Summer Season Synopses

Set in 1976 Winedale, Texas, Love's Labor's Lost is a comedy about four young men who fall in love against their wills. The men pledge to spend three years in study and rustic isolation, avoiding all contact with women. When the Princess of France arrives on a state visit, the king insists she and her ladies camp outside the property. Even so, each young man falls for one of the ladies.

Meanwhile, Don Armado, a Spanish drifter passing through Central Texas, falls for a local farm girl, Jacquenetta. Costard, an ranch hand, mixes up two letters he's been asked to deliver: one from Armado to Jacquenetta, and another from Berowne, one of the king's companions, to Rosaline, one of the French ladies.

The men confess their feelings to one another and devise a pageant to woo the ladies, who turn the tables by exchanging identifying tokens to trick them. When word arrives that the Princess's father has died, the ladies reject the men's proposals as rash and impose a year's delay before any further wooing.

The prologue of Romeo and Juliet calls the title characters “star-crossed lovers”—and the stars do seem to conspire against these young lovers. Romeo is a Montague, and Juliet a Capulet. Their families are enmeshed in a feud, but the moment they meet—when Romeo and his friends attend a party at Juliet’s house in disguise—the two fall in love and quickly decide that they want to be married.

A friar secretly marries them, hoping to end the feud. Romeo and his companions almost immediately encounter Juliet’s cousin Tybalt, who challenges Romeo. When Romeo refuses to fight, Romeo’s friend Mercutio accepts the challenge and is killed. Romeo then kills Tybalt and is banished. He spends that night with Juliet and then leaves for Mantua.

Juliet’s father forces her into a marriage with Count Paris. To avoid this marriage, Juliet takes a potion, given her by the friar, that makes her appear dead. The friar will send Romeo word to be at her family tomb when she awakes. The plan goes awry, and Romeo learns instead that she is dead. In the tomb, Romeo kills himself. Juliet wakes, sees his body, and commits suicide. Their deaths appear finally to end the feud.

 

Henry IV, Part 1, culminates in the battle of Shrewsbury between the king’s army and rebels seeking his crown. The dispute begins when Hotspur, the son of Northumberland, breaks with the king over the fate of his brother-in-law, Mortimer, a Welsh prisoner. Hotspur, Northumberland, and Hotspur’s uncle Worcester plan to take the throne, later allying with Mortimer and a Welsh leader, Glendower.

As that conflict develops, Prince Hal—Henry IV’s son and heir—carouses in a tavern and plots to trick the roguish Sir John Falstaff and his henchmen, who are planning a highway robbery. Hal and a companion will rob them of their loot—then wait for Falstaff’s lying boasts. The trick succeeds, but Prince Hal is summoned to war.

In the war, Hal saves his father’s life and then kills Hotspur, actions that help to redeem his bad reputation. Falstaff, meanwhile, cheats his soldiers, whom he leads to slaughter, and takes credit for Hotspur’s death.

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