boccacci

Updated: May 11, 2025

I may not end with one of those graceful admonitions beloved of Messer Boccacci to whom in my jester's days I owed so much. Not mine is it to say with him "Wherefore, gentle ladies" or "noble sirs beware of this, avoid that other thing."

Rafael Sabatini - The Shame of Motley: being the memoir of certain transactions in the life of Lazzaro Biancomonte, of Biancomonte, sometime fool of the court of Pesaro

I found a company of gentlemen in the common-room, who upon espying my motley when I had thrown off my sodden cloak and hat pressed me, willy-nilly, into amusing them. And so I spent the night at my Fool's trade, giving them drolleries from the works of Boccacci and Sacchetti the horn-books of all jesters.

Rafael Sabatini - The Shame of Motley: being the memoir of certain transactions in the life of Lazzaro Biancomonte, of Biancomonte, sometime fool of the court of Pesaro

Beginning with quip and jest and paradox, aimed now at him, now at the officer who had remained to keep him company in his cups, now at the servants who ministered to him, now at the guards standing at attention, I passed on later to play the part of narrator, and I delighted his foul and prurient mind with the story of Andreuccio da Perugia and another of the more licentious tales of Messer Giovanni Boccacci.

Rafael Sabatini - The Shame of Motley: being the memoir of certain transactions in the life of Lazzaro Biancomonte, of Biancomonte, sometime fool of the court of Pesaro