Master Simone

Master Simone is a physician whose professional authority becomes the decisive instrument in a prank against Calandrino: summoned to diagnose an imagined illness, he solemnly declares that Calandrino is pregnant, then sells him a cure that helps the pranksters profit at his expense. His role is brief but carefully staged. Bruno supplies the deception, while Master Simone gives it the appearance of medical knowledge, complete with an examination, a prescription, and a confident assurance of recovery.

Identity and Role

The story presents Master Simone as a doctor with a shop in the Old Market, at the sign of the Pumpkin. Bruno describes him to Calandrino as a trusted acquaintance and as someone who will promptly say what must be done. That introduction makes the physician seem like a credible source of help precisely when Calandrino has been persuaded that he is unwell.

Master Simone is not an independent observer drawn into a genuine medical mystery. He is part of the trick. Bruno reaches him before the maid carrying Calandrino’s urine arrives, explains the supposed case, and thereby ensures that the physician has been primed to sustain the same fiction as Calandrino’s companions. The sequence makes the diagnosis look like professional judgment while showing that its conclusion has already been arranged.

The Staged Diagnosis

When Master Simone arrives, he sits beside Calandrino and feels his pulse. With Calandrino’s wife Tessa present, he announces that Calandrino is pregnant. The absurd diagnosis is delivered through the ordinary gestures of a consultation, and the performance works: Calandrino accepts the claim, cries out in distress, and blames Tessa, saying that she insisted on taking the upper position during sex.

That reaction reveals the power Master Simone’s role has acquired in the room. Calandrino treats the physician’s statement as proof, even though it confirms an impossible condition. Tessa, who is described as modest, blushes and leaves without answering her husband. The supposed medical finding thus provokes not only Calandrino’s panic but also a moment of embarrassment for his wife, while the physician’s authority shields the lie from immediate challenge.

Prescription, Payment, and Performance

Master Simone reassures Calandrino that the condition has been caught early and can be cured within a few days, though at some expense. He prescribes a drink made from distilled waters and specifies what is needed: three pairs of fine, fat capons, along with five silver crowns for additional ingredients. Calandrino, desperate to avoid childbirth, offers two hundred crowns that he had intended to use to buy an estate, but the physician directs him to hand over the smaller sum and the money for the capons.

The remedy is as much a part of the performance as the diagnosis. Master Simone takes his leave and has a little clary prepared, which is sent to Calandrino. Bruno, meanwhile, buys the capons and the other provisions; he and his companions eat them with the physician instead of using them to prepare a real treatment. Calandrino drinks the clary for three mornings, believing he is following a cure, while the people who arranged the deception share the food purchased in its name.

On the third day, Master Simone returns with Calandrino’s companions, feels his pulse again, and pronounces him cured. Calandrino rises overjoyed and later praises the doctor for having, as he understands it, removed the pregnancy in three days without pain. Master Simone’s second examination closes the fiction as neatly as the first established it: a declared illness receives a declared cure, and Calandrino leaves convinced that the doctor has saved him.

Comic Function and Consequences

The episode makes Master Simone a collaborator in exploiting Calandrino’s credulity and miserliness. The pranksters’ deception has prepared Calandrino to suspect that something is wrong; the physician converts that suspicion into certainty, then turns certainty into payment. His medical manner is essential to the joke because it gives an outrageous claim the outward shape of diagnosis and treatment.

The narration also undercuts the dignity of the consultation by disclosing the conspiracy to the reader. Bruno and his companions struggle to contain their laughter, while Master Simone laughs so immoderately that, the narrator jokes, every tooth in his head might have been drawn. The doctor’s composure in front of Calandrino therefore belongs to his performance, not to belief in the case: among the conspirators, the supposed patient’s terror is openly comic.

After Master Simone declares Calandrino sound, Calandrino carries the false story of his cure into everyday life, boasting of the doctor’s skill. The pranksters are pleased to have outwitted his stinginess; Tessa, having guessed the deception, scolds her husband. Master Simone’s part ends with the successful fraud, leaving Calandrino to celebrate a cure for an illness he never had and the physician to share in the proceeds of the joke.