Character Analysis
Don't Go Breakin' My Heart
Filostrato, like Panfilo, gets his name from the Greek: it's a portmanteau (combo) word meaning "one crushed or shot down by love." It's also the title of Boccaccio's epic poem Il Filostrato, which tells the tragic story of Troilus and his unfaithful Cressida. In that story, Troilus is the one who gets beaten up by Love and, having lost his heart, eventually dies in battle.
Our Filostrato doesn't have such a heroic life, but he definitely suffers from disappointed love and he wants everyone to know about it. Presumably, he especially wants a certain person in the brigata to feel his misery. We never really find out who it is, but it's believed that Filomena's the one, since Il Filostrato is dedicated to a Filomena.
When he's elected king for the fourth day, he chooses as his theme—what else—loves that have ended unhappily. In case we don't get the message, his personal cheery contribution to the day is a story about a woman who's tricked by her husband into eating a dish made from the actual heart of her murdered lover and then kills herself by jumping out the window. We know from Filostrato's sad and bitter song at the conclusion of that miserable day that the woman of his dreams dumped him for another:
'I comprehend that false deceit
And see how, while I thought that she
Seemed to allow my love, she'd found
Another servant, spurning me.
Ah, then I could not see
My future misery!
But she the other took
And me for him forsook.' (IV.Conclusion.364)
He's a walking country-western song.
Like Troilus, Filostrato's suffered from betrayal and is finding it hard to recover. The language in the song suggests that maybe she wasn't really his to begin with ("she seemed to allow my love") and that his response might be a little extreme. It doesn't stop him from wishing for death to end his suffering—also like Troilus—or from expressing the high-school literary magazine sentiment that no one can sing his song like he can, since no one else has ever suffered like he does.
Filostrato's grief over losing his love isn't really so unfamiliar in this world, especially when you consider the concept of courtly love that Boccaccio portrays in many of the tales. Courtly love was primarily a literary "love game" with well-articulated rules, like "When made public, love never endures" and "No one can be bound by a double love." It involved high-born characters and a lady who was usually unobtainable and had to be admired from afar. The gentleman's supposed to do honorable deeds in his lady's name, suffer in silence and experience passion so intense that it makes him physically ill.
Filostrato's literary predecessor Troilus was the perfect courtly lover of the Middle Ages, especially when suffering from the required lovesickness and having his heart broken so completely that he loses the will to live. That's Filostrato's kind of guy.
Nobody Loves Me, Everybody Hates Me...
For some scholars, Filostrato represents the Spirit part of the soul in the classical Greek tripartite scheme, possibly because of his heightened emotions concerning erotic love. Others believe he embodies anger, because of the betrayal by his girl. Either way, it makes him a pretty unpleasant person to spend time with.
Because his suffering's so overwhelming, it doesn't leave room for the feelings of happy companionship that the group's after. Filostrato obsesses and indulges his misery, which makes him a pretty inconsiderate king. At the end of Day Four, after the crew's suffered from a whole day of depressing stories and is waiting for him to sing, Fiammetta calls him on it and tells him to sing his sad song right now so no other days will be ruined. Without the help of Fiammetta and Dioneo (who refuses to participate in the sob-fest and tells a funny story), Filostrato's reign would likely have been a complete disaster. To his credit, though, he acknowledges his gloomy self-pity and apologizes for forcing his depressing theme on the rest of the group.
Filostrato's Stories
Filostrato tells the following tales:
Bergamino and Cangrande (I.7)
Rinaldo d'Este and the Widow (II.2)
Masetto da Lamporecchio (III.1)
The Eaten Heart (IV.9)
Caterina and the Nightingale (V.4)
Madonna Filippa (VI.7)
Peronella (VII.2)
The Judge of the Marches (VIII.5)
Pregnant Calandrino (IX.3)
Nathan and Mithridanes (X.3)