Silvano's one-sided love for Diana

Silvano’s love for Diana is defined by its lack of return, but not by resentment. Though he once competed with Sireno for her affection, he refuses to make Diana’s choice a grievance against his rival. He remains devoted even when she gives him no reason to expect happiness, and his attachment reaches its clearest expression in his willingness to feel for Diana’s sorrow over Sireno.

Identity and Unequal Devotion

Silvano appears among the shepherds as a rejected lover whose constancy survives the loss of hope. He calls himself a lover who has loved and will continue to love without being loved in return. His position is especially painful because he knows what Diana’s affection for Sireno looked like: she spoke gently to Sireno, shared the work of tending the flock with him, and accompanied him as they took the animals to the river, the grove, and the shade. Silvano does not mistake these favors for his own. He understands that Diana placed her love in Sireno, and that understanding shapes rather than extinguishes his devotion.

Diana’s written assurances to Sireno sharpen the contrast. She tells him she loves him beyond herself, insists that her honor has remained intact, and urges him not to surrender to jealousy and suspicion. Silvano knows that Sireno received words and attentions he himself never did. His love is therefore not sustained by a secret promise or by evidence of a hidden mutual bond; it is a commitment made in full awareness of Diana’s preference for someone else.

A Rivalry Without Vengeance

The former competition between Silvano and Sireno could have made the two shepherds enemies. Instead, their encounter after Sireno’s return turns the rivalry into sympathy. Seeing Sireno in distress, Silvano takes up his pipe and sings of being unloved. Sireno recognizes him as the shepherd who once contended with him for Diana, but addresses him with pity rather than triumph. When they meet, the two embrace in tears and sit together on the grass.

Silvano explicitly rejects the idea that Diana’s favor toward Sireno could make him hate Sireno. Because he loves Diana, he says, he cannot oppose the person on whom she willingly bestowed her love. Sireno, in turn, admires Silvano’s capacity to endure his misfortune and recognizes how poorly Diana has repaid a love so loyal. Their relationship exposes an unusual consequence of the triangle: the rejected lover does not seek revenge on the favored one, and the favored lover can mourn the suffering of his rival.

Service and the Value of a Small Favor

Silvano’s memories show how little it took to sustain his hope. He once watched Sireno and Diana from behind bushes near two oak trees as Diana combed her golden hair and Sireno held a mirror for her. The next day, Silvano found a paper containing verses Sireno had sung to Diana during that scene. Diana later came by in tears, having lost the paper, and asked whether Silvano had seen it. He returned it to her.

For Silvano, the chance to relieve Diana’s distress was itself a rare happiness. Her thanks were the first words he remembered hearing from her without anger. He treasured that acknowledgment so intensely that, as he tells Sireno, it compensated him for more than a year of great suffering. The episode reveals the scale of the imbalance: what would be an ordinary courtesy to another person becomes a cherished relic to Silvano because it comes from Diana. His pleasure lies not in claiming a reward but in being able to help her.

Compassion for Diana’s Grief

Silvano’s devotion is tested when Sireno leaves. He had imagined that absence might make Diana forget Sireno and open a way for his own hopes; he admits that even a feigned favor from her would have seemed welcome to a man so starved of affection. But what he witnesses is not forgetfulness. Diana weeps, cannot remain at ease in the village, seeks solitude, and sighs continually. Silvano sees her leaning over her staff near the pasture, lost in grief; when she raises her eyes, tears prevent her from seeing him.

She then takes a pipe from her bag and plays with such sweetness that the valley, mountain, river, birds, and wild animals seem suspended in attention. Silvano remembers this scene not as an opportunity for himself but as proof of Diana’s pain. Although he knows that time can heal the distress caused by absence, he says he would rather have spared her even one hour of sadness, whatever joy he might otherwise have gained. His compassion extends to the suffering caused by the very love that leaves him excluded.

Constancy and Narrative Significance

Silvano’s words sometimes turn toward general complaints about women’s inconstancy, especially the claim that a man who leaves his beloved may have to win her again on his return. Selvagia challenges this way of judging women, arguing that they can be condemned as fickle whether they pursue a man or withdraw to protect their honor. The debate complicates Silvano’s lament: his own experience of Diana is not that she promised him love and then abandoned him, but that she consistently gave him no grounds to expect it. He also speculates that Diana may have misled Sireno in order to disabuse him, a suspicion shaped by what he believes happened afterward rather than a confirmed account of her motives.

Later, Silvano is present with Selvagia and Sireno when they hear Diana singing by the spring. He recognizes her voice, and the three hide among the myrtles to listen. Diana is seen with her hair loose and tears passing across her face as she sings of her sorrow. By then Silvano is among Selvagia’s new companions in love, but he remains able to identify and attend to Diana’s grief. The narrative gives no indication that Diana ever returns his affection. Instead, his significance lies in the contrast between desire and possession: he loves her without converting that love into a claim, and his most revealing act of fidelity is to wish her relief even when her happiness belongs to another.