Festivities at the Valois court, circa 1580, matching scenes in Love's Labour's Lost.

This anonymous painting at Penshurst used to be thought of as showing Queen Elizabeth I's court, but now is attributed to a painter of the Valois court in France around 1580. Either way it shows activity in the kind of fashionable society reflected in Marlowe's Massacre at Paris, Chapman's two Biron plays, as well as Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, which may deal with a royal visit to the court of Henri de Navarre in 1578. See the Hugh M. Richmond essay in the Individual Play bibliograpghy for LLL. Courtesy of the Yorck Project.