SANCHO

PLOT It is vital that the Duchess of Mantua marries; otherwise the King of Spain will assert his interest in the succession. But the Duchess has turned away three foreign princes proposed by her courtiers, most recently Foscari, who left Mantua annoyed. She declares that she will choose a husband from her own court, which puts the courtiers into a competitive frenzy of ambition. In this they are each abetted by a Florentine visitor to the court, Giotto. Giotto tells Comaccio that the Duchess is interested in his foolish nephew, de Pazzi. At Comaccio’s request, Giotto gives de Pazzi advice on wooing technique designed to make him appear undesirable: he is to talk unchastely and dispraise the other men and women of the court. He composes an offensive poem for the Duchess, but she finds it funny and shows de Pazzi greater favour than before. Comaccio asks Giotto to get de Pazzi out of the way for good, by murdering him; Giotto persuades him to go into hiding until after the marriage is decided. The soldier Orseollo is misled into thinking he is the chosen suitor, and starts to regret his public displays of misogyny. Even after his U-turn, Giotto tells him there is a slight problem: his former attitudes could be taken as evidence of his impotence, perhaps the result of a battlefield injury; so Orseollo attempts to secure his reputation as a stud by revealing the prodigious extent of his secret whoring. Old Contarini regrets his recent marriage to a young wife, which puts him out of the running; so he asks her to commit suicide. When she refuses, he procures Giotto to commit adultery with her in order to provide grounds for divorce. A messenger arrives with the news that the Duchess’s decision is to be announced that night, before the divorce can go through, so Contarini asks Giotto to kill his wife instead, and quickly. When the courtiers gather to hear the Duchess’s decision, de Pazzi denounces Giotto as a traitor for seeking to kill him, the next Duke. He is disabused of his expectations, and the Duchess exposes the corruption and hypocrisy of each of her ambitious courtiers. Her choice is Giotto, who is really Foscari in disguise: the whole exercise has been a ruse to enable him to find out the truth about his new court. All are forgiven.