sam shepards fool for love

Title: Fool For Love
Author: Sam Shepard
Nationality: American
Period and Setting: 1980's, Low rent motel room on the edge of the Mojave Desert
Synopsis: At the top, Eddie is trying to reassure a very stricken May that he isn't going to leave.
She accuses him of cheating and he leaves. May freaks out and then he comes back in. They fight
some more. May threatens to kill both Eddie and his lover. He tries to calm her down by telling
her how far he came for her and his plans for the future. May says she doesn't want that and that
she is sick of him sucking her into his wonderful fantasy plans and then dropping her again. He
says he plans to at least stay the night. They embrace and kiss and then she knees him in the
crotch and runs to the bathroom. The old man explains to Eddie the difference between being a
fantasist and a realist. May comes out and changes into a sexy dress while telling Eddie she can't
forgive him because she can't forget the picture she has of him with The Countess and that he
should leave because she has someone coming over to take her out. He gets upset and leaves.
May frantically throws some things into a suitcase, but hears him coming back and stops. Eddie
enters with a shotgun and some tequila. He pours a glass and begins to clean the shotgun while
telling May she can't be serious about this other guy because she called him a "man" not a "guy"
so she should let Eddie stay and meet him and then she can judge. She argues that whatever the
two of them had, it is stupid and it is over and tells him to leave. He picks up the pieces of his gun
and leaves calling her a traitor. May is thrown into instant and complete grief. As she mourns, the
old man tells her a story about a time he, May and May's mother were on a trip and May was a
baby and started crying and he took her out of the car to calm her and walked into a field in the
dark and they were surrounded by cows and that got her to stop. Eddie returns and May is at the
table with the tequila. He tells her he doesn't believe that there is a guy so he is going to wait to
see. He starts lassoing the bed posts for practice and says when the guy gets there, he is going to
nail his ass to the floor. May gets up and leaves, but Eddie carries her back inside. He says that
May can just introduce him as her cousin and he will meet him and then just leave. Headlights
flash and May goes to the door and stands there looking out. She says there is a woman in a black
Benz staring at the room. Eddie shoves May out of the way and slams the door just as a gun shot
is heard. He flips the lights off, all the while claiming not to know who it is. May figures out that
it is the Countess following Eddie and gets angry. Eddie retaliates saying she obviously means

nothing if he left her to go hunt down May. The old man says how he can't see himself in them,
but he can see their mothers. Eddie says that no matter what May says or does he isn't going to
leave her alone. May says that she can never believe him anymore because he always does this and
then leaves while she has either loved him or not loved him and now she doesn't love him.
Headlights flash again and Eddie turns the lights off and tells May to hide, but May wants to
confront her. They struggle and then the door opens and Martin tackles Eddie because he thought
May was being attacked but is stopped before he punches Eddie. Then Martin is caught in a weird
crossfire between May acting as though nothing is wrong and trying to make him comfortable, and
Eddie's obvious hostility and contradictions of May. May goes into the bathroom to get ready for
the date and Eddie talks with Martin making him more and more uncomfortable until Martin
decides to leave, but Eddie physically stops him. Martin asks if he is her husband and Eddie tells
him he is her half brother which kind of freaks Martin out and he asks how that came to be. Eddie
tells how his father had two women and spent time living with Eddie and Eddie's mother and then
disappearing for months, only to reappear and do it all over again. Then he says it stopped and his
father just stayed for a while and would take long walks, and one night Eddie asked to walk with
him. His father took him and they walked for a long, long time and then came to a house where a
woman appeared and threw herself into the old man's arms and there Eddie saw May and they fell
in love then and there and never stopped. May comes out and says that isn't true at all and he tells
the same story all the time, but always lies. Martin tries to leave, but Eddie tells him to stay to
hear the rest of the story. May says she wants to go to the movies, but Martin says he wants to
stay, so May says she will finish the story and it will be the truth. She says that her mother was
desperately in love with the old man and hunted him down for years and finally found where he
lived, but he disappeared soon afterward. Her mother was in agony, but May was ecstatic because
she and Eddie were so desperately in love that they would get violently ill when separated. Her
mother recognized what was wrong and begged them not to see each other but they wouldn't
listen. So she went to Eddie's mother to ask her to stop it and Eddie's mother blew her head off.
The old man protests this and orders Eddie to correct her, but Eddie tells him it was true. The old
man says that someone should have told him. He blames May's mother for her relentless pursuit
and says that the way she kept opening her heart to him eventually made him fall in love with her
and he couldn't help it. Throughout the speech, Eddie and May have drawn closer and closer until

they meet and kiss. Then headlights flash, there is the sound of broken glass and flames rise up.
Martin goes to the window and says Eddie's horse trailer is on fire and the horses are loose. Eddie
backs away from May and tells her he has to go check on it and The Countess can't get away with
it, but that he will be back in a second and he leaves. May pulls out a suitcase and throws stuff in
it. Martin asks if she needs help or a ride or if she is going to leave with Eddie. May tells him
that Eddie is gone and walks out the door. The old man points to a space and says the picture
there is the woman of his dreams. The space is opposite the space he indicated when telling Eddie
the picture there was a picture of his wife.
Unique Elements of Playwright's Style:
Western themes
violence
isolation
metaphoric statements
people emotionally on the edge
monologues
Production Challenges/Problems:
Learning how to work a lasso for Eddie
The extreme physicality it requires
Making the doors boom as indicated by the script