TRISTAN: I ought to warn Teodoro straigh...

TRISTAN: I ought to warn Teodoro straight away; my friends and my Greek wine will have to wait. I'll hurry home, It’s not too far from here, but wait, I think I see Teodoro now!

(TEODORO enters)

Where are you going, sir?

TEODORO: I wish I knew what it is bears me on or where I'm bound. Alone, adrift, I follow that fond fancy which bids me dare to gaze upon the sun. Just yesterday we spoke so long together; today Diana seemed so out of love, so strange, you'd swear she scarcely knew my name, as if she meant to make Marcela mock me.

TRISTAN: Come to the house, it's vital to us both we're not seen here together.

TEODORO: How d'you mean?

TRISTAN: I'll tell you as we go how I propose to circumvent the plots against your life.

TEODORO: My life! But what on earth... ?

TRISTAN: Just lower your voice, and hear what hopes of remedy you have. Ricardo and the count just spoke to me, and signed me up to settle you for good.

TEODORO: They want to kill me?

TRISTAN: On the evidence of certain blows, they guess milady loves you, and thinking me one of those desperadoes who volunteer to carry out such killings, they've offered me two hundred for your life and sealed the deal with an advance of fifty. I said a friend was asking me to serve you, and said I would, to have more chance to kill you, in point of fact proposing to protect you.

TEODORO: I would to God some man would end my life, and so release me from this living death!

TRISTAN: You're that despairing?

TEODORO: Shouldn't I be seared by such sweet anguish? You must know, Tristan, that if Diana were to find some pretext, any excuse at all, she'd marry me. She's fearful for her honour; when her passion is most inflamed, she cools and turns against me.

TRISTAN: And if I found a remedy, what then?

TEODORO: I’d say you had the guile of Ulysses.

TRISTAN: If I'd the wit to bring you, to the house, a noble father, so you'd be the equal of any countess, wouldn't that resolve it?

TEODORO: No doubt.

TRISTAN: Well, listen. He's an old man now, but twenty years ago Count Ludovico sent off a son--same name as yours--to Malta; his uncle was Grand Master at the time. This son was captured, though, by Moorish pirates and never heard of since, alive or dead. So you must be the son, and he your father, and I'll arrange it all.

TEODORO: Tristan, be careful; your ingenuity and your inventions might cost us both our honour and our lives.

TRISTAN: Ah, we're at home. Goodbye. I guarantee by noon tomorrow she'll be yours. You'll see!

(TRISTAN exits)

TEODORO: For love's unending tortures I intend to find a very different cure, for Venus knows all too well, no power on earth can end her hold on us so well as earth between us. If I put earth between us--go away--I too may cool the ardour of desire, for flaming thunderbolts can never say they pierce the earth; the earth contains their fire. And many have learned, who needed to deny their love, as I do now, that lovers must put earth between, to let its memory die, and so turn earth to earth, and dust to dust; the fact their love had died was only seen when once they'd buried it with earth between.

Lope de Vega. The Dog in the Manger. Trans. Victor Dixon. Carleton Renaissance Plays in Translation. Ottawa, Dovehouse Editions, 1990. pp. 92-94.