Leonora, the heroine, first comes on the stage, and confesses her attachment to Don Juan de Hurtado, a gentleman who has recently returned rich from the Indies. She gives a lively sketch of the way in which he had made love to her in all the forms of national admiration, at church by day, and before her grated balcony in the evenings. Don Luis, her brother, ignorant of all this, gladly becomes acquainted with the lover, whom he interests in a match of his own with Doña Blanca, sister of Bernardo, who is the cherished friend of Don Juan. Eager to oblige the brother of the lady he loves, Don Juan seeks Bernardo, and, in the course of their conversation, ingeniously describes to him a visit he has just made to see all the arrangements for the evening’s entertainment now in progress before the court, including this identical play of Lope; thus whimsically claiming from the audience a belief that the action they are witnessing on the stage in the garden is, at the very same moment, going on in real life in the streets of Madrid, just behind their backs;--a passage which, involving, as it does, compliments to the king and the Count Duke, to Quevedo and Mendoça, must have been one of the most brilliant in its effect that can be imagined. But when Don Juan comes to explain his mission about the lady Blanca, although he finds a most willing consent on the part of her brother, Bernardo, he is thunderstruck at the suggestion, that this brother, his most intimate friend, wishes to make the alliance double and marry Leonora himself. Now, of course, begin the involutions and difficulties. Don Juan’s sense of what he owes to his friend forbids him from setting up his own claim to Leonora, and he at once decides that nothing remains for him but flight. At the same time, it is discovered that the Lady Blanca is already attached to another person, a noble cavalier, named Don Pedro, and will, therefore, never marry Don Luis, if she can avoid it. The course of true love, therefore, runs smooth in neither case. But both the ladies avow their determination to remain steadfastly faithful to their lovers, though Leonora, from some fancied symptoms of coldness in Don Juan, arising out of his over-nice sense of honor, is in despair at the thought that he may, after all, prove false to her.