§ 1
_Gil Vicente_
In Portugal a splendid dawn ushered in the sixteenth century. The
discovery of the sea route to India, while it gave an impulse to
science and literature, also increased religious fervour, since the
Portuguese who contended against the Moors in India were but carrying
on the work of their ancestors five centuries earlier in Portugal.
Old-fashioned Portugal thus only gradually welcomed the Renaissance
and stood firm against the Reformation. But in the reign of João III
(1521-57) the University of Coimbra came to be one of the best-known
universities in Europe. André de Gouvêa (†1548), whom Montaigne called
‘sans comparaison le plus grand principal de France’,[219] and Diogo
de Teive returned from the Collège de Sainte-Barbe to inaugurate
its studies, and many of its chairs were offered to distinguished
Portuguese and foreign scholars, such as Ayres Barbosa (†1540) and
George Buchanan (1506-82), as well as to Portuguese humanists such
as Antonio de Gouvêa and Achilles Estaço (†1581). Nicholas Cleynarts
or Nicolaus Clenardus (1493 or 1494-1542), Professor of Greek and
Hebrew at Louvain, came to Portugal from Salamanca as tutor to
the Infante Henrique in 1533, and from Portugal wrote some of his
wittiest letters.[220] He found Coimbra a second Athens, and few great
Portuguese writers of the century had not spent some years there or
at the University before it was transferred to Coimbra from Lisbon
in 1537. King João III and especially his son, the young prince João
(1537-54), Cardinal Henrique (1512-80), and the many-sided Infante Luis
(1506-55), _favorecedor de toda habilidad_, himself a poet of no mean
order[221] and pupil of Pedro Nunez, eagerly patronized letters; the
household of the accomplished Infanta Maria (1521-77) became the ‘home
of the Muses’[222]; learned Luisa Sigea (†1560), of French origin,
but born at Toledo and brought up in Portugal, wrote a Latin poem in
praise of _Syntra_; her sister Angela, Joana Vaz, and Publia Hortensia
de Castro were likewise noted for their learning, and D. Lianor de
Noronha (1488-1563), daughter of Fernando, Marques de Villareal, did
good service to Portuguese prose by her encouragement of translations.
But Portuguese literature lost something by its latinization, and it is
pleasant to turn back half a century to a time when it was humbler and
more national. The ‘very prosperous’ Manuel I, Lord of the Ocean,[223]
Lord of the East,[224] had been seven years king, Vasco da Gama had
returned triumphantly from Calicut (1497-9), Cabral had discovered
Brazil for Portugal (1500), Afonso de Albuquerque (†1515) stood on the
threshold of his career of conquests and glory, the Portuguese Empire
was advancing from North Africa to China,[225] the gold and spices were
beginning to arrive in plenty from the East, and hope of honour and
riches was drawing nobleman and peasant to Lisbon, when GIL VICENTE
(_c._ 1465-1536?) introduced the drama into his
dear, dear land,
Dear for its reputation through the world.
Dressed as a herdsman on the night of June 7, 1502, he congratulated
the queen on the birth of the Infante, later King João III (born
during the night of June 6), in a Spanish monologue of 114 lines. This
speech gives promise of two qualities apparent in his later work:
extreme naturalness (the embarrassed peasant wonders open-mouthed at
the grand palace and his thoughts turn at once to his village) and
love of Nature (mountain and meadow are aflower for joy of the new
prince born). But, it may reasonably be asked, where is the drama? It
consists principally in the _vaqueiro_, who is restless as one of the
wicked in a Basque _pastorale_. He rushes into the queen’s chamber,
has a look at its luxuries, turns to address the queen, declares that
he is in a hurry and must be going, leaps in gladness, and finally
introduces some thirty courtiers in herdsman’s dress who offer gifts
of milk, eggs, cheese, and honey. There is little in this simple
piece--the _Visitaçam_, or _Monologo do Vaqueiro_--to foreshadow the
sovereign genius,[226] the Plautus, the Shakespeare[227] of Portugal
that was Gil Vicente. His life is wrapped in obscurity, and the known
existence of half a dozen contemporary Gil Vicentes makes research a
risky operation. There was a page (1475) and an _escudeiro_ (1482) of
King João II, an official at Santarem, a Santarem carpenter (†1500),
there was a Gil Vicente in India in 1512,[228] and a Gil Vicente
goldsmith at Lisbon. We know that the poet spoke of himself as near
death (_visinho da morte_) in 1531, although apparently in good health.
This would seem to place his birth a few years before 1470.[229]
Unfortunately the _Auto da Festa_, in which he says that he is over
sixty, is undated. As, however, it was written before the _Templo de
Apolo_ (1526) we may place it probably about 1525. We are thus brought
back to about the same date (_c._ 1465). Almost certainly he was not of
exalted parentage.[230] Indeed, he would appear to have been slighted
for his humble birth, and sarcastically spoke of himself as the son
of a pack-saddler and born at Pederneira (Estremadura).[231] He may
have been the son of Luis Vicente or of Martim Vicente, ‘said to have
been a silversmith of Guimarães’ (Minho).[232] The frequent mention
of the province of Beira is, however, noticeable in his plays. If it
were only that his peasants use words such as _nega_, _nego_, which
according to the grammarian Fernam d’Oliveira were peculiar to Beira
(in 1536),[233] it might pass for a dramatic device, since Oliveira
remarks that old-fashioned words will not be out of place if we assign
them to an old man of Beira or a peasant.[234] Indeed, the grammarian
seems to have had Gil Vicente especially in view (he mentions him in
another connexion) since three of the six words that he notes--_abem_,
_acajuso_, _algorrem_--occur in three successive lines of the _Barca
do Purgatorio_, and another, _samicas_, is as great a favourite with
Vicente as at first was _soncas_,[235] derived from Enzina. But it is
impossible to explain all the references to Beira by the supposition
that _beirão_ is equivalent to rustic and Beira to Boeotia, for Beira
and the Serra da Estrella intrude constantly and indeed pervade his
work. He shows personal knowledge of the country between Manteigas and
Fundão, and we may suspect that it was in order to connect ‘Portuguese
Fame desired of all nations’ with Beira ‘our province’ rather than with
rusticity that he makes her keep ducks as a _mocinha da Beira_. We do
not know when Vicente came to Lisbon, nor whether, as José de Cabedo
de Vasconcellos, another (17th c.) genealogist, would have us believe,
he became the tutor (_mestre de rhetorica_) of King Manuel, then Duke
of Beja. Of his life at Lisbon our information is almost as meagre.
We know, of course, that he accompanied the Court to Evora, Coimbra,
Thomar, Almeirim, and other towns to set up and act in his plays, that
besides acting in his plays he wrote songs for them and music for the
songs. We know that he received considerable gifts in money and in kind
both from King Manuel and from João III, in whose reign he complains
of being penniless and neglected. Some hold that he married his first
wife, Branca Bezerra, in 1512, that he owned the _Quinta do Mosteiro_
near Torres Vedras (a supposition no longer tenable), that the name
of his second wife was Melicia Rodriguez, but we have no certainty
as to this, nor as to the number of his children. The accomplished
Paula became musician and lady-in-waiting to the Infanta Maria before
the death of her father, whom she helped--runs the legend--in the
composition of his plays,[236] as she helped her brother Luis in
editing them in 1562. From a document concerning another brother,
Belchior, we know that Gil Vicente (_seu pae que Deus haja_) died
before April 16, 1540. There is some reason to believe that he died in
the year of his last play (1536) or early in 1537. From his assertion
that the mere collection of his works was a great burden to his old
age[237] we might judge him to have been very old, but he may have been
worn out with labour in many fields and his health had not always been
good. He suffered from fever and plague, which brought him to death’s
door in 1525, and he had grown stout with advancing age. An incident
at Santarem on the occasion of the great earthquake of 1531, so
vividly described by Garcia de Resende, shows him in a very attractive
light, for by his personal prestige and eloquent words he succeeded in
restraining the monks and quieting the half-maddened populace, and thus
saved the ‘new Christians’ from ill-treatment or massacre.
We know a little more about him if we identify him with Gil Vicente,
the goldsmith of Queen Lianor (1458-1525), sister of King Manuel and
widow of King João II, whose most famous work is the beautiful Belem
monstrance, wrought of the first tribute of gold from the East (from
Quiloa or Kilwa).[238] The probabilities in favour of identity are
so convincing that we are bound to assume it unless an insuperable
obstacle presents itself. Our faith in manuscript documents and
genealogies is not increased by the fact that one investigator, the
Visconde Sanches de Baena (1822-1909), emerges with the triumphant
conclusion that the two Gil Vicentes were uncle and nephew, while
another, Dr. Theophilo Braga, declares that they are cousins. Perhaps
we may be permitted to believe in neither and to restore Gil Vicente
to himself. For indeed this was a singular instance of cousinly love.
The goldsmith wrote verses; the poet takes a remarkable interest in the
goldsmith’s art.[239] The goldsmith is appointed inspector (_vedor_)
of all works in gold and silver at the convent of Thomar, the Lisbon
Hospital of All Saints, and Belem. The poet is particularly fond of
referring to Thomar,[240] and in its convent in 1523 staged his _Farsa
de Inés Pereira_ (who lived at Thomar with her first husband), while
at the Hospital of All Saints was played the _Barca do Purgatorio_ in
1518. The goldsmith was in the service of the widow of João II, Queen
Lianor, who mentions two of his chalices in her will; the poet at the
request of the same Queen Lianor wrote verses, probably in 1509, in a
poetical contest about a gold chain and was encouraged by her to write
his early plays.[241] The goldsmith was _Mestre da Balança_ from
1513 to 1517; the poet goes out of his way to refer to _os da Moeda_,
familiarly but not as one of them, in 1521. He henceforth devoted
himself more ardently to the literary side of his genius, speaks of
himself as Gil Vicente who writes _autos_ for the king, and with an
occasional sigh[242] that he can no longer afford to stage his plays
as splendidly as of old (in King Manuel’s reign) produces them with
increasing frequency. ‘Had Gil Vicente been a goldsmith and a goldsmith
of such skill,’ said the late Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo (1856-1912),
‘it would have been impossible for him to leave no trace of it in his
dramatic works and for all the contemporary writers who speak of him
to have kept complete silence as to his artistic talent.’[243] But
his work is essentially that of an artist (Menéndez y Pelayo himself
well calls him an _alma de artista_)[244]: involuntarily one likens
his sketches to some rough terra-cotta figure of Tanagra or sculpture
in early Gothic, and his lyrics are clear-cut gems, a thing very rare
in Portuguese literature. Intensely Portuguese in his lyrism and his
satire, he is almost un-Portuguese in the extreme plasticity of his
genius. Concrete, definite images spring from his brain in contrast to
the vaguer effusions of most Portuguese poets. And if Queen Lianor’s
goldsmith, like the troubadour _ourives_ Elias Cairel, or, to come to
the fifteenth century, like Diogo Fernandez and Afonso Valente of the
_Cancioneiro de Resende_,[245] set himself to write verses, this would
call for no comment. Every one wrote verses. Had a celebrated poet--say
the Gil Vicente of 1520--wrought the _custodia_ his contemporaries
might have recorded the fact, but Gil Vicente was not a famous poet
when the _custodia_ was begun in 1503. Stress was therefore naturally
laid on the plays of Gil Vicente the goldsmith, not on the art of Gil
Vicente the poet. The historian Barros refers in 1540 to Gil Vicente
_comico_,[246] and since 1517 he had certainly been more _comico_ than
_ourives_. But the _comico_ who was dramatist and lyric poet, musician,
actor, preacher in prose and verse, may also have been a goldsmith. His
versatility was that of Damião de Goes a little later or of his own
contemporary Garcia de Resende, with genius added. The fact that the
official document in which _Gil Vicente lavrador da Rainha Lianor_ is
appointed to his post in the Lisbon _Casa da Moeda_ (Feb. 4, 1513[247])
has above it a contemporary note _Gil Vᵗᵉ trouador mestre da balãça_
should in itself be conclusive evidence that the poet was the goldsmith
of the queen. This modest but intimate position at Court accords well
with what we know of the poet and with the production of his plays.
The offerings at the end of the _Visitaçam_ seem to have suggested
to Queen Lianor the idea of its repetition on Christmas morning, but
Gil Vicente, considering its matter inappropriate, wrote a new play
with parts for six shepherds. This _Auto Pastoril Castelhano_ is four
times as long as the _Visitaçam_. The shepherds pass the time in dance
and song, games, riddles, and various conversation (the dowry of the
bride of one of them is catalogued in the manner of Enzina[248] and
the Archpriest of Hita). To them the Angels announce the birth of the
Redeemer, and they go to sing and dance before _aquel garzon_. The
principal part, that of the mystic shepherd Gil Terron, ‘inclined to
the life contemplative’, well read (_letrudo_) in the Bible, with
some knowledge of metaphysics and perhaps of the _Corte Imperial_,
devoted to Nature and the _sierras benditas_, was evidently played by
Gil Vicente himself. A fortnight later, for the Day of Kings, he had
ready the _Auto dos Reis Magos_ (1503), again at the request of Queen
Lianor, who had ‘been very pleased’ with what Vicente himself called a
_pobre cousa_. This brief interval of time limited the length of the
new play. Its action is as slight. A shepherd enters who has lost his
way to Bethlehem. He meets another shepherd and then a hermit, whom
they ply with irreverent problems. To them enters a knight of Araby,
and finally the three kings, singing a _vilancete_. The _Auto da Sibila
Cassandra_ has been assigned to the same year, but is probably a later
play (1513?). Nearly twice as long as the _Auto Pastoril Castelhano_,
it combines the ordinary scenic display--_todo o apparato_--of a
Christmas _representação_ with a presentment of the early prophecies
now to be fulfilled, and introduces Solomon, Isaiah, Abraham, and
Moses, who describes the creation of the world. The play includes a
profane theme, since Cassandra in her mystic aversion from marriage
realistically portrays the sad life of married women in Portugal.
Although Cassandra appears as a shepherdess and her aunt Peresica as a
peasant, they speak a purer, more flowing Castilian than the _toscos,
rusticos pastores_ of the preceding _autos_, and the play is remarkable
for the beauty of its lyrics--_Dicen que me case yo_, _Sañosa está la
niña_, _Muy graciosa es la doncella_, and _A la guerra_. For the Corpus
Christi procession of 1504 was provided, at short notice from Queen
Lianor, the _Auto de S. Martinho_. The subject of this piece, merely
ten dodecasyllabic _oitavas_ followed by a solemn _prosa_, is that of
El Greco’s marvellous picture--St. Martin dividing his cloak with a
beggar, whom Vicente treats with characteristic sympathy and insight:
¿Criante rocío, qué te hice yo[249]
Que las hiervecitas floreces por Mayo
Y sobre mis carnes no echas un sayo?
The _Auto dos Quatro Tempos_, of uncertain date, acted before the Court
in the Lisbon palace of Alcaçova on Christmas morning in or after
1511, opens with a mystic ode on the Nativity and a _vilancete_ (_A
ti dino de adorar_) and proceeds rapidly with snatches of song in a
splendid rivalry between the four seasons. The praises of Spring are
sung with a delightful freshness, as are Winter’s rages, while Summer
in a straw hat appears sallow and fever-stricken. Jupiter comes with
countless classical allusions and David with much Latin, and they
all worship together the new-born King. Very different is the _Auto
da Alma_, written for Queen Lianor and acted in King Manuel’s Lisbon
palace of Ribeira on the night of Good Friday, 1518 (Snr. Braamcamp
Freire’s plausible suggestion in place of the commonly accepted 1508).
It represents the eternal strife between the soul and sin. The soul,
slowly journeying in the company of its guardian angel, is alternately
tempted by Satan with the delights of the world, with fine dresses and
jewels, and exhorted by the Angel, till it arrives at the Church, the
Innkeeper of Souls, and confesses its guilt, imploring protection (_Ach
neige, du schmerzenreiche!_). Then, while Satan in a restless fury of
disappointment makes a last effort to secure his victim, the ransomed
soul is fortified with celestial fare served by St. Augustine and
other _doutores_. The whole theme, to which the language rises fully
adequate, is treated with great delicacy and with a mystic fervour.
In 1505 King Manuel and his Court in his Lisbon palace had witnessed
the first of those _farsas_ in which Gil Vicente has sketched for all
time Portuguese life in the first third of the sixteenth century.
It rapidly became popular and went from hand to hand as a _folha
volante_, receiving from the people the name of _Quem tem farelos?_
i.e. the first three words of the play. The plots of the twelve
_farsas_ written from 1505 to 1531 are so slight that only one
calls for detailed notice, the _Farsa de Inés Pereira_[250] (1523),
which in its carefully defined characters and developed story more
closely resembles a modern comedy. It tells how the hapless Inés,
having rejected a plain suitor for a more romantic lover, a poor but
deceptive _escudeiro_ presented to her by two Jewish marriage agents,
learns by bitter experience the truth of the old proverb that ‘an
ass that carries me is better than a horse that throws me’. But the
types and persons in all these farces are etched with so much realism
and humour that they bite into the memory and rank with the living
malicious sketches of _Lazarillo de Tormes_. Who can forget the
famished escudeiro Aires Rosado with his book of songs (_cancioneiro_)
and guitar, continuing to sing beneath the window of his love while
the curses of her mother fall thick as snowflakes on his head,[251]
or the lady of his affections, vain and idle Isabel, or his servant
(_moço_) Apariço who draws so cruel a picture of his master, or that
other penniless _escudeiro_ who considers himself ‘the very palace’
and calls up his _moço_ Fernando at midnight to light the lamp and
hold the inkstand while he writes down his latest verses?[252] Equally
well sketched is the splendid poverty-plagued _fidalgo_ who walks
abroad accompanied by six pages, but cannot pay his chaplain or his
goldsmith; his ill-used, servile, ambitious chaplain[253]; the witch
Genebra Pereira mixing the hanged man’s ear, the heart of a black cat,
and other grim ingredients: _Alguidar, alguidar, que feito foste ao
luar_[254]; the household of the Jewish tailor who delights in songs
of battles-at-a-distance and is filled with pride when the _Regedor_
salutes him in the street[255]; M. Diafoirus’ lineal ancestors Mestres
Anrique, Felipe, Fernando, and Torres[256]; the sporting priest[257];
the unfaithful wife of the Portuguese who has embarked for India with
Tristão da Cunha; the vainglorious, grandiloquent Spaniard who takes
the opportunity to pay his court to her.[258] They are all drawn from
life with a master hand, even the more insignificant figures, the girl
keeping ducks, the _moços_, the gipsy horse-dealers,[259] the old man
amorous,[260] the carriers faring leisurely along with their mules,
the braggart who disables six of his fourteen imaginary opponents, the
Frenchman and Italian with their stock phrases _Par ma foi_, _la belle
France_, _tutti quanti_,[261] the wily and impudent negro, the poor
_ratinho_[262] Gonçalo, who loses his hare and capons and his clothes
as well, the page of peasant birth ambitious to become a _cavaleiro
fidalgo_, the roguish and pretentious palace pages. Side by side with
these farces Vicente continued to write religious _autos_ as well as
comedies and tragicomedies. The difference between these various pieces
is less of kind than of the occasion on which they were produced, the
_obras de devação_ on Christmas morning or other solemn day,[263]
the _farsas de folgar, comedias_, &c., at the evening parties--those
famous _serões_ of King Manuel’s reign to which the courtiers thronged
at dusk, and which Sá de Miranda remembered with regret.[264] All
provide us with realistic sketches since the background is filled with
the common people, the real hero of Gil Vicente’s plays as it is of
Fernam Lopez’ chronicles. Thus the _Auto da Mofina Mendes_ (Christmas,
1534), besides its heavenly _gloria_ with the Virgin, Gabriel,
Prudence, Poverty, Humility, and Faith, has a very life-like peasant
scene in which Mofina Mendes, personifying Misfortune, represents
a Portuguese version of _Pierrette et son pot au lait_. The _Auto
Pastoril Portugues_ (Christmas, 1523) is a similar scene of peasant
life, relating the cross-currents of the shepherds’ loves and the
finding of an image of the Virgin on the hills. The _Auto da Feira_,
acted before King João at Lisbon in 1527, is a more elaborate Christmas
play. Mercury, Time, Rome, and the Devil attend a fair, and this
furnishes opportunity for a vigorous attack upon the Church of Rome,
with her indulgences for others and her self-indulgence, who has not
the kings of the Earth but herself to blame if she is rushing on ruin,
ruin that will be inevitable unless she mends her ways. But to the fair
also come the peasants Denis and Amancio, as dissatisfied with their
wives as their wives are dissatisfied with them (their conversation
is most voluble and natural), and market-girls, basket on head, come
down singing from the hills. Another Christmas play, the _Auto da
Fé_, was acted in the royal chapel at Almeirim in 1510, and consists
of a simple conversation between Faith and two shepherds. The _Breve
Summario da Historia de Deos_[265] (1527) and the _Auto da Cananea_
(written for the Abbess of Odivellas in 1534) are both based on the
Bible; the former, which contains the _vilancete_ sung by Abel (_Adorae
montanhas_), outlines the story of the Fall, of Job, and of the New
Testament to the Crucifixion, sometimes in passages of great beauty.
The latter develops the episode of the woman of Canaan (Matt. xv.
21-8). The great trilogy of _Barcas_, which ranks among Vicente’s most
important works, is of earlier date. The first part, _Auto da Barca do
Inferno_, was acted before Queen Maria _pera consolação_ as she lay
on her death-bed in 1517, the second, _Auto da Barca do Purgatorio_,
at Christmas of the following year in Lisbon, and the _Auto da Barca
da Gloria_ at Almeirim in 1519. The plot, again, is of the simplest:
the Devil, combining the parts of Charon and Rhadamanthus, ferry-man
and judge, invites Death’s victims to show cause why they should not
enter his boat; and the interest is in the light thus thrown upon the
earthly behaviour of nobleman, judge, advocate, usurer, fool, love-lorn
friar, the cheating market-woman, the cobbler who throve by deceiving
the people, the peasant who skimped his tithes, the little shepherdess
who had seen God ‘often and often’, of Count, King,[266] and Emperor,
Bishop, Cardinal, and Pope. The first part ends with a noble invocation
to the knights who had died fighting in Africa, and the second begins
with the mystic jewelled _romance_: _Remando vam remadores_.
The comedies and tragicomedies vary greatly. The _Comedia de Rubena_
(1521) is, like _A Winter’s Tale_, quite without unity of time or
place (for this primitive humanist, although he might mention Plato,
did not ‘reverence the Stagirite’), but is divided into three acts
(called scenes) as in a modern play. Cismena, like Perdita born in the
first scene, is conveyed by fairies to Crete, where she is wooed and
won by the Prince of Syria. The _Comedia do Viuvo_ (1514) is much more
compact and has a delicate charm. Don Rosvel, a prince in disguise,
serves in the house of a widower at Burgos for love of his daughters.
(He is in love with both, but his brother in search of him arrives and
marries the second.) On the other hand, the _Comedia sobre a divisa da
cidade de Coimbra_, acted before King João III in his ever-loyal city
of Coimbra in 1527, is a lengthy, far-fetched explanation of the city’s
arms, and the _Floresta de Enganos_ (played before the king at Evora
in 1536) is a succession of scenes of pure farce--the deceit practised
upon a merchant, the ludicrous predicament to which love reduced the
grave old judge who had taken his degree in Paris--with a more serious
theme, a Portuguese version of the story of Psyche and Eros. Of the
‘tragicomedies’ two, _Dom Duardos_ (1525?) and _Amadis de Gaula_
(1533), dramatize romances of chivalry: _Primaleon_, that ‘_dulce &
aplacible historia_ translated from the Greek’,[267] and _Amadis_.[268]
The work is done with skill, for Vicente succeeds here as always in
being natural, and in this twilight atmosphere of garden flowers and
romance keeps his realism.[269] Both plays contain passages of great
lyrical beauty, and _Dom Duardos_ ends with the _romance_ beginning
_Pelo mes era de Abril_. Thus in his latter age he successfully adapted
himself to pastures new. In his letter dedicating _Dom Duardos_ to King
João III he wrote: ‘Since, excellent Prince and most powerful King,
the comedies, farces and moralities which I wrote for (_en servicio
de_) the Queen your Aunt were low figures[270] in which there was no
fitting rhetoric to satisfy the delicate spirit of your Highness, I
realized that I must crowd more sail on to my poor bark.’ For us the
words have a tinge of irony, and however much some readers may admire
the hushed rapture of these idyllic scenes we miss the merry author of
the _farsas_, and gladly turn to the _Romagem de Aggravados_ (1533) in
which Vicente proves that his hand had lost none of its cunning. ‘This
tragicomedy is a satire’ says the rubric, and it introduces us to the
inimitable Frei Paço, the mincing courtier-priest with gloves, gilt
sword, and velvet cap (one of Sá de Miranda’s _clerigos perfumados_),
to the discontented peasant who brings his son to be made a priest, the
talkative fish-wives, the hypocrite Frei Narciso scheming to be made a
bishop, and awkward Giralda, the peasant Aparicianes’ daughter, whom
Frei Paço instructs so competently in Court manners. This long play
was written for a special occasion, the birth of the Infante Felipe.
Gil Vicente for many years, as poet laureate, had celebrated great
events at Court. When the Duke of Braganza was about to leave with the
expedition against Azamor in 1513 he wrote the eloquent _Exhortaçam da
Guerra_, which is introduced by a necromancer priest and ends with a
rousing call to war (_soiça_):
Avante avante, senhores,
Pois que com grandes favores
Todo o ceo vos favorece;
El Rey de Fez esmorece
E Marrocos dá clamores.
When King Manuel’s daughter, the princess Beatrice, married the Duke
of Savoy in 1521 Vicente wrote the _Cortes de Jupiter_, in which the
Providence of God bids Jupiter, King of the Elements, speed her on
her voyage, and the courtiers and inhabitants of Lisbon accompany
her ship, swimming, to the mouth of the Tagus. The _Fragoa de Amor_
(1525) was written on the occasion of the betrothal of King João and
Queen Catherina (who replaced Queen Lianor as Vicente’s protector and
patron). Into the forge, to the sound of singing, goes a negro, and
then Justice in the form of a bent old woman who is forced to disgorge
all her bribes and reappears upright and fair. A similar play, _Nao
de Amor_ (1527), in which courtiers caulk a miniature ship on the
stage, was played before their Majesties in Lisbon two years later.
The _Templo de Apolo_ (1526) was acted when another daughter of King
Manuel left Lisbon to become the wife of the Emperor Charles V. The
author introduces the play and excuses its deficiencies on the plea
that he has been seriously ill with fever. He then relates the dream
of fair women--_las hermosas que son muertas_--that he had seen in his
sickness. Apollo then enters, and after declaring that he would have
made the world otherwise mounts the pulpit and preaches a mock sermon.
The world, Fame, Victory, come to his temple and bear witness to the
greatness of the Emperor Charles V. A Portuguese peasant also comes
and has more difficulty in obtaining admittance. The author called the
play an _obra doliente_, and it was propped up by a passage from the
earlier _Auto da Festa_ (1525?), edited by the Conde de Sabugosa from
the unique copy in his possession. Its figures are Truth, two gipsies,
a fool, and seven peasants. Their speech is markedly _beirão_ and the
old woman closely resembles the _velha_ of the tragicomedy _Triunfo do
Inverno_, written to celebrate the birth of Princess Isabel in 1529,
as the _Auto da Lusitania_ celebrated that of Prince Manuel in 1532
and the _Tragicomedia Pastoril da Serra da Estrella_ that of Princess
Maria in 1527. The latter is a whole-hearted play of the Serra with
a _cossante_, a _baile de terreiro_ and _chacota_, and continual
fragments of song: one of the most Portuguese of Vicente’s plays.
The _Triunfo do Inverno_ contains some most effective scenes and a
bewildering wealth of lyrics: before one is finished another has begun,
and the whole long play goes forward at a gallop. The first triumph
of Winter is on the hills, the Serra da Estrella (_serra nevada_);
the second, on the sea, affords a telling satire against the pilots
on India-bound ships. The pilot here begins by stating that the storm
will be nothing, then he says that he is not to blame for Winter’s
conduct, finally he falls to imploring the Virgin and St. George and
St. Nicholas; and but for his incompetence the ship might have been
lying safe at Cochin. The second part of the tragicomedy is the Triumph
of Spring in the Serra de Sintra. Spring enters in a lyrical profusion
singing
Del rosal vengo, mi madre,
Vengo del rosale,
breaks off into _Afuera, afuera nublados_, and resumes his song:
A riberas de aquel rio
Viera estar rosal florido,
Vengo del rosale.
Enough has perhaps been said to suggest the variety of these plays,
the glow of colour that pervades them, and to show how far their
author, although his genius was never fully realized in his _autos_,
had travelled from the first glimmerings of the drama in Portugal and
from his first model, Enzina. Rudiments of dramatic art existed in
the Middle Ages in the ceremonies provided by an essentially dramatic
Church and in the mummeries and mimicking _jograes_ that delighted the
people. Bonamis and his companion furnished some kind of extremely
primitive play (_arremedillum_) for King Sancho I, and they were
probably only the most successful of hundreds of wandering mimics and
players. Mimicry and scenic display[271] were the principal ingredients
of the _momos_ in which Rui de Sousa excelled[272] and the _entremeses_
for which Portugal was famous: they scarcely belonged to literature,
although they might include a song and prose _breve_ such as the Conde
do Vimioso’s, printed in the _Cancioneiro Geral_. Religious processions
and Christmas, Epiphany, Passion, or Easter scenes[273] gave further
scope for dramatic display, as also popular ceremonies such as that
in which ‘Emperors’ and ‘Kings’--figures similar, no doubt, to those
still to be seen in Spanish processions (e. g. at Valencia)--were
carried in triumph to the churches, accompanied by _jograes_ who
invaded the pulpit and preached profane sermons containing ‘many
iniquities and abominations’, even while mass was in progress. The
popular tendencies darkly suggested in the _Constituições_ are manifest
in Vicente’s plays--the Christmas _representações_, the preaching of
burlesque sermons, parodies of the mass, profane litanies, parodies and
paraphrases of the Lord’s Prayer. Like the _Clercs de la Bazoche_ in
France, he represents the drama breaking its ecclesiastical fetters.
It was, however, from Spain that the idea of his _autos_ first came
to him, as the direct imitations of Juan del Enzina (1469?-1529?) in
Vicente’s early pieces and the explicit statement of Garcia de Resende
in his _Miscellania_ prove: he speaks of the _representações_ of very
eloquent style and new devices invented in Portugal by Gil Vicente,
and adds the qualifying clause that credit for the invention of the
_pastoril_ belongs to Enzina. But the wine of Vicente’s genius soon
burst the old bottles, and when his plays ceased to be confined to the
_pastoril_ he naturally turned elsewhere for suggestion. He himself
towards the end of his life called his religious plays _moralidades_,
and the real name of the play popularly known as the _Farsa da Mofina
Mendes_ was _Os Mysterios da Virgem_.[274] The introduction of Lucifer
as _Maioral do Inferno_ and Belial as his _meirinho_[275] may have
been derived from French _mystères_; the conception of his _Barcas_
certainly owed more to the _Danse macabre_ (probably through the
Spanish fifteenth-century _Danza de la Muerte_) than to Dante. The
burlesque _testamento_ of Maria Parda[276] is one of a long list
of such wills (of which an example is the mule’s testament in the
_Cancioneiro Geral_),[277] but in some of its expressions appears
to be copied from the _Testament de Pathelin_. His knowledge of
French was perhaps more fluent than accurate, like his Latin which,
albeit copious, did not claim to be ‘pure Tully’. But there are many
references to France in his plays, as there are in the _Cancioneiro
Geral_, and, although the _enselada_ from France with which the _Auto
da Fé_ ends (i. 75) and the French song (i. 92) _Ay de la noble ville
de Paris_[278] were no doubt some fashionable courtier’s latest
acquisition, Vicente in literary matters probably shared the curiosity
of the Court as to what was going on beyond the frontiers of Portugal.
The great majority of his songs are, however, plainly indigenous. His
knowledge of Italian certainly enabled him to read Italian plays and
poems. We know that he was a great reader--he mentions ‘the written
works that I have seen, in verse and prose, rich in style and matter’.
In Spanish he did not confine himself to Enzina. He read romances of
chivalry, imitated the _romances_ with supreme success, mentions Diego
de San Pedro’s _La Carcel de Amor_, had read the _autos_ of Lucas
Fernandez, the _comedias_ of Bartolomé de Torres Naharro probably,
and without doubt the Archpriest of Hita’s _Libro de Buen Amor_,
possessed by King Duarte, and the _Celestina_. Indeed, for some time
past barriers between the two literatures had scarcely existed and
Vicente enriched both. Celestina would have spoken many proverbs had
she foreseen that he would allow two men (_judeos casamenteiros_) to
take the bread out of her mouth, but he copies her in his Brigida Vaz,
Branca Gil, the formidable Anna Diaz, and the _beata alcoviteira_ of
the _Comedia de Rubena_, although he may also have had in mind the
_moller mui vil_ of King Alfonso X’s _Cantigas de Santa Maria_ (No.
64), with the spirit of which--their fondness for popular types and
satire--Vicente had more in common than with the _Cancioneiro Geral_,
compiled by his friend Resende. With this collection he was naturally
familiar, and must have heard many of its songs before it was published
in 1516. A line here and there in Vicente seems to be an echo of the
_Cancioneiro_,[279] although the fact that it mentions some of his
types (as in the _Arrenegos_[280] of Gregorio Afonso) merely means that
he drew from the life around him. His satire of doctors and priests,
although essentially popular and mediaeval--both are present in the
_Cantigas de Santa Maria_--was also due to his personal observation:
that is to say, he gave realistic expression to a satire of which the
motive was literary (since satire directed against priests had long
been one of the chief resources of comic writers in France, Italy,
Spain, and Portugal).[281] The type of the poor _fidalgo_ or famishing
_escudeiro_ on which Vicente dwells so fondly--we have the latter
as Aires Rosado in _Quem tem farelos?_ and anonymous in the _Farsa
de Inés Pereira_ and _O Juiz da Beira_[282]--is another instance of
literary tradition combined with observation at first hand. Of the
priest-satire Vicente was the last free exponent in Portugal. That
of the poor gentleman was even older and survived him. It dates from
Roman times. The _amethystinatus_ of Spanish Martial[283] reappears in
the _Cancioneiro da Vaticana_, in the Archpriest of Hita’s Don Furon,
in the _lindos fidalgos que viven lazerados_ of Alfonso Alvarez de
Villasandino, in the _Cancioneiro Geral_, and just before Vicente’s
death is wittily described, as the _raphanophagus purpuratus_, by
Clenardus,[284] and less urbanely in _Lazarillo de Tormes_. With no
Inquisition to crush him he continued to starve in literature--for
instance, in the anonymous later sixteenth-century play _Auto do
Escudeiro Surdo_ he and his _moço_ come on the scene in thoroughly
Vicentian guise: _a vossa fome de pam ... meio tostão gasto quinze dias
ha_[285]--as he starves in the real life of the Peninsula to-day.[286]
In a sense Gil Vicente no doubt borrowed widely; he was no sorcerer to
make bricks without straw, and straw, like poets, is not manufactured:
it has to be gathered in. But the _homens de bom saber_ who, as we know
from the rubric to the _Farsa de Inés Pereira_, doubted his originality
must have been very superficial as well as envious critics, for the
bricks were essentially his own. Indeed, every page of his _autos_ is
hall-marked as his, _ca non alheo_, and he could say with King Alfonso
X:
Mais se o m’eu melhoro faço ben
E non sõo per aquesto ladron.
Besides the _Auto da Festa_ we have 42 plays[287]: 12 _farsas_, 16
_obras de devaçam_, 4 _comedias_, 10 _tragicomedias_. Some of them
were staged with much pomp and _grande aparato de musica_ in the
spacious times of King Manuel, but they lose little in being merely
read. They contain a few scenes of dramatic insight and power, a
few touches of real comedy, but above all we value them for their
types and characters, the insight they afford us into man and that
particular period of man’s history, and for the lyrics and lyrical
passages, fragments of heaven-born poetry thrown out tantalizingly
at random as the dramatist passes rapidly, carelessly on. We do not
possess all Vicente’s plays. A farce which in a poem to the Conde de
Vimioso (?1525) he says that he had in hand, _A Caça dos Segredos_,
was perhaps never finished, or perhaps it was produced seven years
later as the _Auto da Lusitania_ (1532). Others were probably lost as
_folhas volantes_ before the edition of 1562 could collect them. Three
at least, the _Auto da Aderencia do Paço_, _Auto da Vida do Paço_, and
_Jubileu de Amor_ or _Amores_, were suppressed.[288] The latter, in
Spanish and Portuguese, was probably the cause of the loss of the two
other plays, for, having ventured far away from the natural piety of
Portugal, it was acted in Brussels on December 21, 1531, in the house
of the Portuguese Ambassador, D. Pedro de Mascarenhas, and in the
mind of the Nuncio, Cardinal Aleandro, who was among those invited,
this ‘manifest satire against Rome’ caused such commotion that, as
he wrote, he ‘seemed to be in mid-Saxony listening to Luther[289] or
in the horrors of the sack of Rome’.[290] Yet in 1533 impenitent,
the incorrigible Vicente is pillorying the Court priest, Frei Paço.
The fact is that in Portugal no one could suspect the sheep-dog, who
had for so long and so mordantly kept watch over the Court flock,
of turning wolf and encouraging the _seitas_ and _cismas_ against
which Alvaro de Brito had already inveighed. He was himself deeply,
mystically religious and perhaps cared the less for creeds and dogmas.
His mystic philosophy appears as early as 1502. Yet they do him a
poor service who represent him as a profound theologian, a great
philosopher, an authoritative philologist. His plays show us a man
lovable and human, tolerant of opinions, intolerant of abuses,[291]
a man of many gifts, with a passionate devotion to his country. We
have only to turn to the ringing _Exhortaçam da Guerra_ or the _Auto
da Fama_. The whole of the latter is written in a glow of pride and
patriotism at Portugal’s vast, increasing empire and the victories of
Albuquerque:
Ormuz, Quiloa, Mombaça,
Sofala, Cochim, Melinde.
Clearly the words to him are a sweet music.[292] From one point of view
Gil Vicente’s position exactly tallied with Herculano’s description
of the _bobo_. He was a Court jester, expected to render the idle
courtiers _muy ledos_. To this purpose he was compelled to saddle
his plays with passages which for us have lost their savour and
significance but almost every line of which must have elicited a smile
or a shout of laughter at the _serões_. We may instance _O Clerigo
da Beira_, which ends with the signs and planets under which various
courtiers were born, the _Tragicomedia da divisa da cidade de Coimbra_,
with the origins of various noble families, the malicious _catalogue
raisonné_ of courtiers in the _Cortes de Jupiter_, Branca Gil’s
comical litany in _O Velho da Horta_, the sixty-four puzzle verses
of the _Auto das Fadas_. But Vicente frequently had a deeper purpose
than to enliven a fashionable gathering. The abuse of indulgences,
the corruption of the clergy,[293] the subjection of married women,
the danger of appointing ignorant men to the responsible position of
pilot, the mingling of the classes--it was not so, he remarks, in
Germany or Flanders, France or Venice--the increasing tendency to
shun honest labour in order to occupy a position however humble at
Court,[294] the ignorance and presumption of the peasants, the false
display and false ambitions, the thousand new lies and deceits, the
decay of piety, the growth of luxury and corresponding diminution in
gaiety--these were matters which he sought not only to portray but to
correct, with much earnestness in his _iocis levibus_. But to the end
of his life he was never able to learn that religion and virtue must
be melancholy. In the introduction to the _Triunfo do Inverno_ (1529)
he complains of the loss of the joyous dances and songs of Portugal
and the disappearance in the last twenty years of the _gaiteiro_ and
his cheerful piping. He himself drew his inspiration from the people,
from Nature, and from the Scriptures, with which he had no superficial
acquaintance. In his love of Nature and his wide curiosity he studied
children and birds, plants and flowers, astronomy and witchcraft--those
myriad forms of sorcery in Portugal, some of which have fortunately
survived in the prohibitory decrees of the Church. He included in his
plays or alluded to many of the traditions, the songs and dances of old
Portugal--the ancient _cossantes_, the _bailes de terreiro_, _bailos
vilãos_,[295] _bailes da Beira_, _chacotas_, _folias_, _alvoradas_,
_janeiras, lampas de S. João_.[296] For he stood at the parting of
the ways. Desirous and capable of playing many parts, tinged unawares
by the new spirit of the Renaissance, but at the same time keenly
national, he linked the Middle Ages with the new learning and the old
traditions of Portugal with her ever-widening dominions, for which he
showed the wise enthusiasm of a true imperialist. But behind the new
glitter and luxury of Lisbon he constantly saw the growing misery of
the people of Portugal for which all the splendour of King Manuel’s
reign had been but a terrible storm[297]; and his latter sadness was
perhaps less personal than patriotic. He had done what he could, far
more than had been required of him. He had been expected to delight a
Court audience, and had mingled warning and instruction with amusement;
and when, having lived and laughed and loved, he went his way, he
was not only spared by a crowning grace from the wrath that was to
come but left to his countrymen an heirloom more enduring than brass,
more precious than all the gold of India, with a breath of that true
Portugal in its simplicity, its mirth and jollity, the disappearance
of which he had deplored. Portuguese literature was never so national
again. A period of splendid achievement followed, but alike in subject
and language it was too often a honeyed sweetness containing in itself
the seeds of decay, and if for the time it swept away all memory of Gil
Vicente, for us it only emphasizes his qualities by the contrast. In
his directness, his close contact with the people,[298] his humanity,
his quick observation, keen satire, love of laughter and malicious
humour, in his unsurpassed lyrical gift and his natural delight in
words, to be used not at haphazard but weighed and set cunningly as
precious stones in the hands of an _ourives_, this great lyrical poet
and charmingly incorrect playwright clearly foreshadowed dramatists so
different as Calderón, Lope de Vega, Shakespeare, and Molière. Yet we
look in vain for a Vicentian school of great dramatists in Portugal.
His fame had reached Brussels and thence Rome, and Erasmus is credited
with having wished to learn Portuguese in order to read Vicente’s
plays. Shakespeare, who was twenty-two when the second edition of
Vicente’s plays appeared and who almost certainly read Spanish, may
also have been tempted. It would have been strange if Erasmus had not
heard of Vicente through his friend André de Resende, who in his Latin
poem _Genethliacon_ declared that had not the comic poet Gil Vicente,
actor and author, written in the vulgar tongue he would have rivalled
Menander and excelled Plautus and Terence. In Portugal the number of
plays written in the sixteenth century was large,[299] but none can
be placed on a level with those of Vicente. One cannot say that he
influenced Camões or Ferreira de Vasconcellos deeply, although they had
evidently read him. In Spain Cervantes, who read everything, _aunque
sean los papeles rotos de las calles_, had read his plays (the _Farsa
dos Fisicos_, _O Juiz da Beira_, the _Comedia de Rubena_ among others),
Lope de Vega likewise, Calderón possibly. Lope de Rueda probably
derived the idea of his _paso Las Aceitunas_ from the _Auto da Mofina
Mendes_. Yet it is almost with amazement, if we forget the crowded
history of Portugal and Portuguese literature in the sixteenth century,
the introduction of the Inquisition, and the great changes in the
language, that we find a Portuguese, Sousa de Macedo, a century after
Vicente’s death, speaking of him as one ‘whose style was celebrated of
old’,[300] and a Spaniard, Nicolás Antonio, declaring that his works
were written in prose and knowing nothing of a collected edition.[301]
It was with reasonable misgivings that Vicente just before his death
wrote: _Livro meu, que esperas tu?_; ‘my book, what is in store for
you?’ We know that it remained in manuscript for a quarter of a
century, that a second edition in 1586 was so handled by the Censorship
that it contains but thirty-five mutilated plays, and that for two and
a half centuries no new edition was printed.