Felicia uses magic to relieve the shepherds’ troubles in love by giving Sireno, Silvano, and Selvagia a potion that alters their attachments. The scene turns the pastoral love story from lament toward new possibility, but its remedy is not reconciliation with the past: Sireno loses his desire for Diana, while Silvano and Selvagia awaken to a mutual love that had not existed in that form before. Belisa, unlike the three who drink, remains with Felicia, awaiting a different resolution.

The Problem and Its Setting

The episode takes place at Felicia’s house after she has promised to address the needs of Felismena and her companions. The day’s conversation has ended; dinner has been served beneath vines in the garden, and the next morning Felicia finds Felismena in tears, impatient to leave and still uncertain of her future. Felicia comforts her with the assurance that her troubles will eventually end, then prepares to depart herself from the private question of Felismena’s fate to the shepherds’ more immediate distress.

Sireno’s predicament is not simply that Diana is absent. He cannot possess her without another person’s death, and Felicia names that condition as an impossible route to happiness. His earlier memories make the scale of the loss clear: at the river meadows where he once tended his flock, he recalls Diana’s vows and the affection they shared, and her letter had assured him of her love and concern for his honor. But those signs of former devotion now sharpen rather than soothe his grief. The cure therefore answers a love made unlivable by changed circumstances, not a temporary disappointment that could be repaired by reunion.

Silvano’s case provides a pointed contrast. He had remained devoted to Diana despite receiving no reward, and he had even felt compassion for Sireno, the rival whom Diana once favored. His constancy was expressed as a willingness to love what Diana loved, including Sireno. Felicia’s intervention does not reward that loyalty by bringing him closer to Diana; instead, it redirects his capacity for attachment toward Selvagia.

The Potion and Its Operation

Felicia brings out two vessels of fine crystal with gold-enamelled bases. Sireno receives one; Selvagia and Silvano share the other. All three drink, and all three immediately fall to the ground asleep. The unusual sleep is not incidental: Felicia explains that the potion can keep them asleep for as long as she wishes, and Felismena’s attempts to wake them by calling and pulling at Silvano’s arm have no effect.

Felicia then uses a book to wake them individually, touching it to each sleeper’s head. The sequence makes her control of the transformation visible. She does not merely give the shepherds a drink and wait for their feelings to change; she determines when they wake and questions them as they return to consciousness. Their responses serve as demonstrations of what the medicine has done, while Felismena watches and tests the apparent change for herself.

The first test concerns Sireno. Felicia asks him to imagine seeing Diana with her husband, both happy and laughing about his former love. Sireno answers that he would feel no pain and would join in laughing at his past follies. When Felicia proposes a second possibility—that Diana is unmarried but intends to marry Silvano—Sireno says he would help arrange it. These are hypothetical questions, not events that have occurred. Their purpose is to reveal the altered force of Sireno’s feelings: he can now regard Diana’s happiness and Silvano’s prospects without jealousy or grief.

Changed Attachments and Unequal Outcomes

Felismena is astonished that Sireno’s tears and sighs have vanished so quickly. Sireno explains that the outward signs of love have ended because the love itself has ended. He still wishes Diana well, but now regards her as he would anyone who has not wronged him. The change is decisive: a man once overwhelmed by memories of her can contemplate her marriage without suffering, and can even assist a rival he had once competed with.

Silvano’s awakening produces a different transformation. He declares his love for Selvagia and compares his former wandering thoughts to a ship unable to find a safe harbor. He now believes he has reached one. The image marks a contrast between his long devotion to Diana and the certainty he feels toward Selvagia after the potion. Felismena is just as surprised by this change as by Sireno’s release, but Silvano’s new declaration does not by itself settle the matter; Selvagia is still asleep in another room.

Felicia tests Selvagia with a misleading report: she says that Alanio has come looking for her and has his father’s permission to marry her. Selvagia rejects the prospect, saying that such permission cannot command her feelings, and immediately asks where Silvano is. The scene makes her preference plain before the lovers meet again. Hearing her, Silvano can no longer remain apart; he comes into the room, and they look on one another with mutual affection. Their new attachment is said to endure until death, and their eventual union is left to marriage.

Belisa’s outcome is deliberately different. Felicia tells her not to lose hope, but does not give her the potion. Instead, she says that Belisa is reserved for a greater happiness than freedom alone and keeps her in her own company until fortune provides the remedy she needs. The event thus distributes relief unevenly: Sireno is freed from his former love, Silvano and Selvagia are brought together, and Belisa’s resolution is deferred.

Aftermath and Narrative Significance

Felicia tells the shepherds to return to their flocks, promising that her favor will remain available and that their loves will end in marriage to the people they desire. She will let them know when the time is right. The nymphs arrive already aware of the remedy, and Dorida, Cintia, and Polidora take particular pleasure in the result. The following morning, Sireno, Silvano, and Selvagia leave for their village in good spirits, while Belisa stays with Felicia. Felismena also departs, dressed as a shepherdess and still carrying uncertainty about her own future.

The scene uses the shepherds’ responses to distinguish two effects of magical intervention: release from an attachment that has become a source of misery, and redirection toward a new reciprocal bond. Sireno’s cure does not restore the idyllic past recalled in the meadows; it makes that past cease to govern his present. Silvano’s outcome, by contrast, turns his formerly unrewarded constancy into a new relationship with Selvagia. The contrasting results make the medicine a turning point in the pastoral plot, though the promise of marriage remains prospective rather than an event completed here.