Editing Love's Labour's Lost (section)

==Date and text==
[[File:Love's Labour's Lost, 1598.jpg|thumb|Frontispiece from ''Loues labors loſt'', 1598 from the University of Edinburgh Heritage Collection]]
[[File:View of first page from Love's Labour's Lost, 1598.jpg|thumb|First page from ''Loues labors loſt'', 1598, from the University of Edinburgh Heritage Collection]]
Most scholars believe the play was written in 1594–1595, but not later than 1598.{{sfn|Woudhuysen|1998|p=59}} ''Love's Labour's Lost'' was first published in [[book size|quarto]] in 1598 by the bookseller [[Cuthbert Burby]]. The title page states that the play was "Newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere," which has suggested to some scholars a revision of an earlier version.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.s4ulanguages.com/william.html |title=William |access-date=2016-07-15 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160403032304/http://www.s4ulanguages.com/william.html |archive-date=3 April 2016}} See title page of facsimile of the original 1st edition (1598)</ref>

Dating to 1598, [[Edinburgh University]]'s manuscript is one of the earliest known copies of the work and according to its title page, is the same version as that which was presented to Queen [[Elizabeth I]] the previous Christmas, in 1597. It is in quarto format and was donated to [[Edinburgh University]] between 1626 and 1636 by former student [[William Drummond of Hawthornden|William Drummond]] of [[Hawthornden Castle|Hawthornden]], making it part of the university's first literature collection.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Loves Labours Lost, 1598, f.1r |url=https://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/detail/UoEsha~1~1~31197~100318:Loves-Labours-Lost,-1598,-f-1r |access-date=2023-01-31 |website=images.is.ed.ac.uk |language=en}}</ref>

The play next appeared in print in the [[First Folio]] in 1623, with a later quarto in 1631. ''[[Love's Labour's Won]]'' is considered by some to be a lost sequel.{{sfn|Woudhuysen|1998|pp=80–81}}<ref>Carroll, William C. (ed.) ''Love's Labour's Lost'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 39–40</ref>

[[File:Love's Labour's Lost Quarto.jpg|thumb|Title page of the second quarto (1631)]]
The speech given by Berowne at 4.3.284–361 is potentially the longest in all of Shakespeare's plays, depending on editorial choices. Shakespeare critic and editor [[Edward Capell]] has pointed out that certain passages within the speech seem to be redundant and argues that these passages represent a first draft which was not adequately corrected before going to print.<ref name="Furness">Furness, Horace Howard. (ed.) ''Love's Labour's Lost'' A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1904), pp. 192–194</ref> Specifically, lines 291–313 are "repeated in substance"<ref name="Furness" /> further in the speech and are sometimes omitted by editors.<ref>{{Folger inline|Love's Labor's Lost|4|3|310}}{{failed verification|date=February 2023|reason=Doesn't say anything about omissions.}}</ref> With no omissions, the speech is 77 lines and 588 words.