By Barbara Arnstein
A brother takes his brother’s inheritance money as well as his own.
Then the robbed brother meets a girl whose father coincidentally has just had his throne (he’s a duke) taken by his brother. They fall in love at first sight.
Her dad’s gone to live in the woods with some buddies but she’s staying with her BFF/cousin (the throne-stealer’s daughter).
Right after they meet, the robbed bro heads for the woods, too, to avoid his brother, who’s become way nastier.
The girl’s uncle then gets nastier too, so she also has to head for the woods.
Her BFF goes with her, and also a jester.
At that time, he was as close to a portable entertainment device as they could get.
To stay safe in the woods, the girl disguises herself as a guy, while her BFF disguises herself, too, but as a female.
The girl meets the bro she loves in the woods but in disguise, and it fools him. When he confides to the “guy” that he can’t stop thinking about a girl (her), she suggests they pretend for a while that she’s an annoying version of that girl until he gets sick of “her” company. He says okay. They do that for days. Does he know who he’s really with? Maybe. Shakespeare doesn’t say.
(Note: In Shakespeare’s time, all the female parts were played by males. So, what audiences were seeing at this point in the play was: a guy playing a girl playing a guy playing a girl.)
While they’re in the woods, the jester meets a girl he likes; a girl gets a crush on the girl-disguised-as-a-guy (ignoring an actual guy who’s got a crush on her), and, uh-oh, the bro’s nasty brother arrives in the woods. He reforms when his brother saves him from some wild animals, and he falls in love at first sight with the “BFF/cousin”. There is a quadruple wedding at the end: the bros and the cousins, the jester and his girl, and the girl who marries “the actual guy”. Last but not least, Dad gets his throne back.