Social Etiquette This society, at all events at the beginning of the sixteenth century, was a matter of art; and had, and rested on, tacit or avowed rules of good sense and propriety, which are the exact reverse of all mere etiquette.In less polished circles, where society took the form of a permanent corporation, we meet with a system of formal rules and a prescribed mode of entrance, as was the case with those wild sets of Florentine artists of whom Vasari tells us that they were capable of giving representations of the best comedies of the day.In the easier intercourse of society it was not unusual to select some distinguished lady as president, whose word was law for the evening.
Everybody knows the introduction to Boccaccio's 'Decameron,' and looks on the presidency of Pampinea as a graceful fiction.That it was so in this particular case is a matter of course; but the fiction was nevertheless based on a practice which often occurred in reality.