Under Development
Most modern scholars believe the play was written in 1595 or 1596, making it contemporaneous with Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Love's Labour's Lost was first published in quarto in 1598 by the bookseller Cuthbert Burby. The title page states that the play was "Newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere," which has suggested to some scholars a revision of an earlier version. The play next appeared in print in the First Folio in 1623, with a later quarto in 1631.
"Love's Labour's Lost" is, along with "The Tempest", a play without any obvious sources. "Cymbeline" falls into this category to some extent, although that play draws strands of its narrative from some texts agreed on by modern scholars. "Love's Labour's Lost", widely thought of as the first work of Shakespeare's genius, was a new departure from his established modes of writing. Some possible influences can be found in the early plays of John Lyly, Robert Wilson's "The Cobbler's Prophecy" (c.1590) and Pierre de la Primaudaye's "Le Academie francaise" (1577).
The earliest recorded performance of the play occurred at Christmas time in 1597 at Court before Queen Elizabeth. A second recorded performance occurred in the first half of January 1605, either at the house of the Earl of Southampton or at that of Robert Cecil, Lord Cranborne.
The first known production after Shakespeare's era was not until a Covent Garden version in 1839, with Elizabeth Vestris as Rosaline