JACKSON, Mich.–The Michigan Shakespeare Festival announced its 2020 season during opening night of King Lear here.

The company, currently in its 25th year, will produce and perform Henry V, The Merry Wives of Windsor and Charley’s Aunt.

Charley’s Aunt is a farce in three acts written by Brandon Thomas. It debuted in 1892. The story centres on Lord Fancourt Babberley, an undergraduate whose friends Jack and Charley persuade him to impersonate the latter’s aunt. The complications of the plot include the arrival of the real aunt and the attempts of an elderly fortune hunter to woo the bogus aunt. The play concludes with three pairs of young lovers united, along with an older pair – Charley’s real aunt and Jack’s widowed father.

Henry V is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written near 1599. It tells the story of King Henry V of England, focusing on events immediately before and after the Battle of Agincourt (1415) during the Hundred Years’ War. In the First Quarto text, it was titled The Cronicle History of Henry the fift,^[1]:p.6 which became The Life of Henry the Fifth in the First Folio text.

The play is the final part of a tetralogy, preceded by Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, and Henry IV, Part 2. 

The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare first published in 1602, though believed to have been written in or before 1597. The Windsor of the play’s title is a reference to the town of Windsor, also the location of Windsor Castle, in Berkshire, England. Though nominally set in the reign of Henry IV, the play makes no pretence to exist outside contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life. It features the character Sir John Falstaff, the fat knight who had previously been featured in Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2. It has been adapted for the opera on several occasions. The play is one of Shakespeare’s lesser-regarded works among literary critics.