Plato's Phaedrus, written c. 388 B.C., is a dialogue about love and passion. Although designed as an exploration of the subject of rhetoric, the examples used by Plato and Socrates are based on love. Plato's Symposium, written c. 370 B.C., explores the nature of beauty and examines the male response to male beauty.

Fierstein's Safe Sex is a trilogy of plays that was first performed in 1987. These combined one-act plays deal with the problems that homosexuals face when AIDS becomes a factor in dating and intimacy.

M. Butterfly (1988), by David Hwang is a play about a French diplomat who falls in love with an opera singer. The singer is a man disguised as a woman. Throughout the many years of their affair, the diplomat claimed not to recognize that his lover was male or that the singer was really a...