The Review of English Studies Advance Access published online on April 28, 2009
The Review of English Studies, doi:10.1093/res/hgp030
© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press 2009; all rights reserved
A Midsummer Night's Dream and La Diane of Nicolas De Montreux
Université François-Rabelais, Tours/
Centre d'Études Supérieures de la Renaissance–CNRS
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Abstract |
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This article proposes the indebtedness of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595–96) to La Diane, a pastoral comedy by Nicholas de Montreux published in a single edition of 1594 (of which very few copies survive) and hitherto ignored by historians of English literature. La Diane is a work of considerable originality, although it is loosely based on Jorge de Montemayor's Diana and generally influenced by Italian dramatic models. Its serio-comic depiction of romantic love through a chaîne amoureuse presents a number of points of contact with Shakespeare's comedy, including a highly distinctive one that seems to clinch the case for direct borrowing: a heroine surprises with her conviction that the man for whom she has pined, but who loved another, is mocking her when he declares his sudden passion for her. Beyond this, Montreux's innovative staging of familiar pastoral devices bears a resemblance to Shakespeare's in its exploitation of magical intervention, abrupt reversal, absurd juxtapositions and exaggerated contrasts in tone and attitude, sometimes expressed in closely similar terms. There is likewise a final return from chaos to order, with marriages in prospect for the reconciled lovers. Intertextual analysis, then, supports a case not only for Shakespeare's inclusion of La Diane among the material on which he drew, but also for a large component of bricolage in his compositional method.