How to Get It Off Your Chest

The one hundred stories which make up Giovanni Boccaccio’s humane and comic masterpiece come from all over the world. This Renaissance work is considered a landmark in the history of literature.

The stories are vividly reset by Boccaccio among the flourishing merchant classes in the cities of fourteenth-century Italy. But their witty, satirical, bawdy voice sounds utterly modern, and their subjects - love, fate, sex, religion, morality - are universal.

“The best ways to take revenge.”

When Zeppa discovers his wife with his best friend, he's keen to make a proportionate response.

Giovanni .... Jude Akuwudike
Zeppa ..... Ian Conningham
Spinelloccio ..... Shaun Mason
Mrs Z ..... Hannah Genesius
Mrs S ..... Bettrys Jones

Adapted by Robin Brooks
Music arranged and performed by Robert Hollingworth and Paula Chateauneuf
Lyric translations by Silvia Reseghetti
Script consultant: Guyda Armstrong
Produced and directed by Jonquil Panting

First broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in December 2014.