Little Lucrezia

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 399, 14 February 1947, Page 10

Little Lucrezia

S far as I could tell from ‘the voices, "Famous Women: Lucrezia Borgia" from 3YA _ recently, was an Australian programme, but I doubt whether the producer or script-writer had read very. painstakingly for their h story degrees. They were sympathetic towards Litthe Lucrezia, a girl who had not had the best of luck, losing a husband before she was 20. Some fellows of the baser sort had hinted that she was responsible for putting him away, but of course it wes her brother Cesare, a practising toxicologist. Lucrezia picked up the Duke of Ferrara after church one day, asked him back to the castle to take pot luck, and later martied him. Ferrara wanted to go back to his own duchy, but Cesare, hearing of this, said to his sister, "Do you think I'll let h'm take you away from me?" "Why, Cesare!" said Lucrezia. Cesare pulled himself together, acted very suave and arranged a banquet. At the banquet he charged Ferrara’s glass and called for a toast to Lucrezia, but the innocent chick switched the glasses when he wasn’t looking, and he was hoist with "his own

potion. Lucrezig and Ferrara lived happ.ly ever after, This is a nice story, with a fine moral, but of course it is not history. Actually Lucrezia Borgia was mixed up in several sordid and fatal intrigues before she married Ferrara, and it is probable that Ferrara poisoned an admirer fairly late in her life. As far as I know Cesare did not try to poison Ferrara as related in this radio fable, and Cesare himself did not die until years later, when he was killed in a skirmish in France, A nice story, but te echo Professor Sinclaire, why drag in Lucrezia Borgia?