Janis FontaineThe Bard’s merry character takes the stage in Jupiter.
On July 9, Shakespeare by the Sea returns to the Seabreeze Amphitheater in Jupiter’s Carlin Park with “Falstaff,” an original production created for the 36th annual event.
The Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival is the longest-running Shakespeare festival in Florida, and it draws more than 10,000 fans over two weekends to see professional actors perform on an open-air stage kissed by Atlantic Ocean breezes.
This local tradition is offered to the community for a $5 suggested donation.
The story of “Falstaff” brings Sir John “Jack” Falstaff, the Bard’s most beloved character, to the stage by melding several plays together. The piece was crafted by artistic director Trent Stephens, a Shakespeare scholar, who started with the festival as an actor in 2009.
The plot for “Falstaff” comes from the “Henry V” plays, Stephens said, but it’s an amalgamation — what might be called a mashup — of Falstaff’s greatest hits from “Henry IV, Part 1 and 2” and “The Merry Wives of Windsor.”
“They’re calling this a world premiere, but we’re kind of fooling people,” he said. “The text is 400 years old.”
Beloved Falstaff
The fictional Falstaff “was Shakespeare’s favorite character,” Stephens said. “He was a larger-than-life buffoon, very sure of himself, very proud. He had an enormous ego, but the endearing thing is that we all see a little of ourselves in him.”
Falstaff is your crazy uncle who shows up tipsy to family gatherings and is always scheming. He’s a rogue; a shamelessly eloquent liar who conned or stole whatever money he has in his pocket, and which he’ll use to fill his voluminous belly with ale. And yet, this deeply flawed character, based on an actual knight, has thought hard about honor and courage. Not that he has any. Or does he?
One of Shakespeare’s gifts is creating characters with complexity, with ambiguous, genuine feelings, and in doing so, real humanity.
In Falstaff’s eulogy in “Henry V” we see that Falstaff’s death casts a long shadow. “The king has killed his heart,” Shakespeare’s Mistress Quickly says, implying that the great knight died from a broken heart after being rejected by Hal, now King Henry.
How can Hal turn his back on his friend? But how can King Henry consort with a drunkard and a thief?
“Shakespeare celebrates the thing that makes us human,” Stephens said. “There are moments he makes your heart flutter, when you’re live in front of a crowd of thousands of people, there’s a kind of syncopation of heartbeats and breathing.”
The magic of live performances
Making that connection is what live theater does. Stephens thinks most people don’t care which of Shakespeare’s works are on stage. “I don’t pretend they’re all screaming fans of Shakespeare. Most see a free event where they can bring up a bottle of wine and enjoy the public space. We’re just playing in the background for them, and that’s fine.”
Others appreciate that this festival is a rare affair: A few dozen Shakespeare festivals are held worldwide each year, and many recreate the open-air settings of the famous theaters where the Bard of Avon’s work was performed. The Globe, built in 1599, had some covered seating, but much of the space was open to the sky.
“You can smell the sea. There are crickets,” Stephens said. “The moon is rising right above us. Sometimes there’s heat lightning that lights up the sky. It’s gorgeous.”
The audience savors the appearance of local critters: One year, a gopher tortoise visited most nights, drawn to the lights, and in 2024, a ghost crab enjoyed stage time nightly during “King Lear.”
For the first 18 years, performances took place on a temporary stage they rebuilt each year, until in 2008, the county built Seabreeze Amphitheater. The amenities included a covered 36-foot-by-35-foot stage, three dressing rooms, prop and costume storage, a green room and rigging for sound and lighting.
New in 2026
This year, the festival will add a hospitality tent where festivalgoers can imbibe, production manager Elizabeth Dashiell said. “Tequesta Brewery is donating beer because that is very Falstaffian.”
The festival depends on grants and donations. “A lot of people think the county pays for this. They do not,” Dashiell said.
Donors like Margo Hartman Tenney, a former actress, businesswoman and patron of the arts from Palm Beach Gardens, and her husband, Del, an independent film producer who died in 2013, financed the festival until she died in 2020.
After that, philanthropists Gary and Katherine Parr of Manalapan stepped up. Parr, an investment banker and Wall Street executive, is senior managing director of Apollo Global Management and the founder of the Parr Shakespeare Prize for Excellence in Teaching Shakespeare, which awards $10,000 gifts to three exceptional teachers each year.
The Parrs helped launch “Sharing Shakespeare,” the festival’s in-school educational program which brings actors into Palm Beach County schools for performances and discussions.
The Sonnet Man
Through its partnership with the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County and its Bright Ideas sponsorship, the festival is bringing back Devon Glover, the Sonnet Man, whom they introduced to fans a few years ago.
He will warm up the audience before the main events.
Glover is a Brooklyn native who performs and teaches Shakespeare by blending hip-hop and rap with his poetry. Glover will bring his workshops to local summer camps, including the Palm Beach County Arts Camps in West Palm, Riviera and Lake Worth Beach, and he will shadow the Shakespeare Summer Intensive at the Kravis Center. Violinist Leoncarlo Canlas also performs the first weekend.
Attendance at the festival has remained steady over the years, Stephens said, because people crave the palpable passion and novelty of live art over squinting at another video on a tiny screen.
“Whether people walk away with a new academic hunger, like I did, or they just walk away having had a wonderful summer evening at Shakespeare by the Sea, every bit of what we do matters.”
If you go:
The Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival presents “Falstaff”
When: 8-10 pm Thursday-Sunday, July 9-12 and July 16-19.
Where: Seabreeze Amphitheater in Carlin Park, 750 S. A1A, Jupiter.
Admission: $5 suggested donation.
Details: Gates open at 6:30 pm with pre-show entertainment from Devon “The Sonnet Man” Glover (joined by violinist Leoncarlo Canlas July 9-12). Bring your own picnic or purchase snacks from the on-site concessions.
Info: www.pbshakespeare.org.
A production history
1988 – The Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival is first imagined as a collaborative event between the Chamber Theatre of the Palm Beaches and Young Audiences of Palm Beach County.
1990 – In April, the Shakespeare Festival was incorporated by Kevin Crawford and Kermit Christman and they held its first production, the tragedy “Macbeth,” in the Duncan Theatre at Palm Beach Community College (now Palm Beach State College).
1990 – That summer, a production of “Twelfth Night” was performed on a stage built for the play in Carlin Park.
1991 – “The Tempest” is performed as the inaugural Shakespeare by the Sea
1992 – “Richard III” (SBTS II)
1993 – “As You Like It” (SBTS III)
1994 – “Romeo & Juliet” (SBTS IV)
1995 – “Cardenio” (SBTS V)
1996 – “Twelfth Night” (SBTS VI)
1997 – “Macbeth” (SBTS VII)
1998 – “The Winter’s Tale” (SBTS VIII)
1999 – “Much Ado About Nothing” (SBTS IX)
2000 – “Hamlet” (SBTS X)
2001 – “The Comedy of Errors” (SBTS XI)
2002 – “The Taming of the Shrew” (SBTS XII)
2003 – “Romeo & Juliet” (SBTS XIII)
2004 – “Othello” (SBTS XIV)
2005 – “Julius Caesar” (SBTS X)
2006 – “Merry Wives of Windsor” (SBTS XVI)
2007 – “Pericles” (SBTS XVII)
2008 – The first performance on the Seabreeze Amphitheater stage at Carlin Park is a revisiting of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (SBTS XVIII)
2009 – The production of “The Comedy of Errors” is moved to Boca Raton due to construction on the stage at Carlin Park. Shakespeare at Sunset Cove replaces Shakespeare by the Sea XIX.
2010 – “Macbeth” (SBTS XX)
2011 – “The Tempest” (SBTS XXI)
2012 – “Twelfth Night” (SBTS XXII)
2013 – “Coriolanus” (SBTS XXIII)
2014 – “Much Ado About Nothing” (SBTS XXIV)
2015 – “Hamlet” (SBTS XXV)
2016 – “The Taming of the Shrew” (SBTS XXVI
2017 – “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (SBTS XXVII)
2018 – “Antony & Cleopatra” (SBTS XXVIII)
2019 – “Romeo & Juliet” (SBTS XXIX)
2020 – “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (SBTS XXX)
2021 – “Twelfth Night” (SBTS XXXI and the inaugural Shakespeare by the Palms is performed in August at Commons Park in Royal Palm Beach.)
2022 – “Richard II” (SBTS XXXII and Shakespeare by the Palms II)
2023 – “Measure for Measure” (SBTS XXXIII and Shakespeare by the Palms III)
2024 – “King Lear” (SBTS XXXIV and Shakespeare by the Palms IV)
2025 – The performances in Royal Palm Beach are moved to the spring for the first time with a production of “As You Like It” (Shakespeare by the Palms V) “The Winter’s Tale” (SBTS XXXV)
2026 – Shakespeare in the Park is held for the first time in Veterans Memorial Park, kicking off with a performance of “Macbeth” on Valentine’s Day weekend. Afterward, the production visited schools through the Sharing Shakespeare school outreach program.
