Lisabetta and Her Brothers
Intro
- Storyteller: Filomena
- Filomena is truly depressed by Elissa's story.
- She'll tell a story about ordinary people this time, which was inspired by the mention of Messina.
Story
- Three merchant brothers of Messina have a beautiful sister named Lisabetta.
- Lisabetta's in love with one of her brothers' employees, the handsome Lorenzo.
- And Lorenzo has fallen in love with her. Pretty soon, they hook up.
- Everything's fine and dandy until Lisabetta's oldest brother sees her going to Lorenzo's bedroom.
- He and the other two brothers decide on a drastic course of action. They lure Lorenzo out to the countryside and murder him.
- They tell Lisabetta that he's away on a business trip.
- When she asks about his disappearance, they threaten her.
- She prays to him to come to her, and after a while, he appears to her in a dream.
- He looks pretty bad. He tells her about his murder and describes his burial place.
- So she takes her maidservant with her to the place Lorenzo had described and yeah—he was still there.
- She does what any woman in her situation would do: cuts off his head and then buries the rest of his body in a more loving fashion.
- Lisabetta takes the head home with her and cries over it and kisses it. Ew.
- Then she puts it into a large pot and covers it with soil, planting some basil on top.
- She becomes very attached to this plant and waters it only with her tears (well, that and some rose essence).
- The basil plant flourishes. Lisabetta does not. She's gone to pot—hahahaha.
- Sorry.
- Her brothers notice. They take away the basil pot because her attachment seems...unhealthy.
- Lisabetta becomes truly sick. She lies in bed and calls for her basil.
- The bros get suspicious, so they root around in the soil to see what this is really about.
- Guess who they find?
- They realize that something funny's going on, so they re-bury the head and flee to Naples.
- Meanwhile, Lisabetta literally cries herself to death over the loss of her basil pot.
- Filomena says that after a time, the whole story came out and a song was composed about this sad story, probably "Tears on My Pillow" by Little Anthony and the Imperials.
- Some critics see Lisabetta as an extreme example of the kind of lovelorn ladies that Boccaccio claims is his target audience.