She consents
As twere to feed without an appetite
Tells me she is content and plays the coy one,
Like those that subtly make their words their ward
Keeping address at distance.

Or how about this:

See how her beauty doth enrich the place!
O, add add the music of they charming tongue
Sweet as the lark that wakens the morning
And makes me think it paradise indeed.

    Arden Shakespeare, the publisher,  concluded that these are indeed the words of the Bard and that most of the play is as well. Last year they published it as the 37th play in the Canon of Shakespeare.

“The publisher did so based on the evidence and research of literature professor Brean Hammond of the University of Nottingham in England.

Passages in the first half of the play… “have the density, metrical sophistication and metaphorical richness” characteristic of Shakespeare. There are also words “that you won’t find anywhere else (again characteristic of Shakespeare) such as ‘absonant’ which means ill-sounding, not pleasant to the ear.”

      “It’s a fraud,” say a long list of critics from Alexander Pope to Harold Bloom. But the play’s the thing so I went to see the first New York production of the play near Third Avenue for myself when I was in New York a few weeks ago and I can report that ---um, I’d rather be seeing Cats. But I will say that it was the most interesting intermission I have ever attended, as a cadre of New York intellectuals debated endlessly about the play’s true author as I waited in line for the urinal.

    I believe this production has closed but if you are a Shakespeare lover you owe to yourself to at least read the play and decide if its for real, or just a Double Falsehood.

      Next on my list – The Tragedy of Arthur – another lost Shakespeare play found recently found in …Minnesota?