In the first, the lovers are a young couple preparing for their final school exams and their imminent wedding.

The girls is pregnant. Although they promise each other happiness, their deaths by drowning save them form a more likely destiny. In the second play, the lovers are older, but their passion , at first, is no less real. It is their marriage that brings its share of compromises and unhappiness.

These plays combine to suggest the "fallible hopes and disenchantments of the varieties of love" ( D E S Maxwell). They have become perennial favourites with drama companies, teachers, students and audiences all over the world.