Marin Držić as Focalized by Hektorović and Mediated by Nalješković

Hektorović’s letter to Vincenco Vanetti is a pastoral narration of a dream which, according to its generic nature per se, holds a special place in the context of the Croatian Early Modern literature. This text receives a special interpretative potential when it is place in the context of turbulent literary relationship between Dubrovnik and Hvar. This is especially visible in the correspondence between Petar Hektorović and Nikola Nalješković, which offers a new context for a problem-oriented interpretation of the comedy A Joke About Stanac (Novela od Stanca) by Marin Držić, as a text which Hektorović quotes, in his own manner, in a letter to Vanetti sent in 1561, which points to close connections with Nalješković’s pastoral theatre. This paper argues that Hektorović’s letter to the Italian doctor, which belongs to those texts of his literary legacy, that remain on the margin of his oeuvre, connects three Croatian writers: Petar Hektorović, Nikola Nalješković, and Marin Držić. The focal point of the paper is the interpretation of A Joke About Stanac by Marin Držić, based on specific premises of new historicism. The interpretation consists of two levels: the first one is used to discuss Držić’s dramatic texts in the function of persiflage of Nalješković, while the second one points to numerous political codes in Držić’s intertextual discourse, and argues for political nature of Držić’s theatre and theatrical nature of Držić’s explicitly political text