Love's Cure, or The Martial Maid is an early seventeenth-century stage play, a comedy in the canon of John Fletcher and his collaborators.
Twenty years earlier, Alvarez had killed Vitelli's uncle in a duel, and had fled Spain with his small son Lucio, leaving behind his wife Eugenia and daughter "Posthumia."
Eugenia, left behind by her husband, concealed Lucio's gender to protect him from the vengeance of "Vitelli and his faction," and raised the boy as a girl.
Now that the disguises are no longer necessary, the parents expect their children to accept their "natural" and socially appropriate roles as male and female; but both Lucio and Clara resist the change and cling to their long-familiar gender guises.
The two come to an understanding: once Vitelli sees that he must give up sexual license, and once Clara is ready to sacrifice her masculine behaviours, they can agree to become husband and wife.
The King of Spain, tired of the long-running feud and civil strife, issues a proclamation allowing Vitelli and Alvarez to resolve their difference through a trial by combat.
The combatants are obdurate; but when the three women arm themselves with swords and a pistol and threaten to fight too, the men finally accept a peaceful compact.
The play supplies abundant comic material through the corrupt constable Alguazeir and his group of tradesmen, who plan to become thieves but without the competence needed for success.