General derision, with a mocking chorus; Luzio, a young nobleman and jovial rake (tenor), appears to wish to make himself the people's leader; he promptly finds occasion for espousing the cause of the oppressed when he sees his friend Claudio (likewise tenor) conducted on the road to prison, and learns from him that, in pursuance of an ancient law unearthed by Friedrich, he is about to be condemned to death for an amorous indiscretion. His affianced, whom the hostility of her parents has prevented his marrying, has become a mother by him; the hatred of the relatives allies itself with Friedrich's puritanic zeal: he fears the worst, and has one only hope of rescue, that the pleading of his sister Isabella may succeed in softening the tyrant's heart. Luzio promises to go at once to Isabella in the cloister of the Elisabethans, where she has lately entered her novitiate.