Translated from his Commentary on the Passage.
"You must know, that this lady, Madonna Francesca, was daughter of Messer Guido the Elder, lord of Ravenna and of Cervia, and that a long and grievous war having been waged between him and the lords Malatesta of Rimini, a treaty of peace by certain mediators was at length concluded between them; the which, to the end that it might be the more firmly established, it pleased both parties to desire to fortify by relationship; and the matter of this relationship was so discoursed, that the said Messer Guido agreed to give his young and fair daughter in marriage to Gianciotto, the son of Messer Malatesta. Now, this being made known to certain of the friends of Messer Guido, one of them said to him, 'Take care what you do; for if you contrive not matters discreetly, such relationship will beget scandal. You know what manner of person your daughter is, and of how lofty a spirit; and if she see Gianciotto before the bond is tied, neither you nor any one else will have power to persuade her to marry him; therefore, if it so please you, it seems to me that it would be good to conduct the matter thus: namely, that Gianciotto should not come hither himself to marry her, but that a brother of his should come and espouse her in his name.'
"Gianciotto was a man of great spirit, and hoped, after his father's death, to become lord of Rimini; in the contemplation of which event, albeit he was rude in appearance and a cripple, Messer Guido desired him for a son-in-law above any one of his brothers. Discerning, therefore, the reasonableness of what his friend counselled, he secretly disposed matters according to his device; and a day being appointed, Polo, a brother of Gianciotto, came to Ravenna with full authority to espouse Madonna Francesca. Polo was a handsome man, very pleasant, and of a courteous breeding; and passing with other gentlemen over the court-yard of the palace of Messer Guido, a damsel who knew him pointed him out to Madonna Francesca through an opening in the casement, saying, 'That is he that is to be your husband;' and so indeed the poor lady believed, and incontinently placed in him her whole affection; and the ceremony of the marriage having been thus brought about, and the lady conveyed to Rimini, she became not aware of the deceit till the morning ensuing the marriage, when she beheld Gianciotto rise from her side; the which discovery moved her to such disdain, that she became not a whit the less rooted in her love for Polo. Nevertheless, that it grew to be unlawful I never heard, except in what is written by this author (Dante), and possibly it might so have become; albeit I take what he says to have been an invention framed on the possibility, rather than any thing which he knew of his own knowledge. Be this as it may, Polo and Madonna Francesca living in the same house, and Gianciotto being gone into a certain neighbouring district as governor, they fell into great companionship with one another, suspecting nothing; but a servant of Gianciotto's noting it, went to his master and told him how matters looked; with the which Gianciotto being fiercely moved, secretly returned to Rimini; and seeing Polo enter the room of Madonna Francesca the while he himself was arriving, went straight to the door, and finding it locked inside, called to his lady to come out; for, Madonna Francesca and Polo having descried him, Polo thought to escape suddenly through an opening in the wall, by means of which there was a descent into another room; and therefore, thinking to conceal his fault either wholly or in part, he threw himself into the opening, telling the lady to go and open the door. But his hope did not turn out as he expected; for the hem of a mantle which he had on caught upon a nail, and the lady opening the door meantime, in the belief that all would be well by reason of Polo's not being there, Gianciotto caught sight of Polo as he was detained by the hem of the mantle, and straightway ran with his dagger in his hand to kill him; whereupon the lady, to prevent it, ran between them; but Gianciotto having lifted the dagger, and put the whole force of his arm into the blow, there came to pass what he had not desired—namely, that he struck the dagger into the bosom of the lady before it could reach Polo; by which accident, being as one who had loved the lady better than himself, he withdrew the dagger, and again struck at Polo, and slew him; and so leaving them both dead, he hastily went his way and betook him to his wonted affairs; and the next morning the two lovers, with many tears, were buried together in the same grave."
The reader of this account will have observed, that while Dante assumes the guilt of all parties, and puts them into the infernal regions, the good-natured Boccaccio is for doubting it, and consequently for sending them all to heaven. He will ignore as much of the business as a gentleman can; boldly doubts any guilt in the case; says nothing of the circumstance of the book; and affirms that the husband loved his wife, and was miserable at having slain her. There is, however, one negative point in common between the two narrators; they both say nothing of certain particulars connected with the date of Francesca's marriage, and not a little qualifying the first romantic look of the story.
Now, it is the absence of these particulars, combined with the tradition of the father's artifice (omitted perhaps by Dante out of personal favour), and with that of the husband's ferocity of character (the belief in which Boccaccio did not succeed in displacing), that has left the prevailing impression on the minds of posterity, which is this:—that Francesca was beguiled by her father into the marriage with the deformed and unamiable Giovanni, and that the unconscious medium of the artifice was the amiable and handsome Paulo; that one or both of the victims of the artifice fell in love with the other; that their intercourse, whatever it was, took place not long after the marriage; and that when Paulo and Francesca were slain in consequence, they were young lovers, with no other ties to the world.
It is not pleasant in general to dispel the illusions of romance, though Dante's will bear the operation with less hurt to a reader's feelings than most; and I suspect, that if nine out of ten of all the implied conclusions of other narratives in his poem could be compared with the facts, he would be found to be one of the greatest of romancers in a new and not very desirable sense, however excusable he may have been in his party-prejudice. But a romance may be displaced, only to substitute perhaps matters of fact more really touching, by reason of their greater probability. The following is the whole of what modern inquirers have ascertained respecting Paulo and Francesca. Future enlargers on the story may suppress what they please, as Dante did; but if any one of them, like the writer of the present remarks, is anxious to speak nothing but the truth, I advise him (especially if he is for troubling himself with making changes in his story) not to think that he has seen all the authorities on the subject, or even remembered all he has seen, until he has searched every corner of his library and his memory. All the poems hitherto written upon this popular subject are indeed only to be regarded as so many probable pieces of fancy, that of Dante himself included.
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THE ONLY PARTICULARS HITHERTO REALLY ASCERTAINED RESPECTING THE HISTORY OF PAULO AND FRANCESCA.
Francesca was daughter of Guido Novello da Polenta, lord of Ravenna.
She was married to Giovanni, surnamed the Lame, one of the sons of
Malatesta da Verrucchio, lord of Rimini.