Ah, love. That indescribable feeling of warmth and bliss. Something that makes the heart beat faster than the wings of a hummingbird. Joy and happiness on a whole other level. At least, at times. There’s also the agonizing feelings of jealousy, frustration, and confusion — the heart plummeting off the side of a mountain. Plus there’s that pesky fact that the world wasn’t created to deliver the object of our love conveniently into our hands and nurture it forever.
But sometimes things do turn out pretty great. In Gaspar Gil Polo’s Enamoured Diana (1583), there’s little doubt that the shepherds and shepherdesses will get through their grievous circumstances — but that’s part of what makes it fun. We are spectators to their messy, up and down affairs, seated eagerly on the sidelines to see how it all transpires. And there are nuggets of insights about the nature of love, as these bagpipe-playing, Cupid-stricken pastoral folk summon up expressions of delight and dejection from the depths of their hearts.
Filled with both prose and verse, Gil Polo’s pastoral romance is a sequel to Jorge Montemayor’s Diana (1559). The latter had intended to further the story himself, but the circumstances for him not getting around to it seem pretty solid — he was killed in a duel. We don’t know the details, but there’s a hint that it might have had something to do with an amorous fracas. At any rate, the lovers in Enamoured Diana avoid any such fate, though they do experience a titanic wave of hurt feelings and torturous chaos.
With any pastoral romance, there’s the risk that things can feel overly artificial or contrived. Some of that is inherent in the genre itself: things are meant to take place in a setting which is not straightforward reality. Nonetheless, some writers handle things more effectively than others. In Gil Polo’s work (and for that matter Montemayor’s as well), some may find the wild series of events a bit too much, and the conversations and romantic dynamics a bit too stilted. These are hindrances that can prevent one from becoming genuinely invested.
All of that is understandable. But there’s much pleasure to be found in Gil Polo’s work if you experience the pastoral world for what it is — because its inhabitants are no dolts, and their reflections on the nature of love are both entertaining and often insightful. And the way Gil Polo weaves his various plots and bevy of lovelorn shepherds is rather impressive.
The plot, though convoluted in places, is quite straightforward. In Enamoured Diana Gil Polo adds some new characters, but keeps the central protagonists of Montemayor’s work, namely Diana and Syrenus. The latter remains in his state of indifference to the former, the woman he was once head over heels for and who shattered his heart when she married while he was away on a long trip. It was in book five of Montemayor’s Diana that the sage and magic-endowed Felicia helped get him out of his rut.
As for Diana, she’s now the one in agony. Her marriage to Delius has her in the pits of despair. As she tells another shepherdess, the union was more of her parents making than it was hers. On top of that, Delius is an incessantly jealous type — and apparently an insensitive oaf, too, as the only time we see him is when he runs after an attractive shepherdess right in front of his wife. Probably a no-no.
So that’s one strand of plot in the giant ball of yarn that is Enamoured Diana. But it’s actually one of the less-intriguing parts of the work, even though it involves two characters we’ve gotten to know since the beginning of Montemayor’s Diana.
Where Gil Polo really gets cooking is in the stories of Ismenia and Montano, and Marcelius and Alcida. The former pair featured in Montemayor’s work, the latter is the creation of Gil Polo. It’s quite fantastic, and the character of Marcelius, in particular, is what glues many of the other narratives together. By the end, things have culminated in an extended scene of merriment, music, humor, and love-themed riddles.
But if you need the help of an appetizer before possibly opening the covers of a 16th-century work about jilted lovers meandering over fields while playing their various instruments and singing songs in a style and diction that is not exactly modern, you’re probably not alone. Here it is.
Marcelius and Alcida, two lovers in Portugal, were so close to getting married and living a happy life together. The king even agreed to bestow their marriage rites. So off they go to Lisbon by sea — Marcelius and Alcida, along with the latter’s father, sister, brother, and a small crew. The future’s looking bright. But a disastrous storm arrives, rocking the boat like mad, and some of the family members don’t fare too well. But that’s not even half the bad news. In the aftermath, traitorous mariners sow false stories among the two lovers and her family, in an attempt to carry out their lusty motives. As a result, the truth is lost, chaos ensues, and a pair of innocent lovers becomes two wounded individuals: one a grief-stricken young man, the other a cynical young lady, the latter who now walks the fields of Spain disguised as a shepherdess so as to get away from the bitterness forever. Ah, love.
There’s lots more of this kind of thing, but the Enamoured Diana is much more than elaborate narrative filled with twists and turns. It’s full of wonderful verse — sonnets, songs, etc., — in which the critical reflections of the lovers are typically expressed in their deepest form. Some of it is mediocre, but there’s plenty which is exquisite, powerful, and worth reading carefully.
Though most of us will never find ourselves despairing over a lost lover due to vicious mariners and an ill-fated sea jaunt down the coast of the Iberian Peninsula, the glees and agonies of the love experience are about as universal as it gets — and so are the pleasures of good storytelling.
Taking in Gil Polo’s Enamoured Diana — especially if consuming it right after Montemayor’s Diana — may leave one feeling a need for respite from the world of love-saturated shepherds. But many of its stories are memorable and relatable — even four hundred plus years after Gil Polo crafted his finely-wrought romance.
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Montemayor, Jorge de 1520?, Judith M. Kennedy, Bartholomew Young, and Gaspar Gil 1516? Polo. 1968. A Critical Edition of Yongs Translation of George of Montemayors Diana and Gil Polos Enamoured Diana. Oxford: Clarendon P.
Spectatio 