ABSTRACT
The novelists and comic writers give the impression that love meant to the Italian the gratification of sensual passion by means of audacity, knavery, treachery and the shabbiest bad-faith. The quick hot blood that bounded through the veins of Juliet and Romeo leaps to a passion that is Italian love at its purest and best; it is love for the sake of love; a moment of high emotion is worth the world and life. In the early part of the fifteenth century, St. Bernardino accuses women of being addicted to flirtation. Perhaps the reason why abduction was so rife in Genoa was that the ladies there were far from discreet. Under the cover of the courtly service of love a good deal of flirtation and also of intrigue went on. The wrath of Pandolfo, a defeated lover who flourished at the end of the fifteenth century, is characteristic of lawless Romagna, where weak princelets were unable to secure strong government.
