the clerk’s tale

Walter decides to test his wife’s fidelity and absolute obedience. To test her, in two distinct moments of the story, there was the murder of both children: the woman remains impassive, and both times she submits to the will of her husband, who is pleasantly surprised. Being not quite satisfied, the king submits his wife to a third trial, in which he pretends to repudiate her in favor of a richer and younger woman, again the young woman agrees to the will of her husband. Griselda is then stripped again and covered only by a rag is driven from the palace. The girl then returns to the village at her father’s house. Shortly after Griselda is summoned back to the palace by the Marquis to serve as a servant and prepare the bridal thalamus to the new bride who would arrive the same day

Finally, when the “new wife” shows up at the royal palace, the king unmasks the staging: he declares to Griselda, the real wife, his own love, and confesses to her that the new “bride” others are but their first daughter, which he had pretended to kill but that instead to she was secretly sent to Bologna by her sister and that the page that accompanied her was none other than their son. The story ends with Griselda’s new dress in majestic clothes.