TEODORO: It's her! DIANA: Attend....

TEODORO: It's her!

DIANA: Attend.

TEODORO: Your servant, madam.

DIANA: A friend of mine, uncertain of her skill, has asked me to compose for her this love-note; for friendship's sake, I felt I should, but knowing so little of love, I want you to improve it. Here, read it.

TEODORO: Madam, how could I compete with what you've written? That would be presumptuous. Pray send it to your friend, I need not read it.

DIANA: Read it.

TEODORO: Your doubts astonish me. I've never used lovers' language; this must teach me how to.

DIANA: What, never, ever?

TEODORO: I've so many faults, I'm far too diffident to dare to love.

DIANA: Your diffidence explains, then, your disguising.

TEODORO: Me? Where, or when?

DIANA: They tell me that the steward saw you disguised last night.

TEODORO: Some prank, perhaps; Fabio and I, I fear, are always fooling.

DIANA: Read, read. I think some enemy has said this, who's envious of me.

DIANA: Jealous, maybe. Read it.

TEODORO: I know I'll only wonder at your wit.

(He reads:)

To love because we see another love is merely envy. If we say we're jealous but not in love, love's theorists disapprove; such jealousy's impossible, they tell us. My love, though, springs from jealousy; distressed, although I know I'm handsomer, I see with envy that another seems more blessed in having won a love that's lost to me. I let "I dare not" wait upon "I would";" don't love, but feel a jealousy intense; know, since I would be loved, that love I should, yet neither yield, nor offer a defence. Thus what I mean I show, but do not show. Let he who can, say what I mean; I know.

DIANA: What do you think?

TEODORO: That if it fits the case, I've not seen better. Yet I can't imagine how jealousy could ever engender love; love always was its father.

DIANA: I suspect the lady found the man in question pleasing, but not desirable; but when she saw him courting another woman, she was roused by jealousy to love him. Could that be?

TEODORO: It could, my lady; yet such jealousy must still have had a source, and that was love. Causes produce effects, and not vice versa.

DIANA: I couldn't say, Teodoro. But I think that's how it was with her; this lady told me she'd merely been attracted by that man, but when she saw him loved, a desperate horde of hot desires beset the road to honour, and stripped her soul of virtuous Intentions.

TEODORO: Your note is finely phrased; I dare not match it.

DIANA: Go in and try.

TEODORO: I dare not.

DIANA: Do, I beg you.

TEODORO: Your ladyship must mean to prove me wanting.

DIANA: I'll wait here. Come back soon.

TEODORO: I shall, my lady.

Lope de Vega. The Dog in the Manger. Trans. Victor Dixon. Carleton Renaissance Plays in Translation. Ottawa, Dovehouse Editions, 1990. pp. 50-52.