Merry Nights of Straparola, The

This collection of panurgic stories is a veritable handbook on amorous intrigue but it is vastly more facetious than the Heptameron or the Decameron. Its contents include Trust Not a Friend, The Way of All Wives, The Priest Who Would Not Be Castrated, A Mistake in the Dark, The Revenge Indelicate, Cuckolds Will Be Cuckolds, Adultery Interrupted, Tables Turned Upon Wives, and The Hermaphrodite, amongst others.The first part of the Merry Nights was published in Venice in 1550 and the second part in 1553. Besides this work only one other of Straparola's is known to exist - a collection of sonnets and other poems published in Venice in 1508.