Dorante, a charming young man, has but a single flaw — he cannot tell the truth. Newly arrived in Paris, he quickly befriends and hires Cliton, a uniquely trusty manservant who cannot tell a lie. In a chance encounter, Dorante falls in love with Clarice, a young woman whose name he unfortunately mistakes for that of her friend Lucrece. What our hero regrettably does not know is that his father is trying to get him married to this selfsame Clarice — a point complicated even further by the fact that she is already secretly engaged to Dorante’s best friend Alcippe. Nor is he aware that the real Lucrece has fallen madly in love with him.