Fib.—Nymphidia, Drayton. One of the fairy attendants to Queen Mab.
Fidele (fi-dē´lē, or fi-dāl´).—Subject of an elegy by Collins.
Fidelie.—Cymbeline, Shakespeare. The name assumed by Imogen, when, attired in boy’s clothes, she started for Milford Haven to meet her husband Posthumus.
Fidessa.—Faërie Queene, Spenser. The companion of Sansfoy; but when the Red-cross Knight slew that “faithless Saracen,” Fidessa turned out to be Duessa, the daughter of Falsehood and Shame. See “Duessa.”
Figaro (fē´gä-rō).—A character introduced by Beaumarchais in his plays Le Barbier de Seville, Le Mariage de Figaro, and La Mère Coupable, used later by Mozart, Paisiello, and Rossini in operas. In the Barbier he is a barber; in the Mariage he is a valet. In both he is gay, lively, and courageous; his stratagems are always original, his lies witty, and his shrewdness proverbial. In the Mère Coupable he has become virtuous and has lost his nerve. He also appears in Holcroft’s Follies of a Day, taken from Beaumarchais’ Mariage de Figaro.
Finetta (fi-net´tä).—The Cinder Girl. A fairy tale by the Comtesse d’Aulnoy. This is merely the old tale of Cinderella slightly altered.
Fingal (fing´gal).—A mythical hero, whose name occurs in Gaelic ballads and traditions, and in Macpherson’s Poems of Ossian.
Fleance (flē´ans).—A son of Banquo, in Shakespeare’s tragedy of Macbeth. The legend relates that after the assassination of his father he escaped to Wales, where he married the daughter of the reigning prince, and had a son named Walter. This Walter afterward became lord high steward of Scotland, and called himself Walter the Steward. From him proceeded in a direct line the Stuarts of Scotland, a royal line which gave James VI. of Scotland, James I. of England. This myth has been seriously accepted by some as fact.
Fledgeby.—Our Mutual Friend, Dickens. An overreaching, cowardly sneak who pretends to do a decent business under the trade name of Pubsey & Co.
Florentius.—A knight whose story is related in the first book of Gower’s Confessio Amantis. He bound himself to marry a deformed hag, provided she taught him the solution of a riddle on which his life depended.