I.ii: Tellus, the earth goddess, tells Floscula that Endymion has made a fool of her by hiding his love for Cynthia and pretending love to Tellus instead. She loves Endymion, but her jealousy leads her to plot to have Endymion bewitched so he may never have the love of Cynthia. Floscula tries to dissuade her.

I.iii: Dares and Samias, the pages of Endymion and Eumenides, have some fun with the foolish Sir Tophas. Tophas, who says he is a devout follower of Mars, wages war with songbirds and fish.

I.iv: Tellus and Floscula meet the old witch Dipsas. They contract with Dipsas to ruin Endymion's love for Cynthia. Dipsas is not powerful enough to ruin love, but she can cause Cynthia always to suspect Endymion's love. Tellus says that will be sufficient.

II.i: Endymion meets Tellus and dissembles his love for her.

II.ii: Dares and Samias loose two young girls, Scintilla and Favilla, on the foolish Sir Tophas in order to test his claim to follow Mars and not to be effected by Venus. Indeed, Tophas has no interest in the girls and goes off to do battle with a sheep.

II.iii: Endymion enters and falls asleep. Dipsas casts a spell over him that he might never awake until the day he is to die of old age.

In a dumb show we see Endymion's dream vision. He sees three women, one with a knife and looking glass (Tellus) is pushed on to kill him by another (Dipsas) while the third (Floscula) wrings her hands and begs leniency. She is stopped from the murder. Next, an old man offers a book with three pages in it. Endymion refuses the book until the old man tears out two of the pages.

III.i: Cynthia enters, hearing of Endymion's strange sleep. Tellus is impudent to her. Cynthia orders her captain, Corsites, to carry Tellus away to a castle where she will weave tapestries for the remainder of her life. She sends Eumenides and others to every corner of the earth to seek out a cure for Endymion.

III.ii: Corsites brings Tellus to the castle. He secretly falls in love with her.

III.iii: Tophas has fallen in love with the old witch Dopsas. He sends Dares and Samias to plead for him.

III.iv: Eumenides comes to a fountain where an old man laments. The old man, Geron, has a secret he will not disclose. He tells Eumenides that the fountain will grant one gift to every true lover who comes to it. Eumenides is discovered to be a true lover and is granted one wish. He hesitates whether he should wish for his love Semele or to wish for Endymion's cure. He decides in favor of his friend. He learns that Endymion can be revived with a kiss from Cynthia. Eumenides and Geron travel back together.

IV.i: Tellus has guessed that Corsites loves her, so she uses her influence upon him to have him move Endymion's sleeping body to a cave, knowing that the heavy-spelled Endymion cannot be lifted.

IV.ii: Dares and Samias come to view Endymion's body, but are turned back by the Watch.

IV.iii: Corsites enters to carry Endymion away, but finds him too heavy to move. Corsites is fallen upon by the fairies guarding Endymion and pinched until he falls to sleep. Cynthia enters with Pythagoras and Gyptes (the philosophers). They wake Corsites, who confesses his weakness in loving Tellus. He is forgiven. The philosophers cannot tell how to awake Endymion.

V.i: Samias and Dares sneak in with Cynthia's entourage to see Endymion. Eumenides has returned with the cure. Cynthia agrees to kiss Endymion, and the cure works. It has been forty years, however, and Endymion cannot recognize his elderly friend Eumenides nor remember much about himself beyond his infatuation with Cynthia. He relates his dream vision to Cynthia. Cynthia offers a reward to anyone who will discover who laid the curse upon Endymion.

V.ii: Dares and Samias return to Tophas. They tell him Dipsas will not marry any man who has teeth or nails. Tophas agrees to have his removed. They tell him she has turned Bagoa her servant into an aspen tree for telling Cynthia it was she who charmed Endymion. Finally they tell him that Dipsas's husband, Geron, has returned. Tophas is distraught only by the last news.

V.iii: Bagoa has told Cynthia of Dipsas' spell indeed and has become an aspen tree for her troubles. Cynthia banishes Dipsas to the desert. Tellus confesses her part in the deed, claiming that her love for Endymion pushed her to it. When Cynthia learns that Endymion has loved her all along, she bids him to continue her suitor. The news restores Endymion's youth. Because he is young again Tellus is allowed to go unpunished. Endymion tells Cynthia that Eumenides loves Semele. But Semele refuses to be given to Eumenides by Cynthia because he did not wish for her at the fountain and is therefore not a faithful lover. She is reconciled by the suggestion that he would not have been given a wish had he not been a faithful lover and the two are matched.

Tellus is matched with Corsites.

Dipsas is matched with Geron on condition that she renounce witchcraft, which she does. Her banishment is revoked

. Tophas wonders who is left for him. Bagoa is redeemed from being an aspen tree and matched with Tophas happily.

Pythagoras and Gyptes are admonished to give up their vain philosophy and follow Cynthia, which they agree to do.

Sir Tophas is a Miles Gloriosus and may be the English forerunner to other such braggarts as Ralph Roister Doister, Sir Bobadill, and Andrew Aguecheek.

The main problem in this play is the passage of time. In the time it takes the young pages Dares and Samias to meet Tophas (I.iii), toy with him a bit, and finally tell him that Geron has returned to claim Dipsas (V.ii) in the subplot, forty years have passed in the main plot. Although Endymion and Eumenides age beyond recognition, the pages remain boys. Tellus seems not to age; neither does Dipsas (who is an old witch when she first charms Endymion) seem to age the additional forty years during the period of the curse.

There is an interesting line regarding the Renaissance conception of microcosmus at IV.ii.47.

When Corsites is pinched to sleep by the fairies (IV.iii) there is much made of pinching him "black and blue." Later, when the sleeping Corsites is discovered, he is likened to a leopard, and his "spots" are remedied by a salve supplied by Gyptes. These spots (the bruises placed on him by the fairies) were probably created by something similar to burnt cork applied to the fingers of the fairies so that they mark him when they pinch to give the illusion from the stage of bruising.

The Dumb Show at II.iii demonstrates the influence of the Italian stage at this period in English drama. The Dumb Show will become a integral facet of English drama in the future. It will introduce every act of Gorboduc, for example, and other Inns of Court plays. It will become an integral part of the later plays such as Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay, Doctor Faustus, and The White Devil where characters see visions portrayed in Dumb Show.

The play could be and allegory of the court despite the Prologue's direct disavowal of that conclusion. The theory that Endymion represented Leicester is largely refuted today. One of the theories advanced is that Cynthia = Elizabeth, Tellus = Mary, Queen of Scots, and Endymion = James VI (later James I).

The play owes very little to the actual myth of Endymion.