Synopsis

The young King of Portugal shows little interest in ruling his country. Count Villalobos, the king's power-hungry guardian and prime minister, uses his listlessness to advance his own cause. By having the royal tutor Don Sancho raise the king as a ladies' man and gourmand, he succeeds in excluding him from direct involvement in any sort of state business. In this way he has also succeeded in estranging the king from his young wife. Even the wedding night of the two was a disaster. The queen wanted to surprise her husband with an exquisite pastry, but the king, so very fond of physical pleasures, indulged so greatly in the banquet fare and the wine that he then disappointed her by railing asleep.- Since then the young king has avoided his wife.

Act I

Don Sancho is keeping guard on the house of the prime minister, whose wife has an appointment for a secret rendezvous with the king. The dishes served by Sancho provide for the physical comfort of the two during their tryst. The writer Miguel de Cervantes has fled from his political opponents in Spain and is residing at the Portuguese court; he has set himself the task of removing the premier from power and in this way to make the king aware of his responsibility. Cervantes sees to it that Sancho has to withdraw. In order to pursue his plan, Cervantes wants to make a fool of the premier in public and thus to make it impossible for him to serve as head of state. For this reason he distributes caricatures of the premier together with his friends and fellow conspirators and sings a satirical song to him as a serenade. The infuriated minister calls the guard and has Cervantes and his friends arrested. The king makes use of this tumult to flee unseen from the premier's house with help from Cervantes, who lends him his jacket.

While fleeing, he assigns Sancho the task of freeing the writer from arrest. His tutor, in a complete state of stress, sets out to carry out this order. Donna Irene, the betrothed of Cervantes and a confidante of the queen, attempts to win her mistress as an ally tor his plans: the address that the king is to deliver at the premier's request at the assembly of the estates to be held on that same day is to be exchanged for another speech, one penned by Cervantes. In its text the king dissolves the previous government and declares that he himself will immediately take over all the state business. Irene asks the queen to persuade the king to read the address written by Cervantes at the assembly. But since she has not been alone with her husband since her wedding night, which she sadly recalls, the queen does not at all see that she is in the position to influence the king in any way.

Meanwhile the king has had Cervantes released from arrest in gratitude for the help that he gave him and named him reader to the queen. Irene jealously observes how the writer flirts with the queen, who has eyes only for him, and then has to put up a clever defence to resist the king's advances. Left back alone, the king too thinks of his wedding night and above all of the truffle pastry with which the queen had surprised him.

During his daily report the premier demands that Cervantes be punished as a dissident, but the king does not grant his request. When the king refuses the breakfast offered to him, the premier begins to suspect that the young ruler himself may be the man who dined alone with his wife on the previous evening. It is only with difficulty that the king succeeds in diverting the suspicion from himself.

The morning dance lesson brings with it the confrontation of the rival parties, each of whom attempts to exert influence on the young king. While Don Sancho has at Count Villalobos' request prepared an address for the assembly of the estates to be held later in the day in order to expand the premier's powers as regent, Irene and Cervantes try to persuade the king to dismiss the premier and immediately to begin conducting state business on his own. For her part, the queen, most deeply impressed by Cervantes, writes a declaration of love to him on her lace handkerchief: 'A queen loves you, but you are no king!' When the principal lady at court, the Marquise de la Villareal, witnesses the delivery of this token of love, Irene is able to avoid imminent disaster at the last moment by initially taking it into her possession and then handing it on to Cervantes. The premier, no longer in charge of the situation, inveighs against the writer and his work and has Cervantes arrested.

Act 2

The king begins to view his wife from a new perspective, while she is torn back and forth between her feelings for her husband and her infatuation with Cervantes. Irene is able to convince the king to help her together with the queen to release Cervantes from arrest and reveals to him her plan to have the writer declared a fool who cannot be held responsible for his words and deeds. The prime minister has called a council meeting and urges that the writer be condemned, but during the cabinet session of his ministers the king orders the examination of the accused by a medical commission. This commission is headed by none other than the disguised Irene, who declares Cervantes a fool and thus again is able to secure his release from arrest. To the horror of the premier and Sancho, the writer is even able to reconcile the king and queen. In order to continue with his plan to expose the king's false advisors in public, Cervantes, disguised as the English ambassador, presents the diplomatic incompetence of the premier and Don Sancho. When he goes, he is recognized by Sancho and loses the queen's lace handkerchief. The premier thus has the means for once again estranging the king from his wife at the next assembly of the estates and is overjoyed. When the monarch publicly declares that he himself will assume rule over the country. Count Villalobos presents him the lace handkerchief as proof that his wife has deceived him with Cervantes. Deeply wounded, the young king sends his wife to a nunnery and banishes Cervantes from his land. The premier is overjoyed: his dismissal has been prevented.

Act 3

In the mountains. After his separation from his wife, the king has lapsed into his old listlessness. By again hurrying him from pleasure to pleasure, the premier hopes that he will again be able to control the young monarch. Cervantes has remained incognito in Portugal. Disguised as on innkeeper, he has got the idea into the premier's head that a popular festival might destroy the king. A bullfight is to form the height of this festival.

In order to bring the premier before the people in on impossible situation, Cervantes claims on short notice that no wild bull can be found in the whole region and persuades the premier to get into a bull's hide together with Don Sancho in order in this way to save the bullfight.

Cervantes, disguised as a robber, succeeds in intercepting the queen and Irene before they have reached the nunnery. Sancho, who is accompanying the two women, also falls into the hands of the supposed bandit and immediately decides to join him. Meanwhile Cervantes informs the queen and Irene of his plan, in which he has thought up a special role for the queen: she is to pretend to be the innkeeper's daughter in the presence of the king, who is in the region on a hunt that has been organized by the premier. The plan is set in motion: the premiere orders a little snack from Cervantes for the melancholy king, with the idea that this food will get him to think of something else. The queen, as the innkeeper's daughter, serves the king the same pastry that she had prepared for him on her wedding night. The girl's face and the baked goods painfully remind the king of his banished wife. She coquettishly flirts with him. When he is about to kiss her, she is able to rob from him the lace handkerchief in order to give it to Cervantes.

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Irene, disguised as a lady bullfighter, opens the popular festival. It quickly becomes apparent that none other that Don Sancho and the premier are under the bull's hide. Both ore finally discredited in public.

While Cervantes explains to the king that the message on his wife's lace handkerchief actually was intended for him as her husband, since with her words she only meant that he finally ought to acknowledge his responsibility as king and husband, he is able to persuade the king to forgive his wife. The queen and king are reunited, and the premier is expelled from the country together with Don Sancho.