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Show Plots of 1979 Festival productions given mm a leer of invitation. in-vitation. Falstaff sends the ladies duplicate love letters and they in turn set out to have revenge upon Falstaff at all costs. , ; They -each send the knight "-tokens of encouragement and the mix-ups ensue. In this first round Falstaff ends UP m a laundry basket of dirty linen which is then dumped into a muddy ditch to escape. The wives set up another tryst which ends with the kmght fleeing a woman's dress and being thoroughly beaten by Master Ford. The women then tell their t- ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. "All's Well That Ends Well" is the third play presented at the Utah Shakespearean Festival this summer. Here Christopher Jones as Parolles and Barry Heins as Bertram discuss one of the play's differences of opinion . plays, being produced this year are THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, and KING LEAR. A brief synopsis of each play follows: . - "All's Well that Ends Well" : The play is a comedy written by Shakespeare when he was probably a mature playwright. Helena is in love with Bertram and follows him to the court of France. There she stakes her life on her ability to cure the king and wins the right to name any man in his court as her husband. After curing the king, Helena names Bertram as her chosen husband. While Bertram must marry her, he runs away to fight for the Duke of Florence because of Helena's low birth, since he doesn't love her. He vows that he will not treat her as a wife until she can "get the ring upon thy finger, which never shall come off, and show me a child begotten of my body." Helena follows him to Florence and through trickery receives the ring and spends the night with her husband who thinks that she is his beloved Diana. Bertram returns to France when he hears a rumor that Helena has died on her pilgrimage. x Helena then appears and explains what has happened. Bertram joyfully accepts her as his wife and nothing but happiness remains. As the king says, it is all the more welcome because of the sorrow that came before. "The Merry Wives of Windsor": The play is a comedy and Shakespeare's only play which protrays middle-class life in the English Country. Sir John Falstaff meets Mistresses Ford and Page and imagines that they have husbands of their fun and together the four plot Falstaff's final humiliation. "King Lear": A tragedy dealing with the eternal theme of the relations of parents and children. The play is a story of poison, insanity and murder. Some of its scenes are so cruel, so pitiful that we would like to call out to Skakespeare for mercy. It is not one of Shakespeare's most popular plays but is one of his greatest. In ancient England, Lear promises to leave his kingdom to the daughter who publicly proclaims the most love for him. Lear disinherits his daughter Cordelia who says that she loves him neither more or less than the natural bond of daughter to father dictates. Leaving his kingdom to Goneril and Regan, they insult and shame Lear and he runs in rage into an open storm. Cordelia has married the King of France and returns to England to reinstate her father. Her forces are defeated but she restores Lear to sanity with her love. The two have a brief time together before she is hanged and Lear dies afterwards, holding her body in his arms. The Gloucester plot is a similar story of banishment of the good son Edgar through the plotting of Gloucester's illegitimate son Edmund. Gloucester is cast out blind into the world and Edgar attends his father in his wanderings. Edmund is accused of treason, he and his brother fight and Edmund Ed-mund is mortally wounded. He tries before dying to countermand his order to hang Cordelia but is too late. Gloucester recognizes Edgar's virtues but is inconsolable in-consolable and crawls off to die of a broken heart. Edgar is left to guide the affairs of state. ; m .,1 i -ii------iimii-" nil miiifiii'iiii -i 'iii - Tit mil i ifci m Um mAkmm,mdmxmmta KING LEAR. The title role in the Utah Shakespearean Festival's production of KING LEAR is played by Anthony An-thony DeFonte. Joann Patton as Mistress Page and Michelle Farr as Mistress Ford appear in opening night production of "The Merry Wives of Windsor." |