THE SCENE: Two lovers steal their parent’s money and elope off to the island of Crete, where they plan to live a happy married life together. Unmoored from their families, though, they soon fall into a deadly spiral of lust, jealousy, and revenge.
THE TEXT: This, then, was their way of life. But as we all know from experience, a surfeit of good things often leads to sorrow, and now that Restagnone, who had once been very much in love with Ninetta, was able to possess her whenever he liked without fear of discovery, he began to have second thoughts about her, with the result that his love began to wane. Furthermore, he was powerfully attracted to a beautiful and gently bred young woman of the neighborhood whom he had glimpsed at a banquet, and he began to court her with the maximum of zeal, paying her extravagant compliments and putting on entertainments for her benefit. When Ninetta perceived what was happening, she was so distraught with jealousy that he was unable to make a move without her getting wind of it and pelting him with so much abuse and hostility that she made Restagnone’s life a misery as well as her own.
In the same way, however, that a surfeit of good things generates distaste, so the withholding of a desired object sharpens the appetite, and Ninetta’s resentment merely served to fan the flames of Restagnone’s newborn love. Whether or not he eventually succeeded in possessing his beloved, we shall never know. But at all events somebody or other convinced Ninetta that he had, and she fell into a state of deep melancholy, which rapidly gave way to anger and finally to blazing fury. All her former love for Restagnone was transformed into bitter hatred, and in a paroxysm of rage she resolved to murder him and thus avenge the affront she believed him to have offered her.
Having called in an old Greek woman who was expert in the preparation of poisons, she persuaded her by means of gifts and promises to concoct a lethal potion. And one evening, without giving the matter a second thought, she served this up to Restagnone, who was feeling thirsty because of the heat and was totally off his guard. The drink was so potent that it finished him off before matins.
– Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, 14th Century AD
