Summer 2008

King Lear
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Lear, the aging King of Britain, decides to step down from the throne and divide his kingdom evenly among his three daughters. First, however, he puts his daughters to a test, asking each how much she loves him. Goneril and Regan, Lear’s older daughters, give their father flattering answers. But Cordelia, Lear’s youngest and favorite daughter remains silent. Saying she has no words to describe how much she loves her father. Lear flies into a rage and disowns and banishes Cordelia. The King of France who has courted Cordelia says he still wants to marry her and she accompanies him to France without her father’s blessing

Lear quickly learns that he has made a bad decision and Goneril and Regan swiftly undermine the little authority the Lear still holds. Unable to believe that his beloved daughters were betraying him he slowly goes insane. He flees his daughter’s houses to wander on a heath during a great thunderstorm accompanied by his Fool, his court jester, and Kent a loyal nobleman in disguise.

Meanwhile, Gloucester, an elderly nobleman and friend of Lear has an experience that parallels Lear’s. His illegitimate son, Edmund, tricks him into believing that his legitimate son, Edgar, is trying to kill him. Edgar flees and disguises himself as a crazy beggar and calls himself “Poor Tom.” Like Lear he flees into the heath

When the loyal Gloucester tries to help Lear, Goneril and her husband, Cornwall, accuse him of treason, torture and blind him, and turn him out to wander the countryside, where his disguised son Edgar finds him and guides and protects him.

Meanwhile, war breaks out between England and France. The English troops led by Edmund defeat the French led by Cordelia, and Lear and Cordelia are captured. In a climactic scene the brothers Edgar and Edmund duel and Edmund is defeated. Cordelia has been executed in prison, and we last see Lear carrying the lifeless body of his beloved daughter. Lear dies of grief, and Albany, Edgar and Kent are left to restore the sorrowing country.

Merry Wives of Windsor
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There is a theory that Queen Elizabeth, who enjoyed the character of Falstaff in the previous two plays in which he appeared (“Henry the Fourth, Parts I and II) and whom Shakespeare had killed off in “Henry the Fifth,” wanted to see Falstaff in love, and so she ordered Shakespeare to write a new play in which she could see the “fat knight” as a lover. And so, Shakespeare wrote “The Merry Wives of Windsor.”

Falstaff, down on his luck and short of money, decides that he will court two wealthy married women of Windsor, Mistress Ford and Mistress Page. He sends the women identical love letters. When the women receive the letters, each goes to tell the other and they quickly discover that the letters are identical. The “merry wives” for their own amusement and to turn the tables on poor Falstaff, hatch a plot to fool and embarrass him.

In a series of hilarious scenes which also involve the ladies’ jealous husbands, Falstaff is hidden by the ladies in a basket of dirty laundry and is dumped into the Thames river, and is disguised as Mistress Ford’s fat aunt, while poor Falstaff is convinced the women are simply playing hard to get. Eventually the women tell their husbands about the series of jokes they have played on Falstaff, and together they devise one last trick to humiliate him in front of the whole town. Falstaff is convinced to dress as “Herne Hunter.” to wear a crown of deer horns. and to meet the ladies in the forest outside of town where the townspeople are waiting in hiding disguised as fairies. Falstaff arrives thinking that he will be making love to both women, and immediately the “fairies” attack.

Although he is embarrassed, Falstaff takes the joke surprisingly well, as he sees it was what he deserved, and it all ends merrily. The townspeople go off to celebrate and Mistress Page invites Falstaff to join them. “Let us all go home and laugh at this sport by a country fire; Sir John Falstaff and all.”