The Decameron Fourth Day Summary & Analysis

Summary: All Fourth-Day Stories

Filostrato, king of the fourth day, begins the morning with a long discourse about his literary efforts. He describes his writing style as humble and unassuming and defends himself against his critics’ allegation that he writes too much about and for the ladies. Filostrato starts telling a story about Filippo, who raises his son completely apart from the world but loses control of his son as soon as the boy discovers women. Because women have that kind of power, reasons Filostrato, writers must do all in their power to please them.

The afternoon storytelling session starts late. Filostrato has chosen the topic of people whose love ends unhappily. The first speaker, Fiammetta, objects to this topic because they are supposed to be fortifying their spirits, not listening to other people’s woes. She follows Filostrato’s directions but produces a horror tale in which a prince cuts out the heart of his daughter’s lover. The second speaker, Pampinea, chooses a funny story about a monk who tells a lady he is the Angel Gabriel but loses her love in the end. Eight more speakers tell stories of lost love. Neifile recounts the tale of two young lovers who lie down beside each other and die.

Summary of Selected Story: Fourth Day, Fifth Story

Filomena tells the story of Lisabetta, a rich young woman who lives with her three brothers in the city of Messina. The brothers employ a young man named Lorenzo, with whom Lisabetta is deeply in love. The three brothers oppose Lisabetta’s affair with Lorenzo, so they carry out a plan to take him out of town and murder him.

Lorenzo frequently travels on behalf of the brothers, so at first, Lisabetta suspects nothing. However, days go by, and Lorenzo does not return. One night Lorenzo appears to Lisabetta in a dream and reveals to her the spot where he is buried. Accompanied by her trustworthy maid, Lisabetta finds Lorenzo’s burial place, digs up his body, and lays it to rest in a different spot. Before covering up Lorenzo’s body, she removes the head.

Lisabetta and her maid carry the head back to town and up to Lisabetta’s room. She places Lorenzo’s head inside a large clay pot, fills the pot with dirt, and plants basil in the pot. Enriched by the decomposing head and watered mostly with Lisabetta’s tears, the soil produces a basil plant that is thick and fragrant. Lisabetta’s brothers worry that she is declining in health and notice her attachment to the basil plant. They take the pot away, find Lorenzo’s head, and bury it without breathing a word to anyone. Lisabetta demands her pot of basil and, when she does not get it, cries herself to death.

Summary: Conclusion of the Fourth Day

After the final story ends, King Filostrato hands the crown over to Fiammetta, who announces that the next day’s stories will be about lovers who survive calamities and misfortunes and attain happiness. Fiammetta asks Filostrato to sing so that no other day will be blighted by his woes. Filostrato performs a sad lament about his grief after his love forsakes him.

Analysis: Fourth Day

Thanks to its ruler, Filostrato, the fourth day disrupts both the mood and the structure of the previous days. Filostrato is a writer with an ego to match his pretensions, able to talk endlessly about himself, his work, and his feelings. He likes the sound of his own voice and meanders into a long story just to make a short point. Filostrato is something of a bore. Because of his extra talk, the storytelling starts late, and the companions’ mood shifts to annoyance. For the first time, there are signs of rebellion and discord among the ten companions.

The stories of the fourth day vary in tone and genre. Fiammetta and Pampinea do not care for Filostrato’s theme of lost love, so they twist the theme away from romance toward horror and humor. In the fifth story, Filomena continues the horror genre. The stories by Fiammetta and Filomena combine crime, horror, and insanity in a macabre manner. (They may remind modern readers of Edgar Allan Poe.) In the eighth story, Neifile produces the pure romantic tragedy that Filostrato expects. (Her story is one of the sources for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.)

The fifth story, told by Filomena, opens with a romance between two young people, Lisabetta and Lorenzo, but quickly turns into a tale of horror and death with a touch of the supernatural. The protagonists, Lisabetta and Lorenzo, are stock characters from romances, two lovers separated by class. Their antagonists, Lisabetta’s three brothers, are wicked, greedy merchants. Like all their kind, the three brothers care more about reputation than about love, justice, or goodness. Revenge comes from the ghost of Lorenzo, who appears to Lisabetta in a dream. In Lisabetta’s quest for justice, her behavior becomes increasingly bizarre: She digs up Lorenzo’s body, beheads it, and uses the head to nourish a plant. The story’s plot is conventional—a woman goes insane and then dies of grief. Boccaccio makes the story romantic, horrible, and memorable with the image of a basil plant growing out of a dead man’s head.

The stories of the fourth day continue the general themes of The Decameron as a whole. All the stories express the theme of the power of love, a power that people use in unexpected ways. In Fiammetta’s story, paternal love drives a father to horrible evil. In Filomena’s story, love for Lorenzo drives Lisabetta to her death. Pampinea’s story, about a monk who seduces a lady by claiming to be the Angel Gabriel, illustrates the theme of hypocritical holiness. As is often the case with this theme, Pampinea plays the story for broad humor.

The revolt against Filostrato continues after all ten companions have finished their stories. The new ruler, Queen Fiammetta, chooses a topic that is directly opposed to that of Filostrato. Fiammetta issues another sharp rebuke when she invites Filostrato to sing. Fiammetta’s words make her disapproval clear but don’t have much effect on Filostrato, whose song is all about feeling sorry for himself. Fiammetta does her best to get the magic back, but the perfect paradise of the third day has now been invaded and poisoned by Filostrato’s self-serving misery.

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