Like most of Shakespeare's comidies, LLL involved a couple of very independent women falling in love with a couple of guys who were in love with them too. It also brought mistaken identities into play and, like A Midsummer Night's Dream, it had a play within the play. The humor was mostly in the form of puns, most of which were hard to understand the first time through. The ending was really bad, though, because the girls didn't get together with the guys like they should have if Shakespeare had planned a happy ending. All-in-all, I would only recommend this play for really serious Shakespearean scholars, as it is almost too dense for us laypeople

this is witty play about four guys who vow to sequester themselves for three years in serious study, but who are forced to forswear their vows when four attractive women show up and upset their plans. the humor is mainly in the form of wordplay, as only shakespeare can do, and the verbal jousting between berowne and his lady is especially entertaining, and anticipates the tete-a-tetes between petruchio and katherina in "taming of a shrew" and benedick and beatrice in "much ado about nothing". definitely worth a read, and if you can get it, the bbc television production of LLL is also worth seeing. last of all, i disagree with the other poster who complained of the ending. i thought it was pretty clear that the couples would get together in a year's time. so the ending was implicitly happy. only someone who is accustomed to instant gratification could find fault with it.

Harley Granville Barker was a leading and legendary actor, director, and playwright of the early twentieth century who gave up most of his public activities after 1918 when he married Helen Huntington. The mystery of why he retired from public life is the puzzle this book presumes to tackle.

The author tries to make the case that Granville Barker withdrew from public life because he sensed a danger it could destroy his private life, and not because his rich new wife provided him with a life of luxury--a luxury he could not refuse since it provided the opportunity to write.

In fact it seems the two of them led a productive life together, translating--as a team--plays from Spanish and writing---each on his own--stories and plays.

The book is a typical academic exercise and reads like a Ph.D. thesis with pictures. The nature of Granville Barker's talents as an actor and director--the basis for the legend--is not captured at all.

The title "A Secret Life" seems not so much a description of how Granville Barker lived--he hardly seems reclusive at all--as a come-on to sell the book. If there was a secret in his life, he has managed to keep it from Professor Salomon.