At the end of Act II, John Lyly's Endymion is bewitched into an onstage slumber, in which he remains for nearly half of the play. Among the minor plots that unfold around his slumbering body is the comic episode featuring Sir Tophas, the miles gloriosus of Lyly's play. Infatuated with a geriatric sorceress, Tophas announces to his page, Epiton, that he is no longer a complete ‘noun substantive’ (III, iii, 16), but instead has become ‘a noun adjective … because I cannot stand without another’ (III, iii, 17–19). Although Tophas's passionate desire for the old hag is ridiculous, his suggestive declaration of his reliance upon her resembles Valentine's line about depending on Silvia's ‘fair influence’ to be ‘kept alive’. Epiton, who considers himself impervious to love, chides his master's foolish behaviour, calling him ‘an amorous ass’ (III, iii, 120). He eventually falls out of favour with Tophas but he tells his fellow pages not to worry, for he can be ‘complete’ (IV, ii, 15) even while he is in disgrace with his master:

Epiton describes an agent who carries his scene on his back; the absolute microcosmos is sealed up, complete and impenetrable. He needs nothing and desires no one.

Although this fantasy of self-containment is as unattainable as the moon herself (Epiton promptly sets off to appease Tophas and mend their relationship), it is a powerful counterpoint to the plight of characters in the play like Endymion and Eumenides, who ‘are in love up to the ears’ (I, iii, 1). To be ‘a petty world of myself’ is to escape the vulnerability consequent upon opening oneself to desire. Bachelard writes of ‘half-open’ beings; but what does this mean? Is not even the smallest aperture, the slightest perforation, a categorical openness?