It is night in the palace of Diana, Countess of Belflor, in Naples. Two cloaked men flee down the stairs, and one of them throws his hat at the lamp to put it out. Furious, Diana questions her ladies one by one, and Anarda finally confesses: the intruder was Teodoro, the household secretary, who had come to see Marcela. Marcela insists he means to marry her, and the countess promises to help them.
But as soon as she is alone, Diana admits in a sonnet what she feels: if Teodoro were more, or she were less, she would love him. Her game begins. She hands him a love poem supposedly written by “a certain friend”, asks his advice for this friend who loves a humble man, and when she falls, asks him to give her his hand. Teodoro gets the message, drops Marcela and dares to dream of becoming Count of Belflor; Marcela, stung, consoles herself with Fabio.
Every time Teodoro comes closer, Diana remembers who she is and rejects him; every time he goes back to Marcela, she reclaims him with jealousy, with a letter she dictates to him and even with slaps, which she then pays for with two thousand escudos. As he puts it, she is the gardener’s dog that neither eats nor lets others eat. Her suitors, the Marquis Ricardo and her cousin Count Federico, suspect what is going on and hire a supposed cutthroat to get rid of the secretary, not knowing he is Tristán, Teodoro’s own lackey. Teodoro asks leave to go to Spain; Tristán has another way out in mind.
The ending (spoilers)
Tristán disguises himself as a Greek merchant and calls on old Count Ludovico, who twenty years earlier lost a son named Teodoro, captured by the Moors on his way to Malta; with an invented story he convinces him that Diana’s secretary is that son. Ludovico embraces him in tears, and Diana, with nothing left in the way, announces she will marry him that very night. Teodoro, too honest to deceive her, confesses that it is all Tristán’s invention; Diana marries him anyway and threatens to have the lackey thrown down a well to keep the secret, though in the end she forgives him. Ricardo exposes the fake cutthroat, Teodoro defends him and marries him to Dorotea, Marcela marries Fabio, and the play closes by asking the audience to keep Teodoro’s secret.
Arcadópolis
Fuente Ovejuna
El mejor alcalde, el rey
El alcalde de Zalamea
La dama duende
El gran teatro del mundo
La vida es sueño
Los entremeses
Viaje del Parnaso · La Numancia
Juan José
El sí de las niñas
El trovador
Los amantes de Teruel