Antonio Bordega, a deformed notary and his wife and baby are living happily together. Malatesta, a dissolute young noble, falls in love with Antonio’s wife and carries her off to his palace. She stabs herself. They carry the body out into the street and leave it there. Antonio finds her. As she is dying she tells him that it was Malatesta who carried her off. Antonio swears revenge and taking his baby leaves the town. Fifteen Years Later. Antonio has become the Duke’s Jester. In this disguise he is watching Malatesta who has married a very young wife. The Jester urges the Duke to carry off Malatesta’s wife for his own secret revenge, but one of the Duke’s followers has seen the Jester’s daughter and comes to the Duke and tells him of her beauty. The Duke and his follower watch the meeting between the Jester and his daughter and the Duke falls in love with her and determines to carry her off. The poet, Dell Aquilla, overhears this and determines to save the Jester’s daughter. He carries her to the house of Malatesta for safety, unknown to the Jester. The Duke and his followers with masks and cloaks and a ladder start to carry off the Jester’s daughter from the house of Malatesta. The Jester, not knowing, and believing the one that they are going to carry off is Malatesta’s wife, gloats over his revenge. The Jester’s daughter, wrapped up in a huge cloak, is carried away and placed in an underground hall of the Duke’s palace. The Duke proposes to have a banquet for the fair lady. The Jester brings the Duke’s wife to listen at the door so that she see the Duke is false to her. The Duchess, in a jealous rage, listens, hears a woman’s voice and poisons the wine that is being taken into the banquet. When Malatesta appears, the Jester scoffs at him, tells hint that his wife is inside with the Duke. Malatesta strikes him and says, “My wife is here.” The Duchess tells the Jester that Malatesta lies, “Let him bring his wife here.” Malatesta brings in his young wife. The Duchess starts, the Jester is appalled. They laugh him to scorn and leave. The Jester then tries to find out who it is that is in the loom with the Duke. Dell Aquilla, the poet, hastily comes in. tells the Jester he has been searching for him to tell him that he has saved his daughter: that he carried her to the house of Malatesta where she slept in safety that night. The Jester realizes the frightful mistake: that it is his own daughter they carried off: that the wine has been poisoned and she is in that room with the Duke, possibly dead. They force the doors and come into the banquet hall. The duke lies poisoned, dead; the Jester’s daughter is in a faint. They ask, “Who poisoned the wine?” The Jester says, “It was I.” The nobles run their swords through him and he falls at the feet of his daughter who recovers and tells him of her safety, and she is placed in the arms of her lover, Dell Aquilla. Malatest comes on, the dying Jester tells Malatesta that 15 years before he stole his wife and in revenge he tried to make the Duke steal Malatesta’s wife. He has usurped Heaven’s vengeance and only had a Fool’s revenge, which recoiled on his own head, and he dies.