The four main male characters are all loosely based on historical figures; Navarre is based on Henry of Navarre (who later became King Henry IV of France), Berowne on Charles de Gontaut, duc de Biron, Dumain on Charles, duc de Mayenne and Longaville on Henri I d'Orléans, duc de Longueville. Biron in particular was well known in England because Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, had joined forces with Biron's army in support of Henry in 1591. Albert Tricomi states that "the play's humorous idealization could remain durable as long as the French names of its principal characters remained familiar to Shakespeare's audiences. This means that the witty portrayal of Navarre's court could remain reasonably effective until the assassination of Henry IV in 1610. ... Such considerations suggest that the portrayals of Navarre and the civil-war generals presented Elizabethan audiences not with a mere collection of French names in the news, but with an added dramatic dimension which, once lost, helps to account for the eclipse "Love's Labour's Lost" soon underwent."