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This has the immediate effect of making Philaritus challenge his supposed rival, who, having witnessed his pretended advances to Castarina, eagerly responds. Their meeting is, however, interrupted, in the one tolerably good scene in the play, by the appearance of the two shepherdesses, who threaten to slay one another unless their lovers desist.
Arismena's coldness, it may be mentioned, has been shaken by Philaritus having rescued her from the pursuit of a satyr, and the two maidens now consent to make return for the long suit of their lovers.
After a vain search for traces of their loves the swains return home, where they are met by the same satyrs, still guarding their captives. They offer to run at them, when the two leaders discover themselves as the fathers respectively of Philaritus and Arismena.
Philaritus, in the hope of rousing Arismena to jealousy, feigns love to Castarina, who readily meets his advances. He is so far successful that he awakes his mistress to the fact that she really loves him, but she determines to play the same trick upon him by feigning in her turn to love Lariscus.
Philaritus is the son of Cleobulus, who is described as 'a gentleman of Arcadia, and opposes his son's marriage with the daughter of a mere shepherd to the point of disowning him, whereupon the lover dons the pastoral garb, and so continues his suit to his unresponsive mistress.
While, however, they are yet in the first transport of joy, a troop of satyrs appear, and carry off the girls by force, leaving the lovers to a despair rendered all the more bitter for Philaritus by the announcement that his father relents of his anger, and is willing to countenance his marriage with Arismena.
In the Italian pastoral proper the shepherds are themselves the aristocracy of Arcadia, the introduction of such social hierarchy as is implied in the phrase being a point of chivalric and courtly tradition. Cleobulus, however, as well as his son Philaritus, is in fact purely Arcadian in character.
Such interest as the play possesses is dependent on the plot. We have the conventional four characters: Arismena, the careless shepherdess, her lover Philaritus, and Castarina, whose affections lean towards the last, though she does not object to hold out some hope to her lover Lariscus.
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