1.Gualtieri was not one who necessarily believed in marriages a whole lot. He wanted a girl that would basically change her whole ways for him and did not believe that this kind of girl existed (which I’m pretty sure they don’t). Anyway, he ends up marrying a girl named Griselda even though she seemed to me like she would be the least likely of all the candidates for Gualtieri. The test in the story was when Gualtieri was trying to make his point that women are not right for getting married to and treated Griselda like crap for a long time to try and get her to break. Griselda never did break but rather acted very obediently and well mannered to her husband. Basically all of this testing was for Gualtieri to test her limits of being a wife and to try and prove his point that women are not worth marrying.
2. I think that both of the stories, One Thousand and One Nights and Decameron, were meant to allow readers to pass some time and still allow somehow throw in a hidden lesson into the reading. In One Thousand and One Nights Sharazad is able to keep the king from killing the young women and is able to gain his trust. In Decameron, it is kind of a different story because it does not try to really accomplish anything it just lets the readers mind wander. I think the bridge between the tale and the teller is very important because I think in stories such as these the teller has to find a way to keep the reader intrigued while also throwing in a lesson through a metaphor usually.
3.The nightingale symbolizes a love that could never be. At night the wife would sneak of bed with her husband to go see her knight. When confronted why she left, she would say that she liked listening to the nightingales song. The husband, being very weary of the situation, had the nightingale killed so that the lady would not have a reason to leave anymore. After it was killed the lady gave the nightingale corpse to her knight to tell him that she cannot see him anymore. I think that this symbolizes the meaning of karma and how they apply to morals. The fact that she was cheating on her husband basically and lying about it, makes it very ironic when she gives the dead bird to her behind the scenes boyfriend.
I agree that there was some irony in the bird corps exchange, it seemed to me that it was strange how the knight understood what it meant. I was surprised they would not have attempted another route of communicating with each-other, because if they would call it quits after one bird was killed, I wonder how much their relationship really meant.