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Decameron First Day, Conclusion Summary

  • Pampinea hands off her crown to the next queen, who'll not only decide the theme of storytelling for the next day, but will make scheduling arrangements for the day.
  • Since this is the first day of storytelling, Pampinea realizes that she's setting precedents. She declares that each monarch should release the group a bit early each day so the new king or queen has time to make arrangements for the next day.
  • Then she chooses Filomena as the next queen and crowns her. The entire group greets her as queen and mock-pledge their loyalty to her.
  • Filomena's shy and doesn't really have the proper mindset for a monarch. She wants everyone to agree to her plans before she enacts them.
  • She reaffirms the routine for the next day: wake up, play, breakfast, dance, nap, tell stories.
  • But Filomena has a new restriction to impose on the game. From now on, they should have a theme for the day, and all storytellers should follow it in choosing a story.
  • She decides that the second day's stories should relate to the unpredictability of Fortune.
  • Everyone's okay with this except Dioneo. He asks to be exempted from this rule if he doesn't feel like conforming to the theme.
  • In exchange, he'll always go last (like that's a bad thing).
  • Filomena guesses his motivation. If the storytelling goes downhill, Dioneo will be there at the end to cheer them up.
  • So she agrees and they all go off to play in the water until dinner.
  • After dinner, there's singing and dancing.
  • Emilia sings an odd little song to round out the day. It's either a riddle about an object, or an incredibly narcissistic set of lyrics about how much she loves herself. Even her friends are mystified.