William Shakespeare and John Fowles – a seemingly unusual association that might prompt the reader to pose the following question: ‘What does the one have to do with the other? What do they have in common? After all, Shakespeare lived no less than four hundred years before Fowles!’ Surprising as it may seem, they do interrelate. The focus of the present paper is to analyse the different auctorial and / or narratological devices applied by Fowles in his celebrated novel The Magus, in order to reconsider and re-actualize Shakespearean / Renaissance values and traditions. The present research also aims to analyse the extent to which Fowles successfully re-enacts Shakespeare for the 21^st century, postmodern reader, who battles the same existential inquiries as Shakespeare’s Renaissance characters.

Keywords: Re-enactment, Intertextuality, Mise-en-abime, Quid-pro-quo, Initiation.