Fedele and Fortunio, the Two Italian Gentlemen

Book excerpt: An adaptation of an Italian anti-comedy into an English formulaic-comedy. Fedele and Fortunio is an exercise in adapting Luigi Pasqualigo’s Italian Il Fedele: Comedia del Clarissimo (1576) into an idealized version of British cultural purity. Pasqualigo had rebelled against preceding tropes of Italian comedy by showcasing murderous and wildly promiscuous and unfaithful ladies and gentlemen, and rebellious servants. Perhaps because Percy was desperate in his youth to create extremely proper content that would lead to him being invited to officially write for court revels, Percy re-wrote Pasqualigo’s innovations back into what this comedic plot was initially designed to be. A couple of virginal gentlemen and a couple of virginal ladies exchange love-interests as they realize they cannot attain their initial desires. Their eventual marriages are attained with mischievous help from a pretense-captain Crack-Stone, a spying Pedant who fakes being in love to appear manly, and the scientific and psychologically-manipulating magic of enchantress Medusa. Percy avoided repeating these standard comedic tropes across the rest of his literary career, as he instead explored extremes of tragic infidelity in plays such as Hamlet, or extreme promiscuity in Cuck-Queans’; Fedele and Fortunio’s structural simplicity convinced Percy he had to constantly search for new formulas, vocabularies and foreign cultures to showcase. The introduction explains why the staging of this play is minimalistic to fit with the budgetary and spatial restraints of the accessible London stages. A precise explanation is offered of how scholars have come to the false conclusion that the “M. A.”/ “A. M.” initials indicate this play was written by “Anthony Monday”, and why the Percy attribution is accurate. To show the original divergences of Percy’s Fedele, original and translated excerpts are included from Pasqualigo’s Italian, France’s Latin, and Larivey’s French versions; the plots, characters and linguistics of these versions are compared and analyzed. “A deftly presented, informative, and inherently interesting study, Fedele and Fortunio will prove to be a much appreciated and valued addition to college and university library English Drama and Literary Studies collections in general, and William Percy supplemental studies lists in particular.” —Midwest Book Review, James Cox, May 2022 Exordium Plot and Staging J. Johnson’s Introductions (1909, 1933) Luigi Pasqualigo’s Il Fedele: Comedia del Clarissimo (1576: Italian) Abraham France’s Victoria (1588-92?: Latin: based on Dana Sutton’s Translation) Pierre de Larivey’s Le Fidelle Comedie (1611: French) Text Terms, References, Questions, Exercises