This book contends that in Love's Labour's Lost Shakespeare sought to discover the ways in which the imagination uses and abuses language. The author's critical reading shows that the characters are endowed with a wide variety of rhetorical disguises. Each assumes that his verbal and social point of view is correct, and the limitations and virtues of each viewpoint are explored as the drama unfolds.

In an elegant examination of theme and style, Professor Carroll heightens the reader's awareness of Shakespeare's marvellously inventive use of language. The author analyzes the...