allusions so local. But we must be infinitely grateful to him for the
way in which he portrays a type in a few lines and for the fact that
although they are types they are evidently taken from individuals whom
he had observed and who continue to live for us in his pages. His
gallery of priests is for all time. Frei Paço comes, with his velvet cap
and gilt sword, 'mincing like a very sweet courtier'; Frei Narciso
starves and studies, tinging his complexion to an artificial yellow in
the hope that his hypocritical asceticism may win him a bishopric; the
worldly courtier monk fences and sings and woos; the Lisbon priest, like
his confessor one of Love's train, fares well on rabbits and sausages
and good red wine, even as the portly pleasure-loving Lisbon canons; the
country priest resembles a kite pouncing on chickens; the ambitious
chaplain accepts the most menial tasks, compared with whom the sporting
priest of Beira is at least pleasantly independent; and there are the
luxurious hermit, the dissipated village priest who never prayed the
hours, the inconstant monk who had been carrier and carpenter and now
wishes to be unfrocked in order to join more freely in dance and
pilgrimage, the mad friar Frei Martinho persecuted by dogs and Lisbon
_gamins_, the ambitious preacher who glosses over men's sins. If the
priests fared well in this life the satirists were determined that they
should not be equally fortunate after their death. Vicente's proud
Bishop is to be boiled and roasted, the grasping Archbishop is left
perpetually aboiling, the ambitious Cardinal is to be devoured by dogs
and dragons in a den of lions, while the sensual and simoniacal Pope is
to have his flesh torn with red-hot iron. And we have--although here
Vicente discreetly went to the _Danza de la Muerte_ for his satire--the
vainglorious and tyrannical Emperor, the Duke who had adored himself and
the King who had allowed himself to be adored. There are the careless
hedonistic Count more given to love than to charity or churchgoing, the
_fidalgo de raça_, the haughty _fidalgo de solar_ with a page to carry
his chair, the judge who through his wife accepts bribes from the Jews,
the rhetorical goldsmith, the usurer (_onzeneiro_) with his heart in his
_cassette_ (_arca_)[127]. There too the pert servant-girl, the gossiping
maidservant, the witch busy at night over a hanged man at the
cross-roads, the faithless wife of the India-bound _lisboeta_, the
Lisbon old woman copious in malediction, her genteel daughter Isabel,
the wife who in her husband's absence only leaves her house to go to
church or pilgrimage, the _mal maridada_ imprisoned by her husband, the
peasant bride singing and dancing in skirt of scarlet, the woman
superstitiously devout, the _beata alcouviteira_ who would not have
escaped the Inquisition had she been printed like Aulegrafia in the
seventeenth century, lisping gypsies, the _alcouviteiras_ Anna and
Branca and Brigida, the _curandera_ with her quack remedies, the poor
farmer's daughter brought to be a Court lady and still stained from the
winepress, the old woman desirous of a young husband, the slattern
Catherina Meigengra, the market-woman who plays the _pandero_ in the
market-place, the peasant girls with pretentious names coming down to
market basket on head from the hills, the shrew Branca and the timid
wife Marta, the two irrepressible Lisbon fishwives, the voluble _saloia_
who sells milk well watered and charges cruel prices for her eggs and
other wares, the country priest's greedy 'wife' who eats the baptism
cake and is continually roasting chestnuts, the mystical ingenuous
little shepherdess Margarida who sees visions on the hills, the superior
daughter of the peasant judge who had once spoken to the King, the small
Beira girl keeping ducks, Lediça the affectedly ingenuous daughter of
the Jewish tailor, Cezilia of Beira possessed by a familiar spirit.
Or, again, we have the ceremonious Lisbon lover Lemos, the high-flown
Castilian of fearful presence and a lion's heart, however threadbare his
_capa_[128], the starving gentleman who makes a _tostão_ (= _5d._) last a
month and dines off a turnip and a crust of bread, another--a sixteenth
century Porthos--who imagines himself a _grand seigneur_ and has not a
sixpence to his name but hires a showy suit of clothes to go to the
palace, another who is an intimate at Court (_o mesmo paço_) but who to
satisfy a passing passion has to sell boots and viola and pawn his
saddle, the poor gentleman's servant (_moço_) who sleeps on a chest, or
is rudely awakened at midnight to light the lamp and hold the inkpot
while his master writes down his latest inspiration in his song-book,
the incompetent Lisbon doctors with their stereotyped formulas, the
frivolous persons who are bored by three prayers at church but spend
nights and days listening to _novellas_, the _parvo_, predecessor of the
Spanish _gracioso_, the Lisbon courtier descended from Aeneas, the
astronomer, unpractical in daily life as he gazes on the stars, the old
man amorous, rose in buttonhole, playing on a viola, the Jewish
marriage-brokers, the country bumpkin, the lazy peasant lying by the
fire, the poor but happy gardener and his wife, the quarrelsome
blacksmith with his wife the bakeress, the carriers jingling along the
road and amply acquainted with the wayside inns, the aspiring _vilão_,
the peasant who complains bitterly of the ways of God, the _lavrador_
with his plough who did not forget his prayers and was charitable to
tramps but skimped his tithes, the illiterate but not unmalicious
_beirão_ shepherd who had led a hard life and whose chief offence was to
have stolen grapes from time to time, the devout bootmaker who had
industriously robbed the people during thirty years, the card-player
blasphemous as the _taful_ of King Alfonso's _Cantigas de Santa Maria_,
the delinquent from Lisbon's prison (the _Limoeiro_) whom his confessor
had deceived before his hanging with promises of Paradise, the peasant
_O Moreno_ who knows the dances of Beira, the negro chattering in his
pigeon-Portuguese 'like a red mullet in a fig-tree,' the deceitful negro
expressing the strangest philosophy in Portuguese equally strange, the
rustic clown Gonçalo with his baskets of fruit and capons, who when his
hare is stolen turns it like a canny peasant to a kind of posthumous
account: _leve-a por amor de Deos pola alma de meus finados_, the Jew
Alonso Lopez who had formerly been prosperous in Spain but is now a poor
new Christian cobbler at Lisbon, the Jewish tailor who in the streets
gives himself _fidalgo_ airs and is overjoyed at the regard shown him by
officials and who at home sings songs of battle as he sits at his
work[129].
In the actions and conversation of this motley crowd of persons high and
low we are given many a glimpse of the times: the beflagged ship from
India lying in the Tagus, the modest dinner (_a panela cosida_) of the
rich _lavrador_, the supper of bread and wine, shellfish and cherries
bought in Lisbon's celebrated Ribeira market, the Lisbon Jew's dinner of
kid and cucumber, the distaff bought by the shepherd at Santarem as a
present for his love, the rustic gifts of acorns, bread and bacon, the
shepherdess' simple dowry or the more considerable dowry of a girl
somewhat higher in society (consisting of a loom, a donkey, an orchard,
a mill and a mule), the migratory shepherds' ass, laden with the
milk-jugs and bells, and with a leathern wallet, yokes and shackles, the
sheepskin coats of the shepherds, bristling masks for their dogs (as a
defence against wolves), loaves of bread, onions and garlic. Thus in
town and village, palace and attic, house and street, on road and
mountain and sea the Portugal of the early sixteenth century is clearly
and charmingly conveyed to us, and we can realize better the conditions
of Gil Vicente's life at Court or as he journeyed on muleback to Evora
or Coimbra, Thomar or Santarem or Almeirim.
IV. ORIGINALITY AND INFLUENCE
In 1523 the 'men of good learning' doubted Vicente's originality. They
might point to the imitations of Enzina or to the resemblance between
the trilogy of _Barcas_ and the _Danza de la Muerte_ or they might
reveal the origin of many a verse and phrase used by Vicente in his
plays and already familiar in the song-books of Spain and Portugal.
Vicente could well afford to let his critics strain at these gnats. He
had the larger originality of genius and while realizing that 'there is
nothing new under the sun[130]' he could transform all his borrowings
into definite images or lyrical magic. (There are flashes of poetry even
in the absurd _ensalada_ of III. 323-4.) He was the greatest lyrical
poet of his day and, in a strictly limited sense, the greatest
dramatist. He is Portugal's only dramatist, without forerunners or
successors, for the playwrights of the Vicentian school lacked his
genius and only attain some measure of success when they closely copy
their master, while the classical school produced no great drama in
Portugal: it is impossible to except even Antonio Ferreira's _Ines de
Castro_ from this sweeping assertion. But that is not to say that
Vicente stands entirely isolated, self-sufficing and self-contained.
Genius is never self-sufficing. Talent may live apart in an ivory palace
but genius overflows in many relations, is acted on and reacts and has
the generosity to receive as well as to give. The influences that acted
upon Gil Vicente were numerous: the Middle Ages and the humanism of the
first days of the Renaissance, the old national Portugal with its
popular traditions and the new imperial Portugal of the first third of
the sixteenth century, the Bible and the _Cancioneiro de Resende_, the
whole literature of Spain and Portugal, the services of the Church, the
book of Nature. But before examining how these influences work out in
his plays it may be well to consider whether their sources may be yet
further extended.
Court relations between Portugal and France had never entirely ceased
and the 1516 _Cancioneiro_ contains many allusions to the prevailing
familiarity with things French. But Vicente's genius was not inspired by
the Court: it would be truer to say that, while he was encouraged by
Queen Lianor and the King, the Court's taste for new things, superficial
fashions and personal allusions tended to thwart his genius. When he
introduces a French song in his plays this does not imply any intimate
acquaintance with the lyrical poetry of France but rather deference to
the taste of the Court. He would pick up words of foreign languages with
the same quickness with which he initiated himself into the way of witch
or pilot, fishwife or doctor, but we have an excellent proof that his
knowledge of neither French nor Italian was profound. We know how
consistently he makes his characters speak each in his own language. Yet
in the _Auto da Fama_, whereas the Spaniard speaks Spanish only, the
Frenchman and Italian murder their own language and eke it out with
Portuguese[131]. Vicente read what he could find to read, but we may be
sure that his reading was mainly confined to Portuguese and Spanish. The
very words in his letter to King João III in which he speaks of his
reading are another echo of Enzina[132], and although it cannot be
asserted that he was not acquainted with this or that piece of French
literature and with the early French drama, it may be maintained that
whatever influence France exercised upon him came mainly through Spain,
whether the connecting link is extant, as in the case of the _Danza de
la Muerte_, or lost, as in that of the _Sumario da Historia de Deos_.
Probably Vicente knew of French _mystères_ little more than the
name[133]. As to the literature of Greece, Rome and Italy the conclusion
is even more definite. Vicente had not read Plautus or Terence, his
knowledge of _el gran poeta Virgilio_ (III. 104) does not extend beyond
the quotation _omnia vincit amor_. Aristotle is a name _et praeterea
nihil_. With the classical tragedy of Trissino and others he had nothing
in common, and if he lived to read or see Sá de Miranda's _Cleopatra_ he
probably had his own very marked opinion as to its value. Dante was, of
course, a closed book to him as to most of his contemporaries. With
Spanish literature the case is very different. The fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries were the most Spanish period of Portuguese
literature. The _Cancioneiro de Resende_ is nearly as Spanish as it is
Portuguese. Portuguese poets were, almost without exception, bilingual.
The horsemen stationed to bring the news of the wedding from Seville to
Evora in 1490 were emblematic of the close relations between the two
countries. Men were in continual expectation that they would come to
form one kingdom[134]. King Manuel's infant son was heir to Spain and
Portugal and the empires in Africa and America.
Vicente's close acquaintance with Spanish literature shows itself at
every turn, and if we examine his plays we find but slight traces of the
influence of any other literature. His first pieces were written in
Spanish, and the Spanish is that of Enzina. Lines and phrases are taken
bodily from the Spanish poet and words belonging to the conventional
_sayagués_ (in which there was already a Portuguese element: cf. _ollos_
for _ojos_) placed on the lips of _charros_ by Enzina are transferred
from Salamanca to Beira. The Enzina eclogues imitated by Vicente were
based on those of Virgil, but in Vicente's imitation there is no vestige
of any knowledge of the classics. The only Latin that occurs is the
quotation by Gil Terron of three lines from the Bible. A little later
the hungry _escudero_ of _Quem tem farelos?_ was in all probability
derived from Spanish literature, either from the Archpriest of Hita's
_Libro de Buen Amor_ or from some popular sketch such as that contained
later in _Lazarillo de Tormes_ (1554)[135]. The only French element in
the _Auto da Fé_ is the _fatrasie_ or _enselada_ 'which came from
France,' but its text is not given. The classical allusions to Virgil
and the Judgment of Paris in the _Auto das Fadas_ are perfectly
superficial. A little medical Latin is introduced in the _Farsa dos
Fisicos_. _O Velho da Horta_, which opens with the Lord's Prayer, half
in Latin, half in Portuguese[136], is written in Portuguese with the
exception of the fragment of song and the lyric _¿Cual es la niña?_
There is a reference to Macias, a name which had become a commonplace in
Portuguese poetry as the type of the constant lover. Spanish influence
is shown in the introduction of the _alcouviteira_ Branca Gil, probably
suggested by Juan Ruiz' _trotaconventos_ or by Celestina. The
_Exhortação da Guerra_ begins with humorous platitudes, _perogrulladas_,
after the fashion of Enzina. Gil Terron has increased his classical
lore, and Trojan and Greek heroes are brought from the underworld, the
_dramatis personae_ including Polyxena, Penthesilea, Achilles, Hannibal,
Hector and Scipio. The influence of Enzina is still evident in the _Auto
da Sibila Cassandra_, the _bellíssimo auto_ wherein Menéndez y Pelayo
saw the first germ of the symbolical _autos_ in which Calderón
excelled[137], and in the _Auto dos Quatro Tempos_. The immediate
influence on the _Barcas_ is plainly Spanish, this being especially
marked in the _Barca da Gloria_. When the _Diabo_ addresses the King:
Nunca aca senti
Que aprovechase aderencia
Ni lisonjas, crer mentiras
... Ni diamanes ni zafiras (I. 285)
he is copying the words of Death in the _Danza de la Muerte_:
non es tiempo tal
Que librar vos pueda imperio nin gente
Oro nin plata nin otro metal[138].
Vicente's Devil taxes the Archbishop with fleecing the poor (I. 294) in
much the same words as those of the Spanish Death to the Dean (t. 2, p.
12). The Devil in the _Barca do Purgatorio_ (I. 251) and Death (t. 2, p.
17) both reproach the _labrador_ with the same offence: surreptitiously
extending the boundaries of his land. It must be admitted that these
signs of imitation are more direct than the French traces indicated in
the introduction of the 1834 edition of Vicente's works. The whole
treatment of the _Barcas_ closely follows the _Danza de la Muerte_. The
idea of a satirical review of the dead is of course nearly as old as
literature. In the _Barca da Gloria_ Vicente begins to quote Spanish
_romances_[139], and this is continued on a larger scale in the _Comedia
de Rubena_ (cf. also the Spanish songs in the _Cortes de Jupiter_) and
in _Dom Duardos_, in which reference is also made to two Spanish books,
Diego de San Pedro's _Carcel de Amor_ and Hernando Diaz' translation _El
Pelegrino Amador_[140]. Maria Parda's will was probably suggested rather
by such burlesque testaments as that of the dying mule in the
_Cancioneiro de Resende_ than by the _Testament de Pathelin_. The
criticism of the _homens de bom saber_ seems to have turned Vicente to
more peculiarly Portuguese themes in the _Farsa de Ines Pereira_ and the
_Auto Pastoril Portugues_, and in the _Fragoa de Amor_, written for the
new Queen from Spain, he presents national types: _serranas_, pilgrims,
nigger, monk, idiot. In the _Ciganas_ we have a passing reference to
'the white hands of Iseult,' a lady already well known in Spanish and
Portuguese literature. _Dom Duardos_ is of course based entirely on a
Spanish romance of chivalry. In _O Juiz da Beira_ he returns to the
_escudeiro_ and _alcouviteira_; the figures are, however, thoroughly
Portuguese with the exception of a new Christian from Castille. The
title of the _Nao de Amores_ already existed in Spanish literature[141].
After this we have a group of thoroughly Portuguese plays, those
presented at Coimbra, the anticlerical _Auto da Feira_, the _Triunfo do
Inverno_, _O Clerigo da Beira_. It is not till _Amadis de Gaula_ that
Vicente again has recourse to Spanish literature[142], and we may be
sure that if he had known of a Portuguese text he would have written his
drama in Portuguese.
Although Vicente owed much to Spanish literature we have only to compare
his plays with those of Juan del Enzina or Bartolomé de Torres Naharro,
or his first attempts with his later dramas to realize his genius and
originality. The variety of his plays is very striking and the farce
_Quem tem farelos?_ (1508?), the patriotic _Exhortação_ (1513), the
_Barca_ trilogy (1517-9), the religious _Auto da Alma_ (1518), the
three-act _Comedia de Rubena_ (1521), the character comedy _Farsa de
Ines Pereira_ (1523), the idyllic _Dom Duardos_ (1525?) mark new
departures in the development of his genius. No doubt his plays are
'totally unlike any regular plays and rude both in design and
execution[143].' Vicente divided them into religious plays (_obras de
devaçam_), farces, comedies and tragicomedies, but the kinds overlap and
there is nothing to separate some of the comedies and tragicomedies from
the farces, while some of the farces are religious both in subject and
occasion. How artificial the division was may be seen from the rubric to
the _Barca do Inferno_, which informs us that the play is counted among
the religious plays because the second and third parts (_Barca do
Purgatorio_ and _Barca da Gloria_) were represented in the Royal Chapel,
although this first part was given in the Queen's chamber, as though the
subject and treatment of the three plays were not sufficient to class
them together. Again, the rubric of the _Romagem de Aggravados_ runs:
'The following tragicomedy is a satire.' Really only its length
separates it from the early farces. Vicente's plays were a development
of the earlier Christmas, Holy Week and Easter _representaciones_,
religious shows to which special pomp was given at King Manuel's Court.
When he began to write the classical drama was unknown and it is absurd
to judge his work by the Aristotelean theory of the unities of time and
place. His idea of drama was not dramatic action nor the development of
character but realistic portrayal of types and the contrast between
them. His first piece, _Auto da Visitaçam_, has not even dialogue--its
alternative title is _O Monologo do Vaqueiro_--and for comic element it
relies on the contrast between Court and country as shown by the
herdsman's gaping wonder. The _Auto Pastoril Castelhano_ contains six
shepherds and contrasts the serious mystical Gil with his ruder
companions.
The action of the _Auto dos Reis Magos_ is as simple as that of the two
preceding plays. _Quem tem farelos?_ however is a quite new development.
'The argument,' says the rubric, 'is that a young squire called Aires
Rosado played the viola and although his salary [as one of the Court]
was very small he was continually in love.' He is contrasted with
another penniless _escudeiro_ who gives himself martial airs and
willingly speaks of the heroic deeds of Roncesvalles, but runs away if
two cats begin to fight. Only five persons appear on the stage, but
with considerable skill Vicente enlarges the scene so as to include a
vivid picture of the second squire as described by his servant as well
as the barking of dogs, mewing of cats and crowing of cocks and the
conversation of Isabel with Rosado, which is conjectured from his
answers. No doubt the two _moços_ owe something to Sempronio and Parmeno
of the _Celestina_, but this first farce is thoroughly Portuguese and
gives us a concrete and living picture of Lisbon manners. Not all the
farces have this unity. The _Auto das Fadas_ loses itself in a long
series of verses addressed to the Court. The _Farsa dos Fisicos_ has no
such extraneous matter: it confines itself to the lovelorn priest and
the contrast between the four doctors. The _Comedia do Viuvo_ is not a
farce and only a comedy by virtue of its happy ending. A merchant of
Burgos laments the death of his wife and is comforted by a kindly priest
and by a friend who wishes that his own wife were as the merchant's (the
simple mediaeval contrast common in Vicente). Meanwhile Don Rosvel,
Prince of Huxonia, has fallen in love with both the daughters of the
merchant, whom he agrees to serve in all kinds of manual labour as Juan
de las Brozas. His brother, Don Gilberto, arrives in search of him and a
quaintly charming and technically skilful play ends with a double
wedding (the Crown Prince of Portugal, present at the acting of this
play, had to decide for Don Rosvel which daughter he should marry).
The _Auto da Fama_ is Vicente's second great hymn to the glory of
Portugal. Portuguese Fame, in the person of a humble girl of Beira, is
envied and wooed in vain by Castille, France and Italy--England and
Holland were then scarcely in the running--and narrates in ringing
verses the deeds of the Portuguese in the East, without, however,
mentioning the great name of Albuquerque, a name which inspired many of
the courtiers with more fear than affection. The _Auto dos Quatro
Tempos_ is a pastoral-religious play, the main theme being, as its title
indicates, a contrast between the four seasons. David appears as a
shepherd and Jupiter also takes a considerable part in the conversation.
Action there is none.