Tancredi, Prince of Salerno
Intro
- Storyteller: Fiammetta
- Fiammetta confesses that she doesn't understand why they're telling such dismal tales when they're supposed to be cheering themselves up.
- Did Filostrato think they needed to tone it down a bit?
- Still, she wants to show that she can play the game, so she's going to tell a truly horrendous tale.
Story
- Tancredi has a beautiful daughter called Ghismonda that he loved so much he didn't want to marry her off.
- Eventually, he gives her up to the Duke of Capua, but the Duke dies early and Ghismonda returns home again.
- And once again, Tancredi's in no hurry to marry off his beloved daughter.
- The beautiful and young daughter tires of her loneliness and decides to take a lover on the sly.
- She sets her heart on her father's valet, Guiscardo. Guiscardo notices that he's caught her eye and the feeling is clearly mutual.
- Ghismonda passes him a letter concealed in a hollow reed. In it, she tells him how to proceed.
- As palaces often do, Tancredi's palace has a secret passage to an unknown place. The door to a forgotten cavern is conveniently located in her bedroom.
- Guiscardo just has to lower himself into the cavern from outside the palace and he can walk right into his lover's room.
- Which he does. More than once.
- Everything's going well until one day Tancredi decides to speak with Ghismonda in her room. She isn't there, so he decides to curl up on a low stool behind a curtain and wait for her.
- Of course, Ghismonda's made a date with Guiscardo for that very afternoon. She returns to her room and lets her lover in by the secret door.
- Tancredi wakes up and is horrified by what he sees going on in the bed next to him.
- He doesn't say anything, but he's already got a pretty grisly plan taking shape in his mind.
- Tancredi has Guiscardo arrested as he's leaving the cavern and gives him a very good dressing down before locking him up for the night.
- In the morning, Tancredi confronts Ghismonda. He's peeved not just because she's carrying on with a man outside of marriage, but because she chose such a low-born guy.
- And now the image of them making love is burned on his brain forever. (Thanks for that, kids.)
- Tancredi tells Ghismonda that he already knows what he's going to do with Guiscardo, but he wonders what to do with her.
- Ghismonda knows what this means. She decides not to sugar-coat the story for Daddy in order to save her life. If Guiscardo dies, she wants to die, too.
- She reminds her father what it's like to be young, to understand about the pleasures of the flesh and to have a lot of time on your hands.
- Then she takes him to task for being elitist. Guiscardo's a noble man in his behavior even if he wasn't born into nobility.
- Ghismonda reminds her father how much he actually likes Guiscardo and says that she fell in love with him on Tancredi's own good opinion of the young man's virtues.
- Tancredi isn't moved by her speech. He decides to spare his daughter and kill Guiscardo.
- So his servants strangle Guiscardo and by Tancredi's orders, remove his heart.
- Tancredi has the heart placed in a gold chalice and sent up to Ghismonda with a special little note.
- Ghismonda's a woman prepared for all emergencies. In this case, she's prepared a potion to end her life.
- She cries enough tears into the chalice to mix with the poison and then drinks up.
- Her serving women tell Tancredi what's going on and he rushes to her. Ghismonda tells him that he's just getting what he wanted and that if he really does feel sorry about the whole thing, he should bury the two lovers together.
- She dies, clutching Guiscardo's heart-chalice to her chest.
- Tancredi is sorry for his actions, but too late. To make amends, he buries the two lovers together in a public ceremony.
- Listen and learn, Shmoop parents.