Messer Ricciardo di Chinzica

Messer Ricciardo is a respected jurist of Pisa whose learning has done nothing to prepare him for the appetites of a young wife, and he approaches the marriage as though it were a case to be argued and won. His vanity about his own cleverness blinds him to the obvious, and his attempts to regulate desire by rule and calendar become the setup for his own cuckolding. He stands among the Decameron's gallery of husbands whose authority rests on parchment rather than performance, and his story asks what happens when the law meets the body.