Matteo Bandello

Matteo Bandello , 1485-1561, Italian storywriter, a Dominican priest. He is famous for his novellas, short tales in imitation of Boccaccio, that provided themes for several 17th-century plays. Often coarse, they have considerable vitality and occasional tragic force. His version of an earlier Romeo and Juliet is probably the source of Shakespeare's play. An edition of his novellas was translated into English by Sir Geoffrey Fenton in 1567 and reprinted in 1924.

Bandello, Matteo (1485–1561), Italian short story writer, many of whose tales were translated by Belleforest into French (1564–82); 13 of these French versions were rendered into English by Geoffrey Fenton in his Certaine Tragicall Discourses (1567). Painter's Palace of Pleasure includes 25 of Bandello's tales, nine translated from the Italian and sixteen from Belleforest. Turberville included two in his Tragical Tales (1576). Bandello is the source of plots for many English plays, including Much Ado about Nothing, Twelfth Night, and The Duchess of Malfi.