Love's Labour's Won

Love's Labour's Won is a lost play attributed by contemporaries to William Shakespeare, written before 1598 and published by 1603, though no copies are known to have survived. Scholars dispute whether it is a true lost work, possibly a sequel to Love's Labour's Lost, or an alternative title to a known Shakespeare play.

Evidence

he first mention of the play occurs in Francis Meres' Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598) in which he lists a dozen Shakespeare plays. His list of Shakespearean comedies reads:

"for Comedy, witnes his Ge[n]tleme[n] of Verona, his [Comedy of] Errors, his Loue labors lost, his Loue labours wonne, his Midsummers night dreame, & his Merchant of Venice".

The August 1603 book list of the stationer Christopher Hunt lists the play as printed in quarto among other works by Shakespeare:

"marchant of vennis, taming of a shrew, …loves labor lost, loves labor won."