PROSPERO

Contarino, who has been wooing Jolenta, asks her family’s permission to marry her, but her widowed mother Leonora misunderstands his oblique request and thinks she is herself the object of his interest. Meanwhile Jolenta’s brother, Romelio, would prefer her to marry Ercole; but she refuses him and Ercole takes offence. Contarino fights a duel with Ercole, and they wound one another. The bodies are sent to a 1618 monastery. Ercole recovers and decides to forgo his interest in Jolenta to Contarino, should he too survive. Concerned that he should not, Romelio visits the monastery disguised as a Jewish physician, and stabs Contarino’s body. He is seen by two surgeons, who plan to blackmail him; but ironically the stab clears Contarino’s wound and facilitates his recovery. Romelio’s financial situation is perilous: he has lost his mercantile carracks of spice. Contarino has named Jolenta his heir; Romelio plans to make her Ercole’s too, by fabricating the story that she is pregnant by him. Romelio himself will supply the eventual baby: he has got a nun, Angiolella, with child, and wants both to cover this up and ensure that his issue will inherit both suitors’ property. Jolenta, however, claims that she really is pregnant, by Contarino; so Romelio proposes that she should produce twins. Knowing of Leonora’s interest in Contarino, he fosters jealousy between mother and daughter. The Spanish judge Crispiano comes to Naples in disguise with three objectives: to observe his son’s lifestyle, to investigate reports of illegal gold-mining by Romelio, and to appoint the lawyer Ariosto as a judge. Blaming her son for Contarino’s death, Leonora brings a false law-case that will deprive him of his patrimony by establishing his illegitimacy: he was conceived, she claims, during his father’s absence. Crispiano sits as judge, and attributes the action to malice, but stands down when he becomes a party in the case: Leonora names him as Romelio’s natural father. Ariosto takes his place on the bench, and Crispiano demonstrates that he was not even in Europe at the time in question. To evade punishment, Leonora claims to have become a nun. Ercole, present in disguise, is arrested for killing Contarino, but accuses Romelio of the crime. In the absence of a witness, this is to be settled in a trial by combat. Contarino, incognito, agrees to fight on Ercole’s side. The news of Contarino’s survival reaches Leonora via her confessor, a Capuchin, but Romelio locks them in a tower on…