Measure for Measure Synopsis
Vincentio, Duke of Vienna, resolving on the enforcement of the city’s ignored laws against immorality, proclaims his departure to Poland; actually he remains, disguised as a friar, to see what his Deputy, the severe Angelo (whose “blood is very snow-broth”) will do. One of Angelo’s first acts is to imprison Claudio for getting his betrothed, Juliet, with child, an offence that carries the death penalty.

Isabella, Claudio’s sister, a potential novice in a religious order, comes to plead with Angelo and he invites her to return the next day. When she does he tells her that, if she will be his mistress, he will pardon her brother. Horrified, she visits her brother who entreats her to agree. She refuses; but the disguised Duke/Friar suggests that she give way, and that Mariana, once Angelo’s spurned love, take her place at night.

Mariana accepts the plan; Angelo, faithlessly, has ordered Claudio’s death which is prevented by the Duke/Friar and the Provost. The Duke returns as himself. In a complex scene Angelo, after compulsorily wedding Mariana, is pardoned, Claudio will marry Juliet, and the Duke confesses his own love for Isabella.
-The Pocket Companion to Shakespeare’s Plays by J C Trewin

All’s Well Synopsis
Helena, an orphan, loves Bertram, son of the dowager Countess of Rousillon, who has brought her up. When the haughty young man goes as a ward to the French King, Helena – whose father has been a celebrated physician – follows him, hoping that she may cure the King of a painful illness. She does so with one of her father’s remedies; and being offered her choice of husband from the gentlemen at court, chooses Bertram. Snobbishly, he objects –“A poor physician’s daughter my wife!” – but forced by the King, agrees to the match. Immediately afterwards he runs away to Florence as a volunteer in the Tuscan wars – the Florentines against the Sienese – with a cowardly braggart, Parolles, as his companion.

Back at Rousillon Helena learns that Bertram will take her as his wife when she has got from his finger a prized heirloom-ring and borne him a child. She goes, in pilgrim’s dress, the Florence, where Bertram is seeking to seduce a widow’s daughter, Diana. Helena persuades Diana to yield to him but to ask for his ring and to make an assignation which she, Helena, will keep.

Meanwhile, the follow-officers of Parolles trick him into exposing his cowardice. Diana, having got Bertram’s ring, duly arranges a midnight meeting with him; hidden by darkness, Helena takes Diana’s place and gives Bertram as a keepsake a ring she had received from the King of France. Hearing that Helena is dead, Bertram returns to Rousillon, where his mother and the old Lord, Lafeu, also believe the story.

Lafeu arranges a match between his daughter and Bertram, who prepares to give to her the ring from Helena. The King recognizes it and orders Bertram’s arrest. Diana, newly arrived, accuses Bertram of seducing her; when he denies it, the King orders her to prison as well, but her mother, the widow, produces “bail”, Helena herself, who is to have Bertram’s child. “All yet seems well,” say the King comfortably, “and if it end so meet/The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.”
-The Pocket Companion to Shakespeare’s Plays by J C Trewin