The play is set in 1597, the year Shakespeare wrote “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” and also the year London theater was almost destroyed, saved only (at least in this telling) by the efforts of a band of women. Some of the themes it touches on include the tensions and relationships between art and society, between men and women, and between historic and poetic truth.

In the first act, the company of players known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, led by the Burbage brothers, is in increasingly dire straits. The lease on their playhouse, The Theatre, is running out, and they have sunk all their money into an experimental indoor playhouse in Blackfriars, only to have their new patron, Lord Hunsdon, sign his name to a petition that prohibits the Blackfriars playhouse from opening. They attempt to win over Hunsdon with a new play, “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” but it turns out that the play’s main character, Sir John Oldcastle (already a hit in “Henry IV”) was named after an ancestor of the powerful Lord Cobham, who is enraged at seeing his ancestor portrayed as a fat rogue. Meanwhile, the wife of the Lord Mayor of London (who is himself an avid reader of plays) pushes him to take action against playhouses, which she sees as dens of vice. The first act ends with the forces opposed to playhouses coming together to secure an order from the Privy Council to ban playing and tear down all the playhouses in London.

In the second act, three women -- Elizabeth Burbage, the wife of one of the Burbage brothers; Lady Hunsdon, the wife of Lord Hunsdon and a great patron of the arts; and Lady Howard, her sister-in-law -- work together to undo the mess their husbands have made of things. They find ways to get around the Lord Mayor’s wife, satisfy Lord Cobham (in part by changing the offending character’s name to Sir John Falstaff), and convince their husbands of the importance of playhouses. By the end, everyone is reconciled and the Blackfriars playhouse is allowed to open.