Shakespeare Statistics

Autorship of Fedele and Fortunio

BRD-Flagge auf deutsch All data were generated witht R Stylo, see:

There are two names in the secondary literature that are associated with Fedele and Fortunio. J. Payne Collier named Anthony Munday in 1831, relying on the initials A.M. of his Collier-Huntington copy, with which the dedication of the 1585 quarto was signed. Richard Hosley, who wrote an essay entitled "The Authorship of Fedele and Fortunio" in 1967, names a number of other scholars who supported this attribution: Thomas Marc Parrott (1915), W.J. Lawrence (1920), M. St. Clare Byrne (1920), Celeste Turner (1928) and I.A. Shapiro (1961) (Hosley, p. 315-316). However, there were also dissenting voices, such as that of Walter W. Greg, who considered the dedication with the initials A.M. to be another forgery by Collier, as it was not included in the quarto (Devonshire-Folger copy) available to him, and he recognised documents by Charles Crawford in favour of George Chapman as being of higher quality. Frederick S. Boas then discovered the aforementioned dedication in another copy (Mostyn-Folger copy) in 1919, but with the initials M.A. instead of A.M. and the text was dedicated to Master M.R., Esquire. Greg questioned the inference that M.A. or A.M. referred to the author of Fedele and Fortunio, citing an argument made by Chambers in his work The Elizabethan Stage, namely that an author would not praise his own work in a dedication, as the epistle explained:
I commende to your freendly viewe this prettie Conceit, as well for the invention, as the delicate conveiance thereof: not doubting but you will so esteeme thereof, as it doth very well deserve, and I hartely desire (Chambers, vol. I, p.14, zitiert nach Hosley, S. 319).
But even this assessment was surpassed by a counter-argument arising from the interpretation of the word "conveyance". This meant the original design by Pasqualigo, entirely in the sense of the OED as "disposition of material." Hosley also finds some arguments in favour of Munday. In terms of style measurements, the manner of his spelling should be mentioned, as can be found in John a Kent and John a Cumber, but also in Sir Thomas More. Hosley cites research by Miss Byrne, who lists seventeen typical ways of writing for Munday: „abooue, doouve, looue, mooue, prooue, affoord, boord, swoord, woord, woork, woorship, woorth, foorth, doone, doost, dooth and freend.“ (Hosley, S. 323).



Here, however, the lowest delta values point to Chapman instead of Munday. Chapman comes also into play through the assessment of Crawford, who perused England's Parnassus by Robert Allot from 1600 and emphasised the close friendship between Allot and Chapman. Chapman not only showed Allot papers from Marlowe's estate to complete Hero and Leander, but also entrusted him with his authorship of Two Italian Gentlemen, the alternative title of Fedele and Fortunio (Crawford, p. xxix). .
Compare this evaluation with that in modern spelling and the results of Rolling Classify, PCA and GI.