ABSTRACT
Date and publication. Written July–August 1676. The date of MF has been much debated, but was definitively established by David M. Vieth in Evidence in Literary Scholarship, edited by René Wellek and Alvaro Ribiero (1979) 63–87. Vieth shows that MF alludes to a number of Shadwell’s works up to and including the printed text of The Virtuoso (advertised in the London Gazette 3–6 July 1676), but none thereafter; the reference to Ogilby (l. 174), who died on 4 September 1676, implies that he is still alive; and there are probable borrowings from MF by Settle in the Preface to Ibrahim (licensed 4 May 1676; SR 7 July; TC November). George McFadden (PQ xliii (1964) 55–72) suggested that D. borrowed from Settle’s Preface, and that MF was conceived over a period of several years, after the controversy over Settle’s Empress of Morocco (1673); this is unlikely, for MF is richly specific to Shadwell and to 1676, as Vieth shows.
