This play starts with the Duke and his retainers holding a funeral for his daughter, Infelice. Her beloved Hippolito is distraught
and vows to make Mondays a day of mourning forever. When the Duke and the Doctor get her home, however, they revive her with a potion and send her away, telling her that Hippolito is dead. Then the Duke pays the Doctor to poison the young man, whose family is a noble one that the Duke hates. The Doctor comes back and tells the Duke that the deed is done, and the Duke immediately exiles him. So the Doctor goes out and tells Hippolito what the Duke's plans were, and arrangements are made for the two young lovers to meet and marry at an abbey where madmen are kept.While he thought his beloved Infelice was dead, Hippolito went to the house of Bellafront, a woman who was debauched originally by Mateo. Hippolito chastises her severely, about how despicable it is to be a whore. She says she would marry him, if he would, but he rejects her in the strongest terms. She asks Mateo to marry her (after Hippolito has left), but he scornfully refuses. Meanwhile, Viola has married Candido, a patient and even saintly linen-draper. She longs to get a reaction out of him, but he refuses to get upset no matter what outrages she and her recently arrived brother perpetrate. Finally, she gets him locked up as a madman at the Abbey. She repents and goes to get him out. There they meet the others. The Duke says she's the crazy one. Bellafront has been locked up there, too. She tells the Duke about Mateo, and he makes them marry. He confronts his daughter and Hippolito, but they are already married, so he makes his peace with the situation, and the great feud is ended, too. Although this play is more judgmental and less profound, in many ways it is in many ways like Shakespeare's ROMEO AND JULIET with a happy ending.