Calandrino’s False Pregnancy turns a small inheritance into the price of an elaborate practical joke: a painter and two companions make Calandrino believe that he is pregnant, then persuade him to pay for a cure that does not exist. The episode’s comedy depends on a carefully staged transfer of authority. Calandrino’s own fears, the friends’ coordinated concern, and Master Simone’s medical performance together make an absurd diagnosis seem credible to its victim.

Story and Setup

Filostrato tells the episode as an embedded story, presenting it as a comic diversion after an earlier tale had been displaced by a judge’s conduct. Calandrino is already familiar to the company as a figure whose foolishness can supply material for laughter. Here, the immediate occasion is an inheritance: an aunt has left him two hundred crowns in small coin. He talks of buying an estate and approaches brokers in Florence as though he had ten thousand gold florins to spend, but negotiations fail when the price is reached.

Bruno and Buffalmacco have urged him to spend the money making merry with them rather than buying land, but have not even managed to get him to provide a meal. Their frustration turns the inheritance into an opportunity. When their fellow painter Nello joins them, the three plan how to make Calandrino spend on their behalf. The scheme is not simply a spontaneous joke; it is devised to answer his refusal to share his money and to exploit the anxious credulity he displays once others suggest that something is wrong.

Building the Diagnosis

The deception begins in the street the next morning. Nello greets Calandrino, studies his face, and asks whether anything troubled him during the night. He does not declare that Calandrino is ill; he merely says that he looks changed, then lets him continue on his way. That uncertainty gives Calandrino room to supply his own fear. Though he feels no ailment, he begins to wonder whether something is wrong.

Buffalmacco follows with a second, apparently independent assessment. When Calandrino reports Nello’s concern, Buffalmacco confirms that he looks half dead. Bruno then arrives and adds another observation about his face. The repetition makes the friends’ invented diagnosis seem like evidence gathered from separate witnesses. Calandrino moves quickly from uncertainty to conviction: now it seems to him that he has a fever, and he asks what he should do.

The three direct him home and recommend that he send his urine to Master Simone, a physician they know well. Calandrino returns in their company, lies down, and asks his wife, Tessa, to cover him warmly. His friends’ intervention has transformed a passing suggestion into a sickroom scene in which he behaves as a patient before any illness has been established.

Master Simone’s Performance

Bruno reaches Master Simone before the servant girl carrying Calandrino’s urine arrives, so the physician hears the conspirators’ account first. After examining the sample, he tells the girl to send Calandrino word to keep warm and says he will come to explain what ails him. The staging lends the trick the appearance of a proper consultation: the urine is examined, the doctor makes a house call, and he feels Calandrino’s pulse before delivering his verdict.

With Tessa present, Master Simone declares that Calandrino is pregnant. Calandrino accepts the impossible diagnosis rather than challenging it, and immediately blames his wife, saying that she always insists on being on top. Tessa, a modest person, blushes, lowers her head, and leaves without answering. His accusation turns the hoax into a domestic humiliation as well as a medical one: Calandrino treats his supposed pregnancy as the consequence of his wife’s sexual conduct and complains that he will suffer the pains of childbirth.

The conspirators struggle to contain their laughter, while Master Simone laughs so hard that, as the narration wryly puts it, every tooth might have been drawn from his head. Yet the doctor resumes his reassuring role. He says that the condition has been caught early and can be removed in a few days, but that the treatment will cost something. Calandrino begs him to act and offers the full two hundred crowns he had hoped to use to buy land, fearing that childbirth will kill him.

The Price of the Cure

Master Simone prescribes distilled waters to be taken for three mornings and demands three pairs of fine fat capons, along with five silver crowns for other necessary items. Calandrino hands Bruno the five crowns and money for the capons, and asks him to buy the supplies. The exchange completes the practical purpose of the scheme: the money reserved for a property purchase becomes payment for a cure against a condition Calandrino does not have.

The physician sends a little clary, described in the account as a drink, and the friends make the capons into a feast for themselves and Master Simone. Calandrino, by contrast, drinks the concoction for three mornings. The separation between what the victim believes he is consuming and what the conspirators actually do with the promised provisions sustains the joke to its end: the supposed medical treatment is merely an excuse to secure the food and money.

Exposure and Comic Reversal

After the three mornings, Master Simone returns with the companions, feels Calandrino’s pulse again, and pronounces him cured. Calandrino rises delighted and goes about his business. He then tells people that the physician has successfully delivered him of a pregnancy in three days, without pain. The episode’s closing irony is that the cure does not merely fool him in private; Calandrino himself spreads the story of his impossible recovery, presenting the fraud as a marvel of medical skill.

Bruno, Buffalmacco, Nello, and Master Simone are pleased to have found a way around Calandrino’s stinginess. Tessa, however, sees through the trick and scolds her husband. Her recognition supplies the episode’s final contrast: Calandrino, who has been surrounded by false signs and assurances, remains proud of the cure, while his wife understands what has happened. The joke depends on his willingness to accept others’ authority when they confirm his fear, and on how thoroughly that fear can redirect his money and judgment.