"Love's Labour's Lost" is the most extravagantly artificial of Shakespeare's comedies, a pun-encrusted farrago of frenetic wordplay that lacks the emotional immediacy of his better-known plays.
To help pay the increase the Lord Chamberlain's Men had to do something theater companies usually were loath to: They sold publication rights to four of their most popular plays, all by Shakespeare--Richard III, Richard II, Henry IV and Love's Labour's Lost.