Ven, ventura, ven y tura

Ven, ventura, ven y tura is an old mote that Arsileo expands into a glosa at the moment Belisa is brought to him, alive and no longer deceived by the report of his death. The song gives voice to the lovers’ reversal of fortune: the trials that seemed to have destroyed their hopes have brought them to a reunion, while its recurring appeal for good fortune to come and remain makes happiness sound newly possible but still precarious.

Form and Occasion

The narrative identifies the words as an old mote and presents Arsileo’s song as a glosa he has composed for the occasion. The short refrain, Ven, ventura, ven y tura, supplies the recurring verbal anchor; the surrounding verses turn it over through images of changing times, strange paths, suffering, faith, and renewed happiness. The passage does not provide the whole composition, but the repeated refrain and the surviving lines establish how the expansion works: Arsileo returns to his appeal to fortune after describing the damage that has preceded this moment.

The song is not detached entertainment. Arsileo is still singing when Belisa and the nymphs approach, and his voice reaches Belisa before he does. Having been told by Polidora that Arsileo lives, Belisa hears the familiar music on the way to see him. The song therefore becomes part of the recognition scene itself: it carries news emotionally before the lovers can speak face to face.

Fortune, Suffering, and Faith

The surviving lines set a history of harm against the prospect of contentment. Arsileo reflects on how extraordinary happiness has emerged from many harms, then makes faith the force that can endure suffering and steady good love. The refrain asks fortune not merely to arrive, but to stay. That desire gives the song its tension: the lovers have received the news they most wanted, yet the language still registers how readily fortune has moved against them.

This appeal has particular force because Belisa’s grief arose from a deliberate deception. Alfeo had caused spirits to take the forms of Arsileo and his father, making Belisa believe she had seen them dead. Polidora reveals that the scene was staged, and that Arsileo himself has told her the truth. The song’s movement from endured damage toward welcome fortune thus answers the mistaken death without erasing what Belisa suffered while she believed it. Its joy is restorative, but earned through uncertainty and pain.

The Song Within the Reunion

As Belisa comes closer, she recognizes Arsileo’s voice and calls it his, though her happiness is still qualified by uncertainty. When Arsileo sees her, joy overwhelms his senses and briefly leaves him unable to speak. Once he recovers, he addresses her and the nymphs, describing his sight of Belisa as repayment for his many unusual hardships. The scene makes the song’s argument tangible: the longed-for contentment has arrived, but its intensity is almost as difficult to bear as grief.

Belisa answers by naming the contrast between his apparent death and his actual life. The false report had carried her into the depths of sorrow; seeing him alive now brings the corresponding height of joy. Her words confirm that the song’s hopeful turn is shared, not merely Arsileo’s private wish. The nymphs, moved by the lovers’ tenderness, join in their happiness, and the group goes together toward Wise Felicia's House as the evening approaches. The refrain thus belongs to a scene that ends not in solitary lament but in reunion and renewed companionship.

Place in the Pastoral Narrative

The episode places a composed lyric inside prose narration and lets the song perform narrative work. In the broader work, pastoral characters sing as part of a story that alternates verse and prose; here, a specific form—the old mote expanded as a glosa—connects Arsileo’s inward response to Belisa’s arrival. The song marks a change in the emotional direction of the episode: apparent death gives way to recognition, and grief gives way to shared relief.

Its appeal to fortune remains deliberately more vulnerable than a declaration that suffering has ended forever. Arsileo asks that good fortune come and endure, and the words acquire their force from the couple’s experience of a happiness repeatedly obstructed by false appearances and painful turns. The song’s significance lies in that combination of recovery and caution: reunion fulfills the hope expressed in its refrain, while the desire that fortune remain acknowledges how much the lovers have already endured.