“Should I cast it to the dogs”

“Should I cast it to the dogs?” is the pointed question Madam Filippa uses to defend herself at an adultery trial in Prato. Her image of surplus desire turns a death sentence into an argument about a law that governs women alone: the crowd laughs and takes her side, and the statute is changed before the hearing ends.

The Trial and the Statute

The law in Prato made no distinction between a wife discovered in adultery and a woman who sold sex for money: either could be burned. Rinaldo de' Pugliesi found his wife, Madam Filippa, with her lover, Lazzerino de' Guazzagliotri, in her chamber. Enraged, he sought her death through the courts rather than killing her himself, and brought an accusation supported by evidence.

Friends and relatives urged Madam Filippa to deny the charge. She chose instead to appear and confess, preferring an open defense to fleeing into exile. The provost explained that he could not condemn her under the statute unless she admitted the accusation; she answered without denying either her marriage or her relationship with Lazzerino.

The Surplus Argument

Madam Filippa first attacked the law’s legitimacy. She argued that laws should apply commonly and be made with the consent of those subject to them, whereas this statute bound women alone and had been enacted without women being consulted. She then asked the provost to establish whether she had always granted her husband what he wanted from her.

Rinaldo answered that she had met his every request. Madam Filippa’s question, “Should I cast it to the dogs?”, follows from that admission: if her husband had received what pleased him, she asked, what was she to do with what remained? In her telling, the alternative to waste was to gratify a gentleman who loved her. The argument is comic, but its force depends on turning the husband’s testimony against his prosecution: his claim that she had satisfied him becomes the premise of her defense.

The Courtroom Reversal

The people of Prato had gathered to watch the trial. Her question made them laugh, and they cried out together that she was right and had spoken well. The provost then prompted a change to the statute: it would apply only to women who betrayed their husbands for money, rather than to every woman found in adultery.

Rinaldo left the court with shame rather than the punishment he had sought. Madam Filippa returned home free and triumphant, described as though she had been lifted from the flames. The reversal is both personal and civic: a sentence intended to kill her ends in the revision of the law under which she was tried.

Meaning and Limits of the Wit

The phrase’s force comes from its deliberately practical image. Instead of answering the charge in the language of repentance or denying her desire, Madam Filippa recasts desire as something her husband has not used up. That move makes the prosecution’s own evidence serve her, while the crowd’s laughter turns a private accusation into a public judgment on the statute.

The change does not abolish the law’s sexual double standard: the revised rule still punishes women who are unfaithful for money. But the episode shows how a quick answer can expose the injustice of a rule and alter its reach. Madam Filippa’s wit saves her from the penalty and helps secure a narrower law, without making the new law equal.