Setting and Plot

Setting: 

The summer of 1940 in the Costa Verde Hotel in Puerto Barrio on the west coast of Mexico.

Plot:

        The play begins with Reverend Shannon getting of a tourist bus filled with women walking toward the Costa Verde Hotel.  Maxine Faulk, the owner and a good friend, welcomes him and orders her two servants, Pedro and Pancho, to help with the bags.  Shannon greets Maxine but is screaming for her husband; however, Maxine tells him that Fred is dead.  He died two weeks ago from an infection when he cut his hand on a fishhook. 

           The eleven women in the tourist bus are schoolteachers at a Baptist Female College in Blowing Rock, Texas, and they are angry because Shannon took them to the wrong hotel and is keeping the ignition key in his pocket, so they cannot leave.  The women start to come up to the hotel while Shannon is complaining about his trip, and the seventeen year old girl named Charlotte.  Charlotte is in love with him.  Miss Judith Fellows, Charlotte's escort, comes up to Shannon and Maxine and complains to them that this is not the hotel that they were supposed to go to.  Shannon tells her that this hotel is a better place and tries to calm her down.  Miss Fellows does not like Shannon and is trying to get him fired; however, Shannon is already on probation.  Judith asks to use the telephone so she can call a judge in Blowing Rock, Texas to charge him for statutory rape.  While Maxine is shaving and cutting Shannon's hair, Miss Fellows returns and calls the tour a cheat.  Shannon begs her to let the ladies stay at this hotel.

            Suddenly Hannah Jelkes and Nonno come to the hotel without reservations.  Maxine tells them that the hotel is closed during September and only special guest are allowed.  Shannon considers them special guest; however, Hanna and Nonno do not have any money and want to pay by displaying their work.  Hanna paints and is a sketch artist, and Nonno is the oldest living and practicing poet who has been in the middle of a poem for years.  Maxine does no want to take them, but she accepts them for one night.  

            Maxine later informs Hannah that she found them a place to stay in the Casa de Huéspedes, but Hannah declines and helps Maxine set the tables.  Shannon comes into the room after being at the beach, but as soon as he gets there he hides from Charlotte who is looking for him.  Shannon comes out of his hiding place and tells Charlotte that he doesn't love her and to leave him alone, but Charlotte refuses.  Judith comes into the room looking for Charlotte and tells her that she called her father.  Her father is planning to try to get a warrant for Shannon's arrest and never let him come back to the states again.  Judith and Charlotte leave, and Hannah begins to have a conversation with Shannon while she sketches him.  Shannon discusses why he was locked out of the church and tells her it was because he had fornication and committed heresy in the same week.  While they continue talking Pedro and Pancho catch an iguana and tie it up.  

            While Shannon and Hannah are still talking, Hannah asks Shannon what would he do if he got fired from Blake Tours.  Shannon answers that he would go back to the Church or take a long swim to China.  He also confesses that he thinks that Hannah is a great woman and needs someone like her to help him.  Just then a storm comes and everyone goes inside.  The rain is increasing and the power goes out, but Shannon puts his hands outside in the rain. 

             Shannon writes a very important letter the next morning to the Dean of the Divinity School at Sewanee.  While Maxine and Shannon are talking, the women are packing their bags onto the bus and getting on it.  A man named Jake Latta came from Blake Tours to take over Shannon's job, but does not have the ignition key.  While Shannon is fighting with Latta about not giving him the key, Hank takes the key from Shannon's pocket.  Shannon says that Hank is a foe and is very disappointed in him.  Miss Fellows enters the room and upsets Shannon by saying he was defrocked for atheism and seducing girls.  Shannon goes crazy and yells that he going to swim to China.  Pedro and Pancho run after him and tie him up in the hammock.  Hannah tries to calm Shannon down with poppy-seed tea and by having a conversation with him.  During their talking they see an iguana at the end of its rope.  Hannah wants Shannon to cut the rope, but Shannon doesn't want to because it is a delicacy in Mexico.  Shannon finally cuts the iguana loose while Nonno comes out with his completed poem.  He recites it while Hanna writes it down.  Hanna takes Nonno to bed while Maxine yells at Shannon for letting the iguana loose.  She also tells him that she wants him to stay with her and manage the hotel but he does not give an answer.  Hannah puts a shawl over Nonno as he dies in his sleep.