What's a Montjoy?

The Song of Roland. Translated by Dorothy L. Sayers. Penguin Books, 1957.

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Shakespeare, William. King Henry V. Ed. T. W. Craik. Arden Shakespeare. Third Series. Methuen Drama, 1995.

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In my seemingly never-ending quest to read everything Dorothy L. Sayers ever wrote, I finally came to her marvelous translation of the anonymous Song of Roland, an epic poem in Old French from around the eleventh century.

The story is thrilling and the history of the events it relays is fascinating.  And Sayers' notes and translation are astonishing.

It's also very funny at times. The last line of a given stanza is often a corporate response, and I think they're mostly hilarious. Observe:

Quoth Blancandrin . . . .

"Better their heads should fall into their laps

Than that fair Spain should fall from out our hands,

And we should suffer grave losses and mishap."

The Paynims say: "There is some truth in that."  [Stanza 4, page 53]

And . . .

"If you contrive this treaty to arrange,

Of gold and silver I'll give you goodly weight,

And lands and fiefs as much as heart can crave."

The Paynims answer: "That will be ample pay."  [Stanza 5, pages 53–54]

Or the last line sometimes has a quick understatement / summary of action, as when a number of knights (in essence) are making proposals to Marsilion and we learn who gets the glove of approval:

"I'll set Spain free, unloosing of her bonds

From Gate of Spain to Durstant and beyond.

Charles will lose heart, the French will yield anon,

You shall be quit of wars your whole life long."

He gets the glove from King Marsilion. [Stanza 69, pages 85–86]

In addition, the used copy I read was annotated, emended, and illustrated by (most likely) a slightly-bored high school student. The most amusing change Eric made (his name is on the flyleaf) was changing the name of Duke Naimon to "Duke Nukem."

But I haven't gotten to the Shakespeare connection (which is, I admit, oblique). As the French go into battle, they often cry "Mountjoy!" or "Mountjoy St. Dennis!" and it reminded me of the only Mountjoy I knew: Montjoy, The French Herald from Shakespeare's Henry V. Here's where I learned what the word meant around the year 1100:

That seems to be in line with the word when it finally entered English as montjoy in 1653 (according to the OED):

What, then, does Shakespeare mean by Montjoy? Every time I had read Henry V before reading Song of Roland, I had assumed that it was a name: "Dr. Jones? Have you met Mr. and Mrs. Montjoy yet?" 

With my mind opened to other possibilities, I checked the notes to the Arden edition. In the "List of Roles," I learned that Montjoy's "name is titular, not personal." And in Act III, scene vi, I found this note:

I find that fascinating! It's also fascinating to note that Kenneth Branagh's film version of Henry V replaces the "Ambassador" who brings Henry tennis balls in Act I with the Montjoy who first appears in Act II of Shakespeare's play.

But that's not all! Dorothy L. Sayers herself brings Shakespeare in with a note to Stanza 114:

Naturally, we now need to head over to Venus and Adonis (from William Shakespeare, The Poems, ed. F. T. Prince (Arden Shakespeare, 2000):

The note to lines 295–98 is priceless. It also takes us to Virgil's Georgics.

But I'm going to call it a day, leaving that as an exercise to the reader.

In short, ain't it marvelous what we can learn from Shakespeare and how what we learn elsewhere can take us back to Shakespeare?

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