Yield Ladies, yield to love Ladies

What a joyfully queer play. Performed in 1592 in front of the Queen of England, this play follows two young virgins, who are dressed in drag and sent into the woods by their fathers, who are afraid that they're so beautiful and fair that they'll be sacrificed to Neptune.

In the woods, Cupid plays pranks on Diana and her nymphs, causing them to experience love for the two young "men," for which Diana retaliates by making Cupid her servant. We also stumble upon some men reminiscent of the Midsummer Mechanicals, off on a journey of apprenticeships under an astronomer, alchemist, and fortune teller. Meanwhile, the two young women heavily suspect that the other is also just a woman in drag (and are both VERY bad at hiding it, trying to flirt with each other as women), and pretty immediately have the hots for each other.

At the end of the play, all the characters meet, Venus shows up and demands Cupid back, and Neptune agrees not to sacrifice anymore virgins. The girls in drag are "revealed" to be girls in drag (it was always obvious) and they announce, in front of everyone, that they are in love. Everyone seems to be baffled but also kind of okay with it and Venus says she can change one of them into a boy to allow them to be married, but the girls do not care about gender, so Venus says it'll be a surprise which one! (Then one of their dads says "hey, if we can just... change genders of people, can we make my wife a man?" which is really iconic.) Then they all go offstage and we have an iconic epilogue by our titular character telling all the women of the audience to be lesbians (including the quote mentioned above).

So yeah, great play. Thanks Lyly for the lesbians.