The villagers of Ploverleigh are preparing to celebrate the betrothal of
Alexis Pointdextre, the son of the local squire, and Aline Sangazure ("Ring forth, ye bells"). Only a young village maiden named Constance Partlet seems unwillng to join in the happy mood, and we learn as she tells her mother that she is secretly in love with the local vicar, Dr Daly ("When he is here, I sigh with pleasure"); and the cleric himself promptly soliloquises that he has been unlucky in love ("The air is charged with amatory numbers".) However, despite Mrs Partlet's best attempts at matchmaking, Dr Daly seems unable to believe that a young girl like Constance would be interested in him. Alexis and Aline arrive ("With heart and with voice"), and it soon becomes clear that his widower father Sir Marmaduke and her widowed mother Lady Sangazure are concealing strong feelings for one another, which propriety however demands remain hidden ("Welcome joy, adieu to sadness"). The betrothal ceremony is carried out, and left alone together Alexis reveals to his fiancée his plans for practical implementation of his principles that love should unite all classes and ranks ("Love feeds on many kinds of food, I know"). He has invited a representative from a respectable London firm of sorcerers to Ploverleigh ("My name is John Wellington Wells"), who prepares a batch of love potion with a fearsome incantation ("Sprites of earth and air"). The potion is added to the teapot for the feast on the village green, and all the villagers save Alexis, Aline, and Wells drink it and fall unconscious ("Oh, marvellous illusion").Plot
Act One