Grace in
Love’s Labour’s Lost
Agrégation 2015
L. Cottegnies, Sorbonne Nouvelle
I. benevolence, favour :
• - God’s grace (benevolence bestowed freely and without regard to
merit) ; favour shown by a person ; favour done to someone ; a
privilege granted by a person in authority ; permission to so
something ; a gift from heaven ;
• - a healing power ; in a person, virtue, goodness ; mercy, clemency,
pardon, forgiveness
• - a person’s lot, destiny, luck, fortune ; te condition of being favoured.
• - a title of respect
• - a period of time granted as temporary reprieve
II. the giving or an expression of thanks, gratitude
• - blessing offered in thanks before or after meal ; thanks, tahnksgiving.
III. Pleasing or attractive quality, gracefulness
• - attractive or pleasing quality or feature
• - an adornment
• - attractively elegant, refined or accomplished mode of behaviour
(social graces), good manners, social ease.
• - the quality of being pleasing, attractiveness, charm, refined elegance
of manner... gracefulness, regarded as natural or effortless
• - pleasnatness of flavour
• - appropriateness of behaviour
IV. the Graces, mythology => applied to a person comparable to one of
the Graces in beauty or charm
• I. Grace : social and personal grace in
danger
• II. ‘Your Grace is perjur’d much’ :
alteration of grace...
• III. Restoring grace, recognizing a Saving
grace ?
I. Grace : social and personal grace in danger
1. « living art » (1.1)
2. Civil Conversation. (Guazzo)
3. ‘we are the makers of manners’ (Henry V, 5.2.) :
originals and imitations
‘That sport best pleases that doth least know how –
Where zeal strives to content, and the contents
Dies in the zeal of that which it presents;
Their form confounded makes most form in mirth,
When great things labouring perish in their birth’
Cf. Michel Jeanneret, Des Mets et des Mots. Banquets et
propos de table à la Renaissance 1987
“La vraie nourriture, c’est la conversation: elle
médiatise le langage du corps en formules anodines
et sublime les appétits, neutralise .. les naturel par le
culturel. Les mots escamotent les mets: les convives
assouvissent leur faim par le spectacle complaisant
de leur savoir-vivre, de leur savoir-parler.” (46)
II. ‘Your Grace is perjur’d much’ : alteration of
grace...
1. Disgrace as lack / Breach of grace
2. Excess of grace <=> disgrace
3. Absence of grace : grease vs. grace
A brank / Scold’s bridle
III. Restoring grace, recognizing a Saving grace ?
1. Disgracing to restore grace
2. Purging disgrace, Saving face
3. Recovering grace ?
• « what grace hast thou, thus to reprove / These
worms for loving, that art most in love ? » (4.3.144).
• « they will shame us. Let them not approach » says
the King / « We are shame-proof, my lord ; and ‘tis
some polcy / To have one show worse than the
King’s and his company » (5.3. 507-08)
• 5.2, p. 171 : “we to ourselves prove false,
• By being once false for ever to be true
• To those that make us both,--fair ladies, you:
• And even that falsehood, in itself a sin,
• Thus purifies itself and turns to grace.”
• « your beauty, ladies / Hath much deformed us,
fashioning our humours / Even to the opposed end
of our intents. / And what in us hath seemed
ridiculous / As love is full of unbefitting strains /...
Those heavenly eyes that look into these faults /
Suggested us to make. (5.2.731-44)