Original scientific paper
FALSTAFF IN ZADAR 1575
Slobodan Prosperov Novak
Abstract
The english dramatist Anthony Munday, some four years older than Shakespeare, published his text Fedele and Fortunato. Two Italian Gentlemen in 1585, a few years before Shakespeare wrote his earliest plays. Thus Shakespeare could have derived motifs from the Munday drama in a lot of his texts, specially in The Two Gentlemen from Verona, Cymbeline and in Much Ado About Nothing but he was particularly fascinated with the Munday character of Crackstone. Shakespeare based on this typical miles gloriosus his famous Falstaff who appeared first in Henry IV, Henry V and than in the comedy Merry Wives of Windsor staged for Queen Elisabeth. The fact is that Munday's Crackston, alias Falstaff, is a character that was completely imitated from the Italian play Il Fedele written by Luigi Pasqualigi for the carnival of Zadar in 1575 and published in Venice a year after. So the character of Falstaff for the first time appeared in Zadar with the name of Frangipietra, than was transferred in Munday's Crackston and finally became Shakespeare's Falstaff. The author concludes the paper maintaining that the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi was right when he considered Falstaff to be a Mediterranean type.
Keywords
Anthony Munday; Alvise Pasqualigo; drama; Falstaff; William Shakespeare; Zadar
Hrčak ID:
19236
URI
Publication date:
11.1.2008.
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