chunk: Act I: The play opens with Agatha being ejected from an inn when her money runs out. Too proud to beg, she is desperate. Frederick enters, sees her, and offers her money although it will mean he cannot pay for his own breakfast. She recognizes him as her son, absent for five years as a soldier. He has returned in order to find his birth certificate, necessary in order to find employment. Distraught, Agatha tells him that there is no certificate: she was seduced at the age of seventeen by Baron Wildenhaim upon promise of marriage. Despite the resulting pregnancy, the Baron broke his promise and married another, wealthier woman, and Agatha, turned out of her home, struggled to make ends meet and raise her son alone. Frederick is dismayed at the news, and to find his mother so destitute, and he arranges for her to stay with some charitable cottagers.