Prologue

The prologue in rhyming couplets portends a play that is not just "good conversation," as conventional plays present, but is full of "wit" and "deboches" [debauches], as is life.

Act 1

The scene untraditionally opens on two women. Sisters Hellena and Florinda are discussing love, which the younger sister Hellena wants to experience before her brother sends her to a nunnery, and Florinda coyly tells about her beau, an English colonel. They are interrupted by their brother Don Pedro, who announces that, to prevent Florinda from having to marry her father's choice for her, an old man, she must marry Don Pedro's friend Don Antonio the next day. The girls decide to go to the carnival that night in masks and costumed as gypsy whores, to exploit their independence before it is stifled by their prearranged futures, and Florinda hopes to encounter Belvile to tell him that she...