Part 19

For those so fastidious as to be satisfied neither by the popular _autos_ nor the staid classical plays, yet another kind was provided in the shape of Celestina comedies in prose. Of the life of their author we know scarcely more than that he was very well known in his day. Judging by literary merit only, one might assign the verses written by Jorge de Vasconcellos in the _Cancioneiro Geral_ to JORGE FERREIRA DE VASCONCELLOS (_c._ 1515-63?), since the poems, alike in the new and the old style, interspersed in his works do not prove him to have possessed high poetical talent. It is as a dramatist and still more as a writer of Portuguese prose that the distinguished courtier of King João III’s reign[377]--deserves a higher place in Portuguese literature than his ungrateful countrymen have habitually accorded him. But the dates forbid the identification of the dramatist with the earlier poet, who was also a notable courtier since he is specially mentioned in Vicente’s _Cortes de Jupiter_ (ii. 404). One of the few definite facts known to us concerning Jorge Ferreira is that affirmed in the preface of his _Eufrosina_: that this play was the first fruit of his genius, written in his youth.[378] The exact date of _Eufrosina_ is unknown, but it was written after the University had been finally established at Coimbra in 1537--the date of the letter from India (December 20, 1526[379]) is clearly a misprint since mention is made of the siege of Diu (1538). Ferreira de Vasconcellos evidently studied law at the University. If he was born, not at Coimbra but at Lisbon, he may have begun his studies in the capital. At the time of Prince Duarte’s death (1540) he was in his service, as _moço da camara_, and he continued as a Court official, first, perhaps, in the service of the heir to the throne, Prince João, who died on January 2, 1554, and then in that of King Sebastião. In 1563 he was succeeded as Secretary (_escrivão do Tesouro_) by Luis Vicente, probably son of the poet Gil. The document[380] which nominates his successor by no means implies his death, since, as Menéndez y Pelayo[381] observed, his name is unaccompanied by the formula _que Deus perdoe_ or _aja_. But it is strange, if he did not die till 1585, the date given by Barbosa Machado, that nothing more is heard of him after 1563 (we are told that his son died at the battle of Alcacer Kebir), and that his son-in-law called _Aulegrafia_, written before the death of Prince Luis (1555), his swan-song.[382] Apart from manuscript treatises which were never published, Jorge Ferreira is the author of four works in prose, the three plays, _Eufrosina_, _Ulysippo_, _Aulegrafia_, and the _Memorial da Segunda Tavola Redonda_. The latter is an involved romance of chivalry[383] which describes the adventures of the Knight of the Crystal Arms, emulator of the Knights of the Round Table and Amadis of Gaul. Each chapter commences with a brief sententious reflection, from which the reader is plunged into mortal combats of knights, centaurs, giants, and dragons. It begins by giving an account of King Arthur, his disappearance, and the prosperous reign of Sagramor. It ends with a vivid description of the tournament (August 5, 1552) at Enxobregas (= Xabregas) in which the ill-fated Prince João was the principal figure. Barbosa Machado included among Ferreira de Vasconcellos’ works _Triunfos de Sagramor em que se tratão os feitos dos Cavalleiros da Segunda Tavola Redonda_ (Coimbra, 1554). A passage in the _Memorial_[384] may have led to the belief that this was a second part of the _Memorial_, of which the first known edition is that of Coimbra, 1567, but from the preface[385] it appears that the _Memorial_ _is_ the _Triunfos_. The title _Triunfos de Sagramor_ may have been given to an earlier edition,[386] or it may have been the title of the second half of the work. The author himself declares that his story had been ‘presented’ to Prince João.[387] The editor of _Ulysippo_ in 1618 says that the _Memorial_ had been printed at least twice during the author’s lifetime.[388] Yet it is difficult not to suspect that the date 1554 was a confusion with the year of the death of the prince to whom the work was dedicated. The same uncertainty, as we have seen, prevails as to the date of the first edition of the author’s masterpiece _Eufrosina_. (He published his plays anonymously, partly perhaps for the same reason that made him insist that his characters represented no definite persons but types.) The earliest edition that we have is that of Evora, 1561, that of Coimbra, 1560, having disappeared, if it ever existed.[389] The words on the title-page, _de nouo reuista & em partes acrecentada_, need not imply more than that, as we know, the manuscript had circulated among his friends: _por muitas mãos deuassa e falsa_. As a novelty, _invençam noua nesta terra_, _Eufrosina_ with its proverbs and its ingenious thoughts and phrases was appreciated in Portugal, whose inhabitants were justifiably proud now to possess a _Celestina_ of their own, a _Celestina_ with less action and rhetoric but more thought and sentiment.[390] Quevedo was loud in its praises, Lope de Vega perhaps quoted it,[391] its influence on the style of Mello and other Portuguese writers is clear. It was a legitimate success and its modern neglect is all the more deplorable because in this play the Portuguese language, the richness, concision, and grace of which are exalted in the preface, appears in its purest, raciest form. The author’s vocabulary is immense, his sentences admirably vigorous and clear. After heading the E’s in the _Index_ of 1581 (_Evphrosina_ simply, without author) it was reprinted by the poet Rodriguez Lobo in 1616, in a slightly modified form, shorn, that is, of some of the coarser passages and of all reference to the Scriptures.[392] The style is not the only merit of _Eufrosina_. Despite the lack of proportion in some of the scenes, in which Jorge Ferreira proves himself to have been, like Richardson, ‘a sorry pruner’ (four scenes out of the thirty-nine constitute a quarter of the play), there is a certain unity in this story of the love of the poor courtier Zelotipo de Abreu for Eufrosina, proud and beautiful daughter of the rich _fidalgo_ D. Carlos, Senhor das Povoas, in the little ancient university town above the green waters and willows of Mondego. The numerous other persons are strictly subordinate, and both scenes and characters are skilfully drawn. The artificial construction, the convention by which emotion finds vent in a string of classical allusions, scarcely mar the exceedingly natural presentment of many of the scenes. Charming, for instance, is that in which Eufrosina and her companion and friend Silvia de Sousa, Zelotipo’s cousin, watch from the terrace of their house the river’s gentle flow and along its bank the citizens and students taking the air in the cool of the evening. The play contains as many characters as a modern novel. There is Cariofilo, a gay good-hearted Don Juan; his friend, the more serious Zelotipo, type of the Portuguese lover, the _galante contemplativo_; D. Carlos, quick to anger but easily appeased; the pedantic, unscrupulous Dr. Carrasco, whose conversation with D. Carlos gives scope for a vigorous attack on the legal profession; Silvia, who sacrifices her love and gives up to Eufrosina her cousin’s verses that she had so carefully kept; the _moços_ Andrade and Cotrim, greedy, timid, and talkative; the gentleman of Coimbra, Philotimo, a wise and kindly man of the world. Other phases of Coimbra life are shown in the _moças de rio_ and _de cantaro_, who fetch water or wash clothes in the Mondego and metaphorically toss in a blanket Galindo, the rich D. Tristão’s agent from Lisbon; in the love-lorn student with his Latin, the morose and jealous workman Duarte, proud of his position as _official_, the resolute goldsmith and his languid daughter Polinia, the old servant Andresa and the merry servant girl Vitoria, and, most prominent of all, Philtra the _alcoviteira_, deploring the wickedness and degeneracy of the world and full of wise saws--the play contains many hundreds. Eufrosina herself is first described by the lover--brow of Diana, lips of Venus, limbs of Pallas, clear green eyes[393] of Juno, quietly mirthful; then by his servant Andrade--the fairest thing that ever he thought to see, fan in hand, the sleeves of her dress like a ship at full sail[394]--so that we have an effective impression of her beauty. Besides Coimbra life we obtain glimpses of that of the Court at Lisbon and Almeirim in a letter from the courtier Crisandor, of India in a very real and interesting letter from Silvia’s brother, even of Cotrim’s native village. That the unity was not sacrificed to these many by-scenes says much for the author’s skill. This praise cannot be given to his second play written some ten years after the first, _Ulysippo_ (1547?), for here the reader loses his way among the many courses of true love. There are twenty-one _dramatis personae_, but the principal interest is in the sketch of Constança d’Ornellas, the hypocritical _beata_,[395] or, rather, that is the most original part, since in the play as a whole there is a certain monotony after _Eufrosina_, and many of the proverbs are the same.[396] Excellent as the earlier play in its terse and idiomatic prose,[397] full of interest in the insight it gives into the customs and life of the people, its chief fault is the intricacy, or absence, of plot which makes it difficult reading, and of course it would naturally please less on its first appearance as being no longer a new thing. The author, who knew how the Portuguese prized _novidades_, appears to have been conscious of this, since his third play, _Aulegrafia_, written perhaps in 1555,[398] and first published in 1619, was developed on somewhat different lines. It is concerned, as its name implies, exclusively with the Court, and the people and popular proverbs are in abeyance. In its fifty scenes we are introduced to typical Court ladies, noble _fidalgos_, poor gentlemen and their servants, one of whom considers it _mais fidalgo nam saber ler_. The play is by its author termed ‘a long treatise on Court manners’,[399] and as such it is admirable and full of interest, however negligible it may be as drama. Its style, moreover, even excels in atticism Ferreira’s other works. The most remarkable character is that of the young (_menina e moça_) and very wily aunt of Filomela. She is twice described in detail (f. 46 and f. 153 v.), and we perceive that Philtra of the people, the middle-class Constança d’Ornellas, and the aristocratic Aulegrafia are really three persons and one spirit. In _Ulysippo_ one of the lesser personages was the Spanish _Sevilhana_ (mentioned also in _Eufrosina_), and here a boastful Spanish adventurer is introduced in the person of Agrimonte de Guzman, who disdains to speak Portuguese. The scene of both the later plays is Lisbon. The author drew from his experience here, as previously at Coimbra, and often describes to the life the persons that he had met. Scarcely any other writer gives us so intimate an idea of the times--of this the latter heyday of Portugal’s greatness--or of the gallant, lovesick, dreaming Portuguese, who considers love as much a monopoly of his country as the ivory and spices of India.[400]

FOOTNOTES:

[353] The disapproval of the popular drama is frequent in religious writers. In the seventeenth century Antonio Vieira declared that _uma das felicidades que se contava entre as do tempo presente era acabarem-se as comedias em Portugal_. Feo earlier, in common with many others, had similarly denounced the romances of chivalry _pelos quaes o Demonio comvosco fala; livraria do diabo_ (_Tratt. Qvad._ (1619), ff. 156, 157).

[354] One of them, João, _lavrador_, says: _Vimos ver se he assi ou nam De hũa arremedaçam Que s’a ca d’arremedar.... Ora nos dizei se he assi Que fazem ho ayto cá._

[355] e. g. Branca Janes says of her husband:

He hum grão comedor, Destruidor da fazenda, &c.

[356] Cf. _este leo ja Celestina_ (_Primeira Parte dos Avtos_, &c. (1587), f. 44).

[357] The student’s song on f. 44 v. and f. 46, _Polifema mi postema Grande mal he querer bem_, parodies Lobeira’s _Leonoreta fin roseta_.

[358] Ibid., f. 49.

[359] _Primeira Parte dos Avtos_, f. 57:

_Ro._ Senhor, se me dá licença, Ja eu aquela trova li.

_Os._ Qual trova leste? _Ro._ Essa sua, Como a disse nua e crua.

_Os._ E onde a leste, vilão?

_Ro._ Cuido, señor, que em Boscão, E canta-se pela rua.

[360] The Devil speaks both Portuguese and Spanish. All the other characters in Prestes’ plays, with the exception of an enchanted Moor, speak Portuguese. On the other hand, there are frequent Spanish words and quotations. The word _algorrem_ occurs twice in these plays, but the attempt to retain the old style of peasant conversation is but half-hearted.

[361] Duarte in the _Auto dos Cantarinhos_ sleeps on an _arca_ (chest) like the _moço_ in _O Juiz da Beira_. There are other echoes of Vicente, as the words _quem tem farelos?_ (1871 ed., p. 65), the reference to _Flerida e Dom Duardos_ (p. 485), the line _Que má cousa são vilãos_ (p. 420), the peasant who, like Mofina Mendes, builds up his future on the strength of an apple of gold, which proves to be a coal (pp. 407-8).

[362] _Auto do Mouro Encantado_ (p. 347). Unless there was an earlier edition of _Lazarillo de Tormes_, this play must therefore have been written after 1554. Prestes’ _Auto do Procurador_ was written before 1557.

[363] p. 262. For a corresponding knowledge of _Amadis de Gaula_, &c., among English servants see Dr. Henry Thomas, _The Palmerin Romances_, London, 1916, pp. 38-40.

[364] _Alfea_ (ed. 1631), p. 59. The wonderful spelling is due to the printer (e.g. _sesse_ = cease) as well as to the peasants (e.g. _monteplica_ = multiply, _pialdrade_ = piety).

[365] _Composto por A. D. S. R._ There is an earlier _Acto Sacramental da Jornada do Menino Deus para o Egypto_ (1746).

[366] It contains a dispute between Maize and Rye, after the very popular fashion of the contention between Winter and Spring in Vicente’s _Auto dos Quatro Tempos_, and the poetical contrasts common in the Middle Ages and in the East, and still in vogue among the _improvisatori_ of Basque villages, between wine and water, boots and sandals, &c.

[367] i.e. No. 3: _De hvm almotacel borracho_; No. 5: _Dos conselhos de hvm letrado_ (a _ratinho_ figures in this, as a _ratiño_ figures in No. 17); No. 6: _Do negro mais bem mandado_ (the _escudeiro’s moço_ is here a negro who speaks in broken Portuguese, e.g. Zesu); No. 11: _Dous cegos enganados_; No. 13: _Das padeiras de Lisboa_ (besides the bakeresses there is a _meleiro_ (honey-seller), an _alheiro_ with his _braços_ of leeks, an _azeiteiro_, &c.), and No. 25. The titles of these plays sufficiently show their homely character.

[368] Of its author we only know that he was _Ulysbonense_. The play had many editions: 1747, 1758, 1789, 1853.

[369] A priest of the same name wrote political and religious pamphlets in the middle of the nineteenth century.

[370] The _affronta de Dio_ is mentioned. It may have been written in the same year as Ferreira de Vasconcellos’ _Eufrosina_.

[371] In a letter sent with _Os Vilhalpandos_ to the Infante Duarte he says that _ninguem que eu saiba_ had so written in Portuguese.

[372] _A comedia qual he tal va, aldeaã e mal atauiada._

[373] A passage in _Aulegrafia_ (1555?) describes the dramatic death of Antony as a new thing: _parece-me que o estou vendo_ (f. 129).

[374] _Tragedia mvy sentida e elegante de Dona Inés de Castro ... Agora nouamente acrescentada_ (31 ff. unnumbered). The one who published _first_ was the most likely to be the thief. _Saudade_ is translated _soledad_.

[375] _Nesta Universidade ... onde pouco antes se viram outras que a todas as dos antigas ou levam ou não dam ventagem._ _Bristo_ was written _por só seu desenfadamento em certos dias de ferias e ainda esses furtados ao estudo_. It is a _comedia mixta, a mor parte della motoria_.

[376] In _El Rei Seleuco_ the doctor and in _Filodemo_ the shepherd and _bobo_ speak Spanish.

[377] _Homem fidalgo mᵗᵒ cortezão & discretto_ (Rangel Macedo, manuscript _Nobiliario_, in Lisbon _Bib. Nac._); _aquelle galante e elegante cortesão Portugues_ (_licença_ of 1618 ed. of _Ulysippo_).

[378] _As primicias do meu rustico engenho, que he a Comedia Eufrosina, e foi ho primeiro fruito que delle colhi, inda bem tenrro._

[379] _Eufrosina_, ii. 5.

[380] Discovered by General Brito Rebello in the Torre do Tombo and printed in his _Gil Vicente_ (1902), p. 114.

[381] _Orígenes de la Novela_, vol. iii, p. ccxxx.

[382] Sousa de Macedo, in _Eva e Ave_ (1676 ed., p. 131), says that he lived in the reign of King João and in the beginning of that of King Sebastian, which confirms the date 1563 as that of his death.

[383] Some of its heroes have geographical names, as King Tenarife of the Canary Islands and the Spanish Moor Juzquibel, who now survives in the name of the mountain that falls to the sea above Fuenterrabía. The author shows considerable knowledge of the Basque country, and we may perhaps infer that he was at the French Court and studied the Basque provinces on the way.

[384] 1867 ed., p. 21: _como se vee ao diante no triumpho del rey Sagramor_.

[385] _Nesta trasladação do triumpho del Rey Sagramor_, ibid., p. viii.

[386] A vague tradition placed the 1554 edition in the Lisbon Torre do Tombo, but inquiries in 1916 proved that nothing is known of it there.

[387] _Ao esclarecido Principe ja apresentada_, ibid., p. vii.

[388] _A primeira parte da Tabola redonda que pera a terceira impressão emendou o Autor em sua vida_ (_Aduertencia ao leitor_).

[389] Nicolás Antonio, whose information as to Portuguese books was often far from accurate, says that there were several editions before that of 1616, probably an erroneous deduction from the 1561 title-page. The late Menéndez y Pelayo, who also made many slips in dealing with Portuguese literature, declared that the 1560 edition was in the British Museum, which, however, only possesses a (mutilated) copy of the edition of Evora, 1561 (lacking the colophon with the date). Of the 1561 edition several copies exist, that of the Torre do Tombo, that in the library of the late Snr. Francisco Van Zeller at Lisbon, and that of the British Museum.

[390] João de Barros, _Dialogo em lovvor da nossa lingvagem_ (1540), wrote that the Portuguese language _parece nam consintir em si hũa tal obra como Celestina_ (1785 ed., p. 222).

[391] _La Filomena_, 1621 ed., p. 188. The quotation, if direct, was from the 1561 edition, not that of 1616, in which part of the sentence quoted is omitted, as in the Spanish translation first published ten years later, in 1631.

[392] They were considered out of place in a comedy. The Catalogue of 1581 condemns _todos os mais tratados onde se aplicam, vsurpam & torcem as autoridades & sentenças da sancta escriptura a sentidos profanos, graças, escarnios, fabulas, vaidades, lisonjarias, detracções, superstições, encantações & semelhantes cousas_. The rules were carried out most mechanically.

[393] Green eyes are beloved by Portuguese writers for their rarity or from an early mistaken rendering of the French _vair_ (e.g. Sylvia in the sixteenth, Joaninha in the nineteenth century). The _glosadores_ inclined to them on account of the second person of the infinitive ‘to see’: _verdes_.

[394] In Arraez, _Dialogos_ (1604), f. 311 v. fashionable women _parecem ... velas de nao inchadas_.

[395] In the first edition she had been called a _beata_. In that of 1618 she became merely a widow woman, _dona viuva_, but the editor defeated the censor’s intentions by noting the change in the preface and declaring that but for this she remained exactly the same as before.

[396] Here the doctors, not the lawyers, are _conjurados contra o mundo_.

[397] Cf. the brief but eloquent praises of wine and of love.

[398] One might be inclined to place it later were not the Infante Luis (†November 27, 1555) still alive.

[399] _Um largo discurso da cortesania vulgar_, f. 178 v. Cf. f. 5: _pretende mostraruos ao olho o rascunho da vida cortesaã_. On f. 5 v. it is called _esta selada_ _Portuguesa_. The courtiers spend all the time they can spare from the pursuit of love in discussing the rival merits of the _romance velho_ and new-fangled sonnet, of Boscán and Garci Lasso, of Spanish and Portuguese, a line of a Latin poet, &c.

[400] _O amor é portugues_ (_Aulegrafia_, f. 38 v.).

§ 4

_Luis de Camões_