SOURCE: “Music as Dramatic Device in the Secular Theater of Marguerite de Navarre,” in Renaissance Drama, new series VII, edited by Joel H. Kaplan, Northwestern University Press, 1976, pp. 193-217.

In the following essay, Auld claims that the significance of Marguerite de Navarre's plays lies in part with her innovative dramatization of personal beliefs, and her use of music to lend emotional force to the abstract religious ideas she wishes to convey.

Among the diverse literary production of Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, the seven dramatic poems grouped together as the Théâtre profane bear testimony to the flexibility and range of her spirit.¹ A learned lady in the best sense, she may also be considered the first modern French poet, the first—even before Ronsard—to entrust to her verses, however clumsily, her intimate personal sentiments, her fears, her sufferings, her rare joys, her devotion to those about her...