Summary
In the Spanish city of the Alicante, the merchant Alsemero has fallen in love with the governor's daughter, Beatrice-Joanna. He extends his stay in Alicante in order to get close to her, even though she warns him not to trust his first impression of her.
It is soon revealed that Beatrice-Joanna is betrothed to another man.
When DeFlores, a servant of Beatrice-Joanna's father, enters, Beatrice-Joanna chides and scorns him. She explains to Alsemero that she finds DeFlores revolting.
Meanwhile, DeFlores confesses to the audience that he is secretly in love with Beatrice-Joanna.
Vermandero, Beatrice-Joanna's father, arrives, and Beatrice-Joanna offers to give Alsemero a tour of the castle. Before they all depart for the castle, Beatrice-Joanna drops her glove on the ground. DeFlores picks it up for her, but she scolds him and throws her other glove at him. DeFlores, alone on stage, reiterates his feelings for Beatrice-Joanna while shoving his hand into the glove.
Meanwhile, the manager of a local madhouse, Alibius, entreats his assistant, Lollio, to keep an eye on his much younger wife, Isabella. Alibius is concerned that visitors in the madhouse are going to try to sleep with his wife.
A man named Pedro enters with an alleged madman named Antonio. Lollio and Antonio exchange witty banter, and Lollio remarks that Antonio is his favorite fool.
Analysis
The first act of the play helps establish the central characters, conflicts, and tensions that will continue to build throughout the performance.
Like many early modern plays, The Changeling features two plots: the main plot, concerning Beatrice-Joanna and her impending marriage, and the subplot of the madhouse. While subplots were often used to provide an otherwise serious play with comic relief (and indeed, the wordplay and banter between Lollio and Antonio certainly fulfills this role), this particular subplot is notable because of its setting. Alibius is the manager of what at the time would have been called a madhouse, where people of unsound mind were kept under watchful eye.
The play therefore introduces early on its investment in portrayals of sanity and insanity that will eventually overlap with and comment on the events of the central plot. Thus, the dual-plot structure of The Changeling is means by which the play can comment on itself in a meta-theatrical look at what it means to be "mad."
Inklings of instability in the main plot arise as early as the first act, in which Beatrice-Joanna falls in love with Alsemero despite being betrothed to Alonzo. More significant than her relationship with either of these men, however, is her relationship with the seemingly negligible DeFlores, her father's servant. DeFlores is unattractive and meek, and Beatrice-Joanna finds him so revolting that she shudders at his arrival and chides him when he is in her presence. Ironically, of course, DeFlores reveals to the audience that he is passionately in love with Beatrice-Joanna and will strive to win her over. This tension between them foreshadows their eventual conspiracy, but it is also indicative of how their relationship will transform over the course of the play.
In one of the most studied gestures from the performance, DeFlores picks up Beatrice-Joanna's glove and forcefully shoves his hand inside it. Critics generally interpret this gesture as a symbolic one, one that suggests DeFlores's plan to "shove" himself into Beatrice-Joanna's life and link the two of them inextricably. The gesture is also not without its sexual connotations, which suggests that DeFlores's passionate pursuit of Beatrice-Joanna will likely be dangerous and destructive.
