Part 14

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.

FOOTNOTES:

[219] _Essais_, 1. XXV.

[220] _Nicolai Clenardi Episiolarum libri duo._ Antuerpiae, 1561.

[221] Several fine sonnets have been ascribed to him (cf. _Fenix Renascida_, iii. 252, _Horas breves_, and, with more reason, iii. 253. _Á redea solta corre o pensamento_), as was also Gil Vicente’s _Dom Duardos_ and a manuscript _Tratado dos modos, proporções e medidas_.

[222] Duarte Nunez de Leam, _Descripção_, 2ᵃ ed. (1785), cap. 80: _Da habilidade das molheres portuguesas para as letras e artes liberaes._ Severim de Faria speaks of her _sancto desejo de saber_. The author of _Dos priuilegios & praerogatiuas q̃ ho genero femenino tem_ (1557) says (p. 9): _se pode estranhar esta hidade na qual as molheres não se aplicam aas letras e sciencias coma faziam as antigas Romanas e Gregas_.

[223] Gil Vicente, _Obras_ (1834), ii. 414.

[224] Ibid. iii. 350.

[225] Cf. João Rodriguez de Sá e Meneses in the _Cancioneiro Geral_: _De Çeita atee os Chijs_.

[226] M. Menéndez y Pelayo, _Antología_, vol. vii, p. clxiii.

[227] A. Herculano, _Historia da Inquisição_, 3ᵃ ed. (1879), i. 238. Cf. Camillo Castello Branco, _A Viuva do Enforcado_, _ad init._ No one of course thinks of comparing Gil Vicente with Shakespeare, but one may perhaps say that he resembles what Shakespeare might have been had he been born in the fifteenth century. The shipwreck in the _Triunfo do Inverno_ recalls the opening scene of _The Tempest_, as the mad friar recalls poor Tom, and the magnificent fidalgo Falstaff. In the _Farsa de Inés_ Pereira Inés, without being a shrew, is tamed by her husband, who says:

Se eu digo: Esto é novello Vos aveis de confirmalo.

[228] In 1513 Afonso de Albuquerque writes of ‘the son of Gil Vicente’ in India.

[229] It is customary in Portugal to fix the date of his birth in 1470 owing to the statement of the judge in the _Floresta de Enganos_ (1536) that he--the judge--was already sixty-six. It is a method which might lead to comical results if further pressed in the case of Vicente or other dramatists. Was Mello seventy-three when he wrote the _Fidalgo Aprendiz_?

[230] ‘A gentleman of good family’ (Ticknor); _hijo de ilustres padres_ (Barrera y Leirado); _na qualidade nobilissimo_ (Pedro de Poyares).

[231] iii. 275. Pederneira is mentioned again in ii. 390 and iii. 205.

[232] The authority is Cristovam Alão de Moraes in his manuscript _Pedatura Lusitana_ (1667) (No. 441 in the Public Library of Oporto). This genealogist, says Castello Branco, _era ás vezes ignorante e outras vezes mal intencionado_. He does not say that Martim Vicente exercised his alleged profession of silversmith at Guimarães, or that Gil was born there. What more probable than for Guimarães, proud of its poetical traditions, to invent a silversmith father for the famous poet-goldsmith? Pedro de Poyares, _Tractado em louvor da villa de Barcellos_ (1672), says that Gil Vicente, _em tempo de D. João o terceiro poeta celebre, foi natural de Barcellos e andam algumas cousas suas impressas_.

[233] _Grammatica_, ed. 1871, p. 118.

[234] Ibid., p. 81. See J. Leite de Vasconcellos, _Gil Vicente e a Linguagem Popular_, 1902. Feo, _Trattados Quadragesimais_ (1619), f. 10, mentions the _somsonete de pronunciação_ of the _ratinhos_.

[235] _Soncas_ occurs no less than seven times in the brief _Auto Pastoril Castelhano_. It occurs twice in the first twenty-eight lines of one of Enzina’s eclogues (_Cancionero de todas las obras_ (Çaragoça, 1516), f. lxxviii, and again f. lxxviii verso and lxxx).

[236] A. dos Reis, _Enthusiasmus Poeticus_ (_Corpus Ill. Poet. Lus._, tom. viii, pp. 18-19): _Quem iuvisse ferunt velut olim Polla maritum_. Manuel Tavares, _Portugal illustrado pelo sexo feminino_ (1734), calls her a _discretissima mulher_.

[237] _Com muita pena de minha velhice._ Ruy de Pina calls a man _mui velho_ whose father (King João I) would have been but ninety-one in that year (_Cr. de Afonso V_, cap. 105). Cf. Jorge Ferreira, _Ulysippo_, iii. 3: _velho se pode chamar pois vai aos cincoenta anos_.

[238] See Barros, _Asia_, 1. vi. 7. Beckford has glowing praise for ‘this gold custodium of exquisite workmanship’: ‘Nothing could be more beautiful as a specimen of elaborate Gothic sculpture than this complicated enamelled mass of flying buttresses and fretted pinnacles’ (_Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal_, Paris, 1834).

[239] Reference to gold, jewels, sapphires, pearls, rubies is frequent in his plays. The goldsmith in the _Farsa das Almocreves_ uses the technical word _bastiães_ which occurs in the _Livro Vermelho_ of Afonso V: _E porque alguns Ouriueses tem ora feita algũa prata dourada e de bastiães_. It occurs, however, in the _Cancioneiro Geral_ (_galantes bastiães_), in Resende’s _Miscellania_ (_bestiães_), and other writers.

[240] Cf. i. 127, 130; ii. 391, 488; iii. 151, 379.

[241] An unfortunate interpolation by the 1834 editors in the rubric of the _Auto da Sibila Cassandra_ was largely responsible for the belief that his patroness was not Queen Lianor but King Manuel’s mother D. Beatriz.

Yet the rubric of the _Auto dos Quatro Tempos_ says clearly that _a sobredita senhora_ is King Manuel’s sister.

[242] _Mas ja não auto bofé Como os autos que fazia Quando elle tinha com que_ (_Auto Pastoril Portugues_, i. 129).

[243] _Antología_, vii, p. clxvi. It should be said that Dr. Theophilo Braga, the late General Brito Rebello, and the late Dr. F. A. Coelho agree with Menéndez y Pelayo. Dr. Theophilo Braga even declares that he can prove an alibi. D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos opposed identity in 1894, and has not definitely expressed herself in its favour since. On the other hand, Snr. Braamcamp Freire is a convinced supporter of identifying poet and goldsmith.

[244] _Antología_, vii, p. clxxvi.

[245] And later Jeronimo Corrêa (†1660) at Lisbon, author of _Daphne e Apollo_ (Lisboa, 1624) and other prosaic verses, Xavier de Novaes (1820-69) at Oporto, and others. Perhaps the gold-beater of Seville, Lope de Rueda (1510?-65), whose _pasos_ are akin to Vicente’s _farsas_, was fired by his example and success.

[246] _Dialogo em lovvor de nossa linguagem_, 1785 ed., p. 222.

[247] Registers of the Chancellery of King Manuel (vol. xlii, f. 20 v.) in the Torre do Tombo, Lisbon.

[248] Cf. _Cancionero_, f. lxxxvi v.

[249] An effective instance of a line shortened by emotion. The long pause on _tardas_ in _Oo morte que tardas, quien te detien?_ is equally impressive, but the 1562 ed. has _de quien_ and Vicente may have written _Oo morte que tardas, di ¿quien te detien?_

[250] _Auto de Inés Pereira_ in the 1562 ed. So _Auto dos Almocreves_. It will, however, be convenient to call them _farsas_, since _auto_ is a more general term applicable to all the plays.

[251] _Quem tem farelos?_

[252] _O Juiz da Beira_, a continuation suggested by the success of the _Farsa de Inés Pereira_ and acted at Almeirim in 1525.

[253] _Farsa dos Almocreves_ (or _do Fidalgo Pobre_) acted at Coimbra (1525). It is curious to compare the sterner type of chaplain denounced in _Don Quixote_.

[254] _Auto das Fadas_ (1511).

[255] _Auto da Lusitania_ (1532) acted in honour of the birth of Prince Manuel (1531).

[256] _Farsa dos Fisicos_ (1512).

[257] _O Clerigo da Beira_ (1529?).

[258] _Auto da India_ (1509).

[259] _Farsa das Ciganas_ (or, in the 1562 edition. _Auto de hũas ciganas_), a very slight sketch acted in a _seram_ before the king at Evora (1521).

[260] _O Velho da Horta_ (1513).

[261] _Auto da Fama_ (Lisbon). Its date has been given as 1510, but internal evidence shows that it is later, probably 1515 or 1516 (although perhaps prior to the knowledge of Albuquerque’s death in India (December 16, 1515) since so splendid a paean in honour of the Portuguese victories would be out of place afterwards).

[262] = labourer from Beira. He figures in comedy as the slow-witted (or malicious) clod-hopper, to the delight of an urban audience.

[263] In the palace (at Lisbon, Almeirim, Evora) or in convents (Enxobregas, Thomar, Odivellas), once (as part of a procession) in a church (_Auto de S. Martinho_).

[264]

Os momos, os serões de Portugal Tam fallados no mundo, onde são idos, E as graças temperadas do seu sal?

[265] This play is written in lines of 10, 11, or 12 syllables with a break of a line of 5 or 6 syllables after every four lines. Most of Gil Vicente’s plays are in octosyllabic _redondilhas_ with or without breaks of a line of four syllables, as in the poems of Duarte de Brito and others in the _Cancioneiro Geral_. Lightness, grace, and ease mark this metre in Vicente’s hands.

[266] This splendour-loving king bears an unmistakable resemblance to King Manuel, before whom the play was acted, but in no other instance does Vicente allow his satire to touch the king or royal family: _cumpre attentar como poemos as mãos_ (_Cortes de Jupiter_).

[267] 1598 ed. (colophon). The date of the first edition is 1512.

[268] Montalvo’s _Amadis_ clearly. Vicente, who invariably suits his language to his subject, would have written in Portuguese had the text before him been Portuguese. If Montalvo’s _Amadis_ became fashionable in Portugal this was characteristic of the Portuguese, who would welcome foreign books while they despised and neglected their own.

[269] When Flerida meets D. Duardos disguised as a gardener she supposes that his ordinary fare is garlic.

[270] For the words _quanto en caso de amores_ the Censorship is evidently responsible.

[271] Cf. Zurara, _Cronica de D. João I_, 1899 ed., i. 116: _Alli houve momos de tão desvairadas maneiras que a vista delles fazia mui grande prazer_.

[272] _Cancioneiro Geral_, 1910 ed., i. 326.

[273] The Portuguese in the East in the sixteenth century maintained these customs. We read of Christmas _autos_ in India and a _representaçam dos Reis_ in Ethiopia. Cf. the Good Friday _centurios_ in Barros, II. i. 5.

[274] i. 103. The word was of course not new in the Peninsula. Cf. the thirteenth(?)-century _El Misterio de los Reyes Magos_.

[275] _Breve Summario da Historia de Deos_ (i. 309).

[276] In the _Pranto de Maria Parda_ ‘because she saw so few branches on the taverns in the streets of Lisbon and wine so dear and she could not live without it’.

[277] _Do macho rruço de Luys Freyre estando pera morrer._ See also Dr. H. R. Lang, C. G. C., pp. 174-8, note on the will of the Archdeacon of Toro; and the extract from a manuscript _testamento burlesco_ in J. Leite de Vasconcellos, _De Campolide a Melrose_ (1915).

[278] As neither of them is printed in his plays we cannot say whether they were two or one and the same, or whether the French of his song was more intelligible than the version preserved in Barbieri’s _Cancionero Musical_ (No. 429).

[279] For instance, the following lines and phrases of the _Cancioneiro Geral_: _Hirmee a tierras estrañas_, _Oo morte porque tardais_, _Vos soes o mesmo paço_, _E outras cousas que calo_, _O eco pelos vales_. The Portuguese fifteenth-century poet by whom he was most influenced was probably Duarte de Brito.

[280] They were published separately in the following century: Lisboa, 1649.

[281] Many writers note the large number of priests. The north of Portugal is _chea de muitos sacerdotes_ says Dr. João de Barros in his _Libro de Antiguidades_, &c., a book full of curious information collected by the author when he was a magistrate (_ouvidor_) at Braga, and written in 1549. [A different work, _Compendio e Summario de Antiguidades_, &c., variously attributed to Ruy de Pina and to Mestre Antonio, surgeon to King João II, appeared in 1606.] Gil Vicente was never in India, otherwise he would certainly have borne witness to the devotion and courage of monks and priests in the East and on the dangerous voyages to and from India.

[282] The anonymity may have been intentional, to emphasize the fact that there was no personal allusion to any of the poor _escudeiros_ who thronged the capital and Court.

[283] _Ep._ ii. 57.

[284] Letter from Evora, March 26, 1535.

[285] In the same play reappears Vicente’s Spaniard: _Castelhano muy fanfarrão_.

[286] According to the _Arte de Furtar_, _decimas_ and sonnets were written on the subject of a poor _fidalgo_ who was in the habit of sending his _moço_ to two shoemakers for a shoe on trial from each, since they would not trust him with a pair.

[287] If the _Dialogo da Resurreiçam_ be counted separately we have forty-four in all.

[288] Index of 1551. See C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, _Notas Vicentinas_, i (1912), p. 31. But here again the _Auto da Vida do Paço_ might be the _Romagem de Aggravados_.

[289] Cf. Barros, prefatory letter to _Ropica Pnefma_ (May 25, 1531): _falam tam solto como se estivessem em Alemanha nas rixas de Luthero_.

[290] _Notas Vicentinas_, p. 21, where the letter is given in the original Italian and in Portuguese. The Legate had lent a cardinal’s hat for the occasion, little realizing that it was to be worn by one of the actors in such a play (a witness to the realism with which Vicente’s plays were staged).

[291] His tolerant spirit, expressed in his letter to the King in 1531, was remarkable in an age not very remote from the day when Duarte de Brito wrote to Anton de Montoro (_c._ 1405-80) that he would have been burnt had he written in Portugal the blasphemous lines addressed to Queen Isabella of Spain:

Si no pariera Sanctana hasta ser nacida vos, de vos el hijo de Dios, rescibiera carne humana.

[292] As indeed they were to Milton: ‘Mombasa and Quiloa and Melind’. On the other hand, Garcia de Resende in one of the _decimas_ of his _Miscellania_ has twenty-six names: _Tem Ceita_, _Tanger_, _Arzilla_, &c., ordered rather for the rhyme than for harmony.

[293] He does not attack them without exception. There is much good sense in the _clerigo_ of Beira, and true charity in the _frade_ of the _Comedia do Viuvo_.

[294]

os lavradores Fazem os filhos paçãos, Cedo não ha de haver villãos: Todos d’ El Rei, todos d’ El Rei (_Farsa dos Almocreves_).

[295] Cf. the _balho vylam ou mourisco_ which cost Abul his gold chain in the _Cancioneiro Geral_, and Lopo de Almeida’s third letter, from Naples: _Mandaram bailar meu sobrinho com Beatriz Lopez o baylo mourisco e despois o vilão_. A century after Vicente the shepherds’ dances are but a memory: _as danças e bailios antigamente tão usados entre os pastores_ (Faria e Sousa, _Europa Portuguesa_, vol. iii, pt. 4).

[296] Cf. _Ulysippo_, iii. 6: _aquellas mayas que punhão, aquellas lampas, aquellas alvoradas_, and D. Francisco de Portugal, _Prisoens e Solturas de hũa Alma_: _Ines_ [of Almada] _moça de cantaro, a gabadinha dos ganhõis do lugar, requestada da velanao dos barbeiros, a cuja porta nunca faltou Mayo florido em dia de Santiago nem ramos verdes com perinhas no de S. João a que os praticos daquella noute chamão lampas._

[297] _Á morte d’ El Rei D. Manoel._

[298] His occasional coarseness is popular, rustic, and as a rule contrasts favourably with that of the _Cancioneiro Geral_.

[299] For a list containing about a hundred see T. Braga, _Eschola de Gil Vicente_, p. 545, or the _Diccionario Universal_, vol. i (1882), p. 1884, s.v. _Auto_.

[300] _Flores de España_, cap. 5.

[301] _Bib. Nova_, ii. 158. Elsewhere he speaks of him as _poetae comoediarum suo tempore celebratissimi_, and in the Appendix says: _cuius comoedias Lusitani admodum celebrant_. But after the sixteenth century Vicente was little more than a name. Faria e Sousa could say that his plays had been esteemed [_con_] _poquísima causa_ (the accidental omission of the _con_ led to the invention _poquísima cosa_); and a learned Coimbra professor, Frei Luis de Sotomaior, caught reading _as semsaborias de Gil Vicente, que em seus tempos foi mui celebrado_, felt bound to be apologetic: _Aurum colligo ex stercore_ (Francisco Soares Toscano, _Parallelos de Principes_ (Evora, 1623), f. 159).

§ 2

_Lyric and Bucolic Poetry_