Disguise and Concealment of Identity

Disguise and Concealment of Identity turns a name, a story, or even an apparent social role into something characters can alter under pressure. Across the Decameron’s varied tales, concealment is not simply a mask: it can protect a vulnerable family, let an endangered person move through unfamiliar places, or secure an advantage by withholding the truth. Recognition and disclosure then reverse the device, converting hidden identity into a cause of reunion, reward, or punishment.

Concealment as protection

The danger of being recognized is made explicit in the story of Madam Beritola Caracciola and her sons. After Arrighetto Capece is captured amid the overthrow of Manfred, Madam Beritola flees with her young son Giusfredi Capece and newborn Scacciato. Corsairs later seize the nurse and the boys, carrying them to Genoa and into the household of Messer Guasparrino d'Oria as slaves. The nurse understands that identifying the children could expose them to further harm. She presents them as her own sons and changes the elder boy’s name to Giannotto di Procida, repeatedly explaining the danger and securing his obedience.

The concealment lasts for years, shaping the boy’s prospects as well as his safety. At sixteen, Giusfredi leaves the household and travels without success; later, in the service of Currado Malespina, he is imprisoned with Spina. When news arrives that Sicily has risen against Charles I of Anjou, he reveals his birth and former standing to his gaoler, believing that his identity may matter again. Currado investigates, consults Madam Beritola, and verifies the signs that establish the prisoner as her lost son. What began as the nurse’s defensive renaming can now be reversed: recognition makes possible Giusfredi’s release and a marriage to Spina, while the family’s scattered history moves toward restoration.

A related pattern appears in the fate of Gautier of Antwerp. Exiled after a false accusation, he reaches London with Louis and Violante and teaches them to endure poverty without disclosing their origins. He changes their names to Perrot and Jeannette, and the children live under those identities while separated from him: Jeannette is taken into the household of an English noblewoman, while Perrot’s ability earns him a place at a marshal’s court in Wales. Their assumed identities do not erase their birth, but they postpone recognition until it is safer and more consequential. After eighteen years, Gautier finds both children alive and prospering. When the queen’s confession clears his name, he discloses himself to Perrot and Jamy Lamiens; Perrot recognizes his father, and Jamy, now married to Violante, seeks forgiveness for earlier insults to the beggar he had not known was his father-in-law.

Assumed roles and altered appearances

Some disguises are physical and immediate. In the inn episode involving Alessandro, the apparent abbot summons him to share a bed. When Alessandro suspects that the abbot’s caresses express a man’s desire, the figure reveals a woman’s body and explains that she is traveling to the Pope in hope of marriage. The disclosure changes Alessandro’s understanding of the encounter; the woman then proposes marriage, and he accepts, exchanging vows with her by a ring before a religious image. Here the apparent clerical identity is undone not by an outside investigator but by a deliberate revelation within a private encounter.

Ginevra’s transformation is more sustained. After Bernabo orders her killed, the servant charged with the murder spares her, takes her clothes, and gives her his own doublet and hood. Ginevra alters the garments, cuts her hair, and adopts the identity of a sailor named Sicurano da Finale. As Sicurano, she enters the service of a Catalan gentleman, travels to Alexandria, and wins the Soldan’s favor through her conduct. The Soldan later sends her to Acre as captain of the merchants’ guard. A woman threatened with death thus gains mobility and authority by passing through successive social positions without disclosing her former identity.

The same general device can serve manipulation rather than protection. In the Seventh Day story, a jealous husband disguises himself as a priest in order to hear his wife’s confession. She leads him to believe that a priest visits her at night; while he keeps watch at the door for this supposed rival, she brings her actual lover in over the roof. The husband’s disguise is part of an attempted surveillance, but the wife’s counter-deception turns his chosen role against him. Concealment here is reciprocal: each spouse acts on a false account of the other’s knowledge.

False histories and controlled disclosure

Alatiel’s return to her father shows that concealment can reside in a spoken account rather than in dress or name. After many changes of circumstance, she meets Antigonus of Famagosta and entrusts him with the history she has kept hidden. He arranges her return and instructs her in the explanation she should give the Soldan. When questioned, Alatiel presents a fabricated account of shipwreck and separation, omitting the experiences that might compromise her honor. Her return is therefore achieved through a carefully limited disclosure: Antigonus knows her history, while her father receives a version designed to conceal it.

These episodes distinguish secrecy from simple disguise. Giusfredi’s new name protects his family’s identity until political change makes revelation useful; Gautier’s children conceal their origins while poverty and exile leave them vulnerable; Ginevra’s male presentation enables her to travel and serve in roles unavailable to her under her former identity; Alatiel’s account preserves a public version of her past. In each case, the truth is not lost. It is held back, selectively shared, or made legible only to particular listeners.

Narrative and social significance

The tales repeatedly make recognition a dramatic event because readers and characters do not possess the same information at the same time. A changed name may initially look like an obstacle to identity, but it also keeps a person alive long enough for the hidden past to matter. Disclosure can bring a son out of prison, restore a father to his children, or expose the difference between an apparent cleric and the woman beneath the role. False histories, meanwhile, show that recognition is not always the same as full disclosure: a character may return home while concealing most of what has happened.

The device also acquires particular force in stories about women’s restricted circumstances. The opening account of the work describes women in love as constrained by family commands and largely confined to their chambers, while men have more opportunities to move about and divert their thoughts. Against that background, Ginevra’s disguise and the wife’s roof-borne lover dramatize competing forms of movement and control. These plots do not make every deception alike: concealment can answer violence or dependence, but it can also serve erotic stratagems and calculated fraud. Its recurring significance lies in the gap between a person’s visible identity and the knowledge held behind it—and in the changes that follow when that gap is maintained, exploited, or finally closed.