Part 3

Twenty weeks after these splendid scenes and the _alegrias d'aquelas naves tam belas_[57] the King was dead. He died (13 Dec. 1521) in the full tide of apparent prosperity. As he watched the slow funeral procession passing in the night from the palace to Belem amid 600 burning torches[58] Gil Vicente must have thought of his own altered position. King Manuel had treated his sister's goldsmith generously[59] and had personally attended the acting of many of his plays. The diversion of elephant and rhinoceros had been only a momentary backsliding, and he had sat through the whole of the _Barca da Gloria_, in which a King and an Emperor fared so lamentably at the hands of the modern Silenus. But he does not appear to have done anything to secure the poet's well-being. King Manuel's sister, Vicente's faithful patroness, was, however, still alive, and he had much to hope from the new king who had grown up along with the Vicentian drama. Vicente's first literary production had celebrated his birth, at the age of nine the prince had been given a special verse in the _Auto das Fadas_ (III. 111), at the age of twelve he had actually intervened in the acting of the _Comedia do Viuvo_ (II. 99), although his part was confined to a single sentence. Finally, in the very year of his accession, he had been represented as a second Alexander in the _Cortes de Jupiter_, and the _Comedia de Rubena_ had been acted especially for him[60]. But King João III had not the careless temperament or graceful magnificence of his father, and while he evidently trusted Vicente and showed him constant goodwill--we have the proof in the pensions received by Vicente during this reign--the favourite of one king rarely finds the same atmosphere in the _entourage_ of his successor, however friendly the king himself. Thus while João III brooded over affairs of Church and State the _detractores_ had more opportunity to attack the Court dramatist. On December 19 the new king was proclaimed at Lisbon and Vicente, placed too far away to hear what was said at the ceremony, invented verses which he placed on the lips of the various courtiers as they kissed hands (III. 358-64). It was not only the king but the times that had changed, and King Manuel died not a moment too soon if he wished not to see the reverse side of the brightly coloured tapestry of his reign. Vicente ends his verses with the significant words:

Diria o povo em geral: Bonança nos seja dada, Que a tormenta passada Foi tanta e tam desigual.

In the following year he wrote a burlesque lamentation and testament, entitled _Pranto de Maria Parda_, 'because she saw so few branches in the streets of Lisbon and wine so dear, and she could not live without it[61].' In the late summer of 1523 in the celebrated convent of Thomar he presented one of his most famous farces before the King: _Farsa de Ines Pereira_. The critics were already gaining ground and 'certain men of good learning' doubted whether he was the author of his plays or stole them from others, a doubt suggested perhaps by the somewhat close resemblance of the _Barca da Gloria_ to the Spanish _Danza de la Muerte_.

Vicente vindicated his originality by taking as his theme the proverb 'Better an ass that carries me than a horse that throws me,' and developing it into this elaborate comedy. At Christmas of the same year at Evora, in the introductory speech of the _Auto Pastoril Portugues_, placed in the mouth of a _beirão_ peasant, the audience is informed that poor Gil who writes plays for the King is without a farthing and cannot be expected to produce them as splendidly as when he had the means (I. 129). He was probably disappointed that the 6 milreis which he had received that year (May 1523) was not a regular pension. His complaint fell on listening ears and in 1524 (the year of Camões' birth) he was granted two pensions, of 12 and of 8 milreis, while in January 1525 he received a yet further pension of three bushels of wheat. Thus, although his possession of an estate near Torres Vedras, not far from Lisbon, has been proved to be a myth and we know that the entire fortune of his widow consisted in 1566 of ten milreis and that of his son Luis of thirty[62], and while we must remember his expenses in travelling and in the production of his plays, his financial position compares very favourably with that of Luis de Camões half a century later.

The _Fragoa de Amor_, wrongly assigned to 1525, belongs to the year 1524, the occasion being the betrothal of King João III to Catharina, sister of the Emperor Charles V[63]. The year 1525 is the most discussed date in the Vicentian chronology. Two plays are doubtfully assigned to it and we may perhaps add a third, the _Auto da Festa_, as well as the _trovas_ addressed to the Conde de Vimioso. Senhor Braamcamp Freire[64] plausibly places in this year the _Farsa das Ciganas_, although the date of the rubric is 1521, the year perhaps in which the idea of this slight piece took shape in the poet's brain. There is a more definite reason for assigning _Dom Duardos_ to this year. It is a play based on the romance of chivalry commonly known as _Primaleon_, of which a new edition appeared at Seville in October 1524[65], and we know from Gil Vicente's dedication that Queen Lianor († 17 Dec. 1525) was still alive[66]. Yet we are still in the region of hypothesis, for the adventures of Dom Duardos were in print since 1512 (Salamanca)[67], and we may perhaps doubt whether this 'delicious idyl[68],' the longest of Vicente's works, was ready a year after the publication of the Seville edition, although as Senhor Braamcamp Freire points out[69], the betrothal of the Emperor Charles V to the King's sister was a suitable occasion for the production of the play[70]. The only play assigned with some certainty to 1525 is that in which the husband of Ines Pereira reappears as a rustic judge _à la Sancho Panza: O Juiz da Beira_, acted before the King at Almeirim.

It was a year of famine and plague at Lisbon. The fact that the verses addressed by Vicente to the Conde de Vimioso inform us that Vicente's household was down with the plague and his own life in danger (III. 38) bind these verses to no particular date, the plague being then all too common a visitation. Indeed General Brito Rebello and Senhor Braamcamp Freire both attribute this poem to 1518. His complaints of poverty would thus have begun immediately after his resignation of the lucrative post of Master of the Mint and before he had received his pensions. 'He who does not beg receives nothing,' he says, and later on in the same poem 'If hard work and merit spelt success I would have enough to live on and give and leave in my will' (III. 382-3). The general tone of these verses is more in accordance with that of his later plays[71], and the occasion was more probably that in which he composed the _Templo de Apolo_, written when he was _enfermo de grandes febres_ (II. 371), and acted in January 1526[72]. In his verses he tells the Conde de Vimioso that 'I have now in hand a fine farce. I call it _A Caça dos Segredos_. It will make you very gay.' 'I call it'; but the name given by the author was more than once ousted by a popular title. This implied popularity of Gil Vicente's plays, acted before the Court and not published in a collected edition till a quarter of a century after his death, might seem unaccountable were it not for the fact that some of his pieces, printed separately, were eagerly read, and that the people might be present in fairly large numbers when his plays were represented in church or convent. We know too that plays were acted in private houses. The publication of Antonio Ribeiro Chiado's _Auto da Natural Invençam_ (_c._ 1550) by the Conde de Sabugosa throws much light on this subject. This _auto_, acted a few years after Vicente's death, contains the description of the presentation of a play in a private house at Lisbon. The play was to begin at 10 or 11 p.m., the actors having to play first at two other private houses. So great is the interest that not only is the house crowded and its door besieged but the throng in the street outside is so thick that the players have much difficulty in forcing their way through it. The owner of the house had given 10 cruzados for the play[73]. Vicente's _Auto da Festa_ was similarly acted in a private house. The most interesting of all the facts recorded by Chiado is the eagerness of the people. Uninvited persons from the crowd outside kept pressing in at the door. Thus we can easily understand how the people could give their own name to a play, fastening on words or incident that especially struck them. The Farce of the Poor Squire became _Quem tem farelos?_[74], the author's name for the _Auto da Mofina Mendes_ was _Os Mysterios da Virgem_ (I. 103), the _Clerigo da Beira_ was also known as the _Auto de Pedreanes_[75]. Therefore when we come upon a new title of a Vicente play unknown to us we need not conclude that it is a new play.

Of the seven Vicente plays[76] placed on the Portuguese _Index_ of 1551 four are known to us. The _Auto da Vida do Paço_ may be identified with some probability with the _Romagem de Aggravados_[77]. If we may not identify the _Jubileu de Amores_ with the _Auto da Feira_ its disappearance must be accounted for by the wrath of the Church of Rome, which fell upon it when produced at Brussels in 1531[78]. The remaining play _O Auto da Aderencia do Paço_ can scarcely be identified with the _Auto da Festa_ on the ground that the _vilão_ says (1906 ed., p. 123):

Quem quiser ter que comer Trabalhe por aderencia: Haverá quanto quiser. Vosoutros que andais no paço....

especially as there was scarcely anything for the Censorship to condemn: merely the mention of the _Priol's_ two sons (p. 111) and the ease with which the old woman obtains a Bull from the Nuncio (pp. 120, 124). There is far more reason, 'in my simple conjectures,' for believing that _A Caça dos Segredos_ altered its name before or after it was produced and became _A farsa chamada Auto da Lusitania_. In the burlesque passage concerning Gil Vicente in this play (III. 275-6) we learn that he was instructed for seven years and a day in the Sibyl's cave and informed by the Sibyl of the secrets which she knew about the past:

E ali foi ensinado Sete anos e mais um dia E da Sibila informado Dos segredos que sabia Do antigo tempo passado.

If the _Trovas ao Conde de Vimioso_ were written in 1525, the seven years during which Vicente hunted for secrets bring us to 1532, the date of the _Auto da Lusitania_. The necessary allusions to the birth of the Prince were inserted, but the play had been ready long before[79].

The _Auto da Festa_ was probably acted in a private house at Evora. It contains scarcely an indication as to its date[80], but it has passages similar to others in the _Farsa de Ines Pereira_ (1523), the _Fragoa de Amor_[81] (1524) and the _Farsa das Ciganas_ (1525?)[82]. That the play was prior to the _Templo de Apolo_ seems evident, and the author would be unlikely to copy from what he calls an _obra doliente_ (II. 373) with Portuguese passages introduced to prop up a play originally written wholly in Spanish (_ibid._). Nor need the anti-Spanish passages tell against the year of the betrothal of Charles V and the Infanta Isabel, for they are placed in the mouth of a _vilão_ and the play was performed in private. In the _Templo de Apolo_ the anti-Spanish atmosphere has not quite vanished, but the _vilão_ contents himself with saying that _Deos não é castelhano_, and even so Apollo feels bound to present his excuses:

Villano ser descortés No es mucho de espantar.

_Quem não parece esquece_, says Vicente in his _trovas_ to Vimioso. _Les absents ont tort_. After a quarter of a century he could no longer describe his _autos_ as a new thing and he was now confronted by the formidable novelty of the hendecasyllabic metre introduced by Sá de Miranda from Italy. He felt that he had his back against the wall[83]. He made a prodigious effort to vary the themes of his plays and to produce them with increasing frequency. The year 1527 is his _annus mirabilis_. The _Sumario da Historia de Deos_ and the _Dialogo sobre a Ressurreiçam_ are assigned, if not to this year, to the period 1526-8[84]. The _Nao de Amores_ celebrated the entry of Queen Catharina into Lisbon in 1527, and before the autumn[85] three plays, the _Divisa da Cidade de Coimbra_, the _Farsa dos Almocreves_ and the _Tragicomedia da Serra da Estrella_, had been presented before the Court at the charming old town of Coimbra which ten years later definitively became the University town of Portugal. His great efforts were not unrewarded, for in the following year he received a yet further pension of 12 milreis. On his way back from Coimbra to Santarem he fell among some Spanish carriers who took advantage of the new Queen's favour to fleece the poet, and he wrote some verses of comic complaint to the King (II. 383-4). The rubric assigns to the same year the famous _Auto da Feira_ (Lisbon: Christmas 1527) but Snr Braamcamp Freire[86] points out that King João did not spend Christmas of this year at Lisbon and assigns it to 1528, the year in which the celebrated Dialogues of Alfonso and Juan de Valdés saw the light. In April 1529 the _Triunfo do Inverno_ celebrated the birth of the Infanta Isabel. The author introduced the play in a long lament in verse over the forgotten jollity of earlier times and then, to show that his own hand had lost none of its cunning, he gave his audience a feast of lyrical passages in the Triumphs of Winter and Spring.

In 1527 Vicente seems clearly to have aimed his allusions to the sons of priests at Francisco de Sá de Miranda, whose father was a priest and who was born at Coimbra. And now in _O Clerigo da Beira_[87] we have a priest addressing his son Francisco and telling him that a priest's son will never come to any good. On his part the grave Sá de Miranda had protested against the introduction of scenes from the Bible into the _farsas_: the allusion to Vicente was clear although his treatment of such scenes was usually reverent. Vicente still had the ear of the Court and Sá de Miranda could only lament that the new style had at first so little vogue in Portugal. That the King, when he had leisure, consulted Vicente on weightier matters than the production of Court plays is proved by a passage[88] in the letter addressed to him by the poet from Santarem. A terrible earthquake shock on Jan. 26, 1531, followed by other severe shocks, kept the people in a panic for fifty days. _Terruerant satis haec pavidam praesagia plebem_, and to make matters worse the monks of Santarem, with an eye on the new Christians, spoke of the wrath of God and announced another earthquake as calmly as if they were giving out the hour of evensong. Vicente, who in his letter to the King[89] says, like Newman's Gerontius, 'I am near to death,' assembled the monks and preached them an eloquent sermon. The prestige of the Court poet restrained their zeal and probably avoided another massacre such as he had seen at Lisbon a quarter of a century before. It was in December of this year that the _Jubileu de Amores_ was acted in the house of the Portuguese Ambassador at Brussels, to the horror of Cardinal Aleandro, who almost persuaded himself that he was witnessing the sack of Rome four years earlier. It was perhaps before this that King João commanded Vicente to publish his works, but he could not be greatly perturbed that a play by Vicente had given offence to the Holy See, with which he was himself often in unpleasant relations at this time. At all events Vicente continued to produce his plays. In 1532 the birth of the long desired heir to the throne was celebrated at Lisbon, and Vicente presented the _Auto da Lusitania_, while two long plays, the _Romagem de Aggravados_ and _Amadis de Gaula_, belong to the following year. The former was acted at Evora in honour of the birth of the Infante Felipe (May 1533). _Amadis de Gaula_ perhaps shows some signs of weariness, and if he played the part of Amadis he would apply to himself the lines

Que ya veis que soy pasado A la vida de los muertos (II. 282).

The _Auto da Cananea_ was written at the request of the Abbess of Oudivellas and acted at that convent near Lisbon in 1534. It contains perhaps a reference to the earthquake of 1531 (I. 373). The _Auto da Mofina Mendes_ may have been written some years before it was acted in the presence of the King at Evora on Christmas morning 1534: it alludes to the capture of Francis I at Pavia (1525) and to the sack of Rome (1527). Vicente had returned to Evora at least as early as August 1535, and in 1536 he produced there before the King his last play, the _Floresta de Enganos_, which may well have been a collection of farcical scenes written at various periods of his career[90]. We know that he was dead on April 16, 1540. He did not follow the Court to Lisbon in August 1537 and his death may be assigned with some plausibility to the end of 1536 at Evora[91]. The children of his second marriage were almost certainly with him, Paula and Luis, who edited his works in 1562 and were now still in their teens, and the even younger Valeria. Paula seems to have inherited her father's versatility and his musical, dramatic and literary tastes. Tradition connects her closely with him and would even assign her a part in the composition of his plays. Another and a more reliable tradition says that he was buried in the Church of S. Francisco at Evora. His life had been full and strenuous and we leave him in this quiet little town _depois da vida cansada descansando_[92].

II. CHARACTER AND IDEAS

If we were limited to the information about Gil Vicente furnished by his contemporaries, we should but know that he had introduced into Portugal _representações_ of eloquent style and novel invention imitating Enzina's eclogues with great skill and wit[93], and that the mordant comic poet Gil Vicente, who hid a serious aim beneath his gaiety and was skilled in veiling his satire in light-hearted jests, might have excelled Menander, Plautus and Terence if he had written in Latin instead of in the vulgar tongue[94]. That is, we should have known nothing that we could not learn from his plays and it is to his plays that we must go if we would be more closely acquainted with his character and his attitude towards the problems of his day. King Manuel, says Damião de Goes, always kept at his Court Spanish buffoons as a corrective of the manners and habits of the courtiers[95]. The King may have had something of the sort in his mind in encouraging Gil Vicente, and probably he especially favoured his allusions to the courtiers; but we cannot for a moment consider that Vicente, friend and adviser of King João III, the grave town-councillor whose influence could check the fanaticism of the monks at Santarem--can we imagine them bowing before a mere mountebank, a strolling player?--was looked upon simply as a Court jester. The impression left by his plays is, rather, that of the worthy thoughtful face of Velazquez as painted in his _Las Meninas_ picture, a figure closely familiar with the Court yet still somewhat aloof, _apartado_. like Gil Terron. Vicente regards himself as a _rustico peregrino_ (III. 390), an _ignorante sabedor_ (I. 373) as opposed to the ignorant-malicious or ignorant-presumptuous of the Court. But Vicente was no ascetic, his was a genial, generous nature, he liked to have enough to spend and give and leave in his will. Kindly and chivalrous, he was a champion of the down-trodden but had first-hand knowledge of the malice and intrigues of the peasants and of the poor in the towns. Above all he was thoroughly Portuguese. He might place his scene in Crete but in that very scene he would refer to things so Portuguese as the _janeiras_ and _lampas de S. João_. Portugal is

Pequeno e muy grandioso, Pouca gente e muito feito, Forte e mui victorioso, Mui ousado e furioso Em tudo o que toma a peito,

and he appears to have shared the popular prejudice against Spain. Did he also share the people's hostility towards the priests and the Jews? It cannot be said that the priests presented in his plays are patterns of morality. As to the Jews he knows of their corrupt practices and describes them in a late play as _a mais falsa ralé_[96]. It was during the last ten years of Vicente's life that the question of the new Christians came especially to the front (from 1525). In earlier plays Vicente seems more sympathetic towards them and the pleasant sketch of the Jewish family in Lisbon is as late as 1532[97]. In 1506, the very year of the massacre of Jews at Lisbon, he had gone to the root of the question when he declared in his lay sermon that:

Es por demás pedir al judío Que sea cristiano en el corazón ... Que es por demás al que es mal cristiano Doctrina de Cristo por fuerza ni ruego[98].

And twenty-five years later he said to the monks at Santarem: 'If there are some here who are still strangers to our faith it is perhaps for the greater glory of God[99].' That is to say: if you force the Jews to become Christians you will only make them hypocrites; far better to treat them frankly as Jews and not expect figs from thistles. That Vicente himself was a devout Christian and Catholic and a deeply religious man such plays as the _Auto da Alma_, the _Barcas_, the _Sumario_, the _Auto da Cananea_ are sufficient proof. He had much of the Erasmian spirit but nothing in common with the Reformation. His irreverence is wholly external, it was abuses not doctrine that he attacked, the ministers of the Church and not the Church itself. He may have been in the secret of King João's somewhat stormy negotiations with the Holy See and he took the national and regalist view: in the _Auto da Feira_ Mercury addresses Rome as follows:

Nam culpes aos reis da terra, Que tudo te vem de cima (I. 166).

He wished to reform the Church from within. All are perversely asleep, a sleep of death[100]. Many prayers do not suffice without _almas limpas e puras_[101]. Men must be judged by their works[102]. In the _Auto da Fé_ (1510) we have a simple declaration of faith:

Fé he amar a Deos só por elle Quanto se pode amar, Por ser elle singular, Nam por interesse delle; E se mais quereis saber, Crer na Madre Igreja Santa E cantar o que ella canta E querer o que ella quer[103].