SOURCE: Greene, Charles Richard. “A Note on the Authorship of Shamela.” Modern Language Notes 59, no. 8 (December 1944): 571.

In the following essay, Greene notes similarities between a passage in Shamela and a passage in Fielding's translation of a work by Moliére, and suggests that this is evidence for Fielding's authorship of the novel.

As a contribution to the vexed and as yet incompletely settled question of the authorship of Shamela (1741) may I offer the following parallel passage in Fielding's translation of Molière's Le Médecin malgré lui as The Mock Doctor: or, The Dumb Lady Cur'd (1732). It occurs in an added plot scene which is not found in Molière's original.

Dorcas is exulting over the fact that she is at last to be revenged upon her husband for the frequent beatings he has been administering to her:

I don't remember my Heart has gone so pit-a-pat with...