This thesis investigates the Early Modern context of oath swearing and breaking within Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost. This thesis draws on John Kerrigan's work on oaths, as well as on Jonathan...Show moreThis thesis investigates the Early Modern context of oath swearing and breaking within Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost. This thesis draws on John Kerrigan's work on oaths, as well as on Jonathan Gray's work regarding oath's and the English Reformation. The context and rules of oath-theory will show that the oaths sworn by the men of the play have lost spiritual potency, rendering the oaths ineffective. However, the women of the play represent a new way of swearing in which the absent authority (i.e. God) in oaths can be replaced with intimacy and a hallowed human connection. This argument is based on Isabel Karremann's interpretation of Elizabeth Mazzola's "remains of the sacred" (Karremann 67). Subsequently, this thesis will question how Love's Labour's Lost and its oaths can be staged and have been staged in societies that have largely secularised.Show less
