Peronella’s lover in the vat is a comic episode in which a poor Neapolitan wife converts an unexpected return into an opportunity to hide her lover in the very object her husband is trying to sell. The vat becomes both hiding place and stage prop: by persuading her husband to clean it for its buyer, Peronella keeps him occupied while Giannello Strignario remains concealed inside. The joke depends on the husband’s confidence in his wife’s honesty, the couple’s precarious household economy, and the physical awkwardness of a sale conducted around an unseen lover.

The Household and Its Arrangement

In Naples, Peronella and her husband make a modest living: he works as a mason, while she earns money by spinning. Their means are slender, but they manage as best they can. A young gallant from the neighborhood falls in love with Peronella and, after persistently seeking her company, becomes her lover. The two arrange their meetings around the husband’s workday rather than openly challenging his authority or the household’s routine.

The arrangement is practical and repeated. Peronella’s husband leaves early to look for work or go to a job; Giannello waits until he sees him depart, then visits her. Their street, Avorio, is described as solitary, helping make these visits possible. The affair is therefore organized around observation and timing: Giannello watches for the husband’s departure, and Peronella receives him once the house seems clear.

That routine fails one morning when the husband comes back unexpectedly. He has left with his tools, but the day is the Feast of San Galeone, when no work is being done. The return is not the result of suspicion: he believes he is simply coming home on a day without work. The mismatch between his innocent explanation and Peronella’s alarm drives the episode’s sudden turn.

The Vat Becomes a Hiding Place

Peronella recognizes her husband by the way he knocks. She tells Giannello that she is in danger and urges him to climb into a vat while she goes to open the door. Her fear is immediate, but she also leaves open the possibility that the husband may have seen Giannello enter. The vat, an ordinary household object that has long been an obstruction in their small home, abruptly becomes the means of concealing the affair.

When Peronella opens the door, she greets her husband angrily rather than anxiously. She reproaches him for returning so early with his tools and complains that, if he does not work, they will have no bread. Her speech redirects attention from the lover’s presence to the husband’s failure to earn. She even contrasts her own hard labor at the spinning with his apparent idleness, turning the unexpected return into an accusation against him before he can question her.

The husband explains that he has come back because the feast day means there is no work. He also believes he has solved their immediate financial problem: he has arranged to sell the vat to a man who will pay five lily-florins, enough, he says, to provide bread for more than a month. His story supplies Peronella with a ready-made cover. Instead of denying that anyone is there, she claims that she herself has already sold the vat for seven florins to an honest buyer who entered just before her husband returned.

A Sale That Keeps the Secret

The husband accepts the claim and is pleased that his wife has secured a higher price than he did. He sends his own prospective buyer away, satisfied that the household will receive seven rather than five florins. The supposed improvement in their finances makes him an ally in the deception: he now has a reason to help complete the transaction rather than investigate the person hidden inside the vessel.

Giannello emerges from the vat as though he had heard nothing of the husband’s return. He asks for the woman with whom he made the bargain, and the husband identifies himself as her spouse. Giannello then objects that the vat is crusted inside with hard residue that cannot be removed by fingernails; he will not take it unless it is cleaned. This complaint turns the sale into a task for the husband and gives the concealed lover a plausible reason to remain in the house.

The husband puts down his tools, removes his coat, obtains a light and scraper, and climbs into the vat to clean it. Peronella leans into its narrow mouth, directing him to scrape particular places. While she holds the opening and guides his work, Giannello takes the opportunity to satisfy his desire with her. The husband is only a few inches away, enclosed inside the object that hides the affair, yet he understands the situation as nothing more than necessary labor to prepare a saleable vessel.

Once the scraping is done, Giannello inspects the vat, declares himself satisfied, pays the promised seven florins, and has it carried to his own house. The transaction removes the hiding place from the home and delivers it to the lover, while the husband believes he has helped his wife complete a profitable bargain. Peronella’s quick invention thus resolves both immediate dangers at once: Giannello is not discovered, and the vat is sold for the price she claimed.

Comic Construction and Significance

The episode’s reversals are built from small, concrete details rather than a prolonged confrontation. The locked door, the husband’s tools, the two competing prices, the crust inside the vat, and the scraper each acquire a second function as the deception develops. Peronella first uses the husband’s return as an occasion to scold him, then turns his own sale plan into cover for her lover, and finally directs the very cleaning that allows the secret encounter to continue.

The husband’s credulity is essential to the comedy, but it is not presented as the result of a clever investigation gone wrong. He interprets the locked door as evidence that his wife is guarding the home from intruders, praises her virtue in his own thoughts, and accepts her account of the sale because it appears to benefit their household. His trust, joined to his concern for bread and money, makes him an unwitting participant in the plan.

The vat likewise changes from nuisance to commodity, from commodity to hiding place, and finally to a purchased object carried away by Giannello. Its physical use governs the scene’s farce: the husband’s body is inside it, Peronella’s head and arm are at its mouth, and the lover is close enough to act while the husband scrapes. In the end, an ordinary sale conceals an affair in plain sight. The episode’s sharpest irony is that the husband’s labor and satisfaction at the improved price help the lovers escape discovery.