Isabella

Or the Pot of Basil

A Story from Boccaccio

By John Keats

Introduction by Margaret Robertson

Narrated by Denis Daly

Isabella, or the Pot of Basil (1818) is a poetic retelling of a story from The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio.

The poem relates the sad fate of two victims of youthful love. The aristocratic and nubile Isabella is intended for marriage to an eligible suitor but falls in love with the plebeian Lorenzo. Isabella's brothers murder Lorenzo and bury his body, the location of which is revealed to Isabella by a ghost. She exhumes the body and re-inters the head in a pot of basil.