Cunning and Wit in the Ninth Day

Cunning and Wit in the Ninth Day is a flexible kind of power: the ability to read a situation, exploit its unexpected openings, and redirect its consequences. In these stories, ingenuity can be a carefully designed test, a timely observation, or an improvised cover story. Its results are not always noble, but they repeatedly shift control away from those who assume they possess it.

Wit as escape from unwanted power

Francesca de' Lazzari uses ingenuity to end the importunities of two Florentine exiles, Rinuccio Palermini and Alessandro Chiarmontesi, who pursue her independently while living in Pistoia. She has sometimes listened to their messages, but now wants to withdraw without giving either man a further opening. Rather than answer their demands directly, she devises a test based on a corpse recently buried outside the church of the Minor Friars: each suitor must bring the dead man to her house, and the task is designed to seem possible while remaining frightening enough to expose the limits of their boldness.

The plan turns on a misidentification. Alessandro hides in the tomb, but Rinuccio, believing he has seized the corpse, drags him out and carries him toward Francesca’s house. When the night watch suddenly appears, Rinuccio drops his burden and flees; Alessandro escapes as well, still tangled in the dead man’s long clothes. Francesca has watched from her window and recognized both men. Their courage has carried them farther than expected, but the interruption gives her the conclusion she needs: when each later reports his failure and asks for her favor, she refuses to credit either claim and ends their approaches. Her test does not make the men harmless; it gives her a plausible pretext to deny them access to her.

This episode makes wit a response to constrained choice. Francesca cannot simply make the suitors’ desire disappear, but she can arrange circumstances so that their own actions supply her refusal with a defensible reason. The scheme is also edged with comic reversal: Rinuccio intends to carry a dead body, yet unknowingly carries a living rival, while Alessandro’s concealed presence turns the supposed proof of courage into a scene of undignified flight.

Exposure through a timely observation

In the convent story, Isabetta’s peril comes from a group of nuns who have secretly watched her and her lover and now bring the case before their abbess, Madam Usimbalda. The abbess condemns Isabetta for conduct said to compromise the convent’s sanctity and reputation. Isabetta is ashamed and initially silent, with the other nuns’ attention fixed on her apparent offense.

Her escape begins when she notices what the abbess has failed to notice about herself. In the darkness and haste of rising, Madam Usimbalda has put on a priest’s breeches instead of her own head covering. Isabetta points out the misplaced garment and asks the abbess to adjust her coif before continuing her reprimand. The remark forces the assembled nuns to look up; the abbess then recognizes that her own conduct has been exposed along with her clothing.

The reversal is more than a joke about mistaken dress. The abbess’s authority rests on her position as censor, but Isabetta makes that authority answerable to the same standard it applies to others. Unable to restore her initial posture, Madam Usimbalda changes her judgment, declares that the promptings of the flesh cannot be resisted, frees Isabetta, and returns to her own priest. Isabetta goes back to her lover, and the other nuns who have lovers pursue their affairs discreetly. A single accurate observation turns a public accusation into a disclosure of hypocrisy and changes the convent’s practical rule from punishment to tacit accommodation.

Credulity made into a comic instrument

The Calandrino story shows wit taking a less defensive, more exploitative form. After inheriting two hundred crowns, Calandrino talks as though he can afford a substantial estate, but his negotiations fail when the price becomes real. Bruno and Buffalmacco would rather see him spend the money on their company, and, with the painter Nello, they devise a way to make him pay for their entertainment. Their success depends on Calandrino’s readiness to believe what people tell him about himself and his prospects.

The deception grows into a counterfeit romance with Niccolosa. Bruno keeps Calandrino hopeful through messages, letters, and staged signs of the woman’s interest; meanwhile Calandrino neglects his work to seek glimpses of her and gives his supposed intermediaries small gifts and food. When he becomes impatient for the affair to advance, Bruno proposes a magical script. Calandrino is instructed to bring virgin parchment, a live bat, frankincense, and a blessed candle. Bruno writes invented characters on the parchment and tells him that touching Niccolosa with it will make her follow him. The elaborate materials lend an appearance of procedure to a fraud whose real mechanism is Calandrino’s credulity.

Nello adds a second scheme, this time directing the deception toward Calandrino’s wife, Tessa. He reminds her that Calandrino once beat her after returning from the Mugnone with stones, then falsely claims that her husband has arranged to meet another woman. Tessa takes the allegation seriously and sets out with Nello to catch him. As the episode reaches the point shown in the account, Calandrino touches Niccolosa with the script and follows her into a barn, where she shuts the door and embraces him. The available scene establishes how the conspirators have arranged the encounter and brought Tessa toward it; its comedy lies in the collusion between counterfeit magic, fabricated romantic signals, and a husband whose confidence in the trickers makes him vulnerable to their next move.

A separate bedchamber mishap displays a more protective kind of improvisation. Pinuccio, returning in darkness after sleeping with his host’s daughter, mistakes the host’s bed for his own and begins boasting to the man he has accidentally lain beside. When the host angrily challenges him, the wife understands both the mistake and the danger: she has also been in the wrong bed, beside Adriano, and now realizes that her husband may discover the affair. Without a lamp or time to explain, she carries her child’s cradle across the room, lies beside her daughter, and presents herself as having slept there all night. She and Adriano reinforce the cover by treating Pinuccio’s confession as the talk of a drunken sleepwalker. The host accepts their explanation, and Pinuccio, understanding what is required, pretends to wake from a dream. Here wit is neither a prepared test nor a magical counterfeit; it is the rapid coordination of movement, speech, and a plausible account before suspicion can settle.

Revenge, reciprocity, and the limits of a trick

The exchange between Ciacco and Biondello gives cunning the shape of retaliation. Both men make a practice of attaching themselves to wealthy diners: Ciacco is a well-mannered, witty glutton whose means cannot sustain his appetite, while Biondello is another practiced hanger-on, noted for his carefully arranged appearance. A claim by Biondello about a sumptuous dinner draws Ciacco into an expectation of food. Later, a deception involving Messer Filippo ends with Biondello beaten, his clothes torn, and his coif pulled away. The bystanders explain why Messer Filippo attacked him, and Biondello realizes that Ciacco must have engineered the humiliation.

When the two meet again after Biondello’s bruises have healed, Ciacco asks how he liked Messer Filippo’s wine. Biondello answers by recalling the lampreys associated with his earlier invitation, recognizing the retaliatory pattern. Ciacco warns that he will answer any future attempt to cheat him with another such punishment. Biondello understands that wishing Ciacco ill is easier than carrying it out, asks him to make peace, and thereafter avoids affronting him. The trick has achieved its end not through reconciliation between equals but through a credible threat of repetition.

Together, these episodes distinguish several uses of practical wit. Francesca’s plan creates distance from unwanted suitors; Isabetta’s observation exposes the double standard of an authority figure; the plots against Calandrino turn self-deception into a source of profit and amusement; the bedchamber cover protects those caught in an embarrassing tangle; and Ciacco’s retaliation converts an earlier deception into a warning. In each case, the decisive advantage comes from recognizing what another person does not see—whether a hidden rival in a tomb, breeches on an abbess’s head, a fraud disguised as magic, a dangerous arrangement of beds, or the pattern linking one dishonest dinner to the next. Wit changes who controls the explanation, and with it who must bear the consequences.