Christopher Sly, a drunk beggar, refuses to pay for the glasses he’s broken at a local inn, and the hostess is fed up with it. She goes to fetch the authorities, and Sly falls fast asleep. A wealthy lord, arriving from a hunting trip, sees the sleeping Sly and decides to play a trick on him. He tells his servants to take Sly to the lord’s bedroom and then to convince Sly that he’s a lord himself. When he wakes up, they’re to tell Sly he’s been suffering from a delusion for years. A troupe of traveling actors arrives at the inn, and the lord asks them to put on a play for Sly to help convince him that he’s really a lord. The lord also decides to have his page dress up as a woman and pretend to be Sly’s lady, since lords have ladies.