Abstract: Comparing Les Plaisantes idées du Sieur Mistanguet (1615) with Rabelais’s works amounts to noticing what is specific to the prologues, and how they resonate strongly with one another since they consist of identifiable borrowings and replicate Rabelais’s lavish copia, far exceeding the pithiness of that of his fellow stage counterparts (Buscambrille and Tabarin). Les Plaisantes idées thus invites a reassessment of Mistanguet at the origin of the burlesque through the interplay between adumbratio and æmulatio.
