Part 5

Vicente's close acquaintance with Spanish literature shows itself at every turn, and if we examine his plays we find but slight traces of the influence of any other literature. His first pieces were written in Spanish, and the Spanish is that of Enzina. Lines and phrases are taken bodily from the Spanish poet and words belonging to the conventional _sayagués_ (in which there was already a Portuguese element: cf. _ollos_ for _ojos_) placed on the lips of _charros_ by Enzina are transferred from Salamanca to Beira. The Enzina eclogues imitated by Vicente were based on those of Virgil, but in Vicente's imitation there is no vestige of any knowledge of the classics. The only Latin that occurs is the quotation by Gil Terron of three lines from the Bible. A little later the hungry _escudero_ of _Quem tem farelos?_ was in all probability derived from Spanish literature, either from the Archpriest of Hita's _Libro de Buen Amor_ or from some popular sketch such as that contained later in _Lazarillo de Tormes_ (1554)[135]. The only French element in the _Auto da Fé_ is the _fatrasie_ or _enselada_ 'which came from France,' but its text is not given. The classical allusions to Virgil and the Judgment of Paris in the _Auto das Fadas_ are perfectly superficial. A little medical Latin is introduced in the _Farsa dos Fisicos_. _O Velho da Horta_, which opens with the Lord's Prayer, half in Latin, half in Portuguese[136], is written in Portuguese with the exception of the fragment of song and the lyric _¿Cual es la niña?_ There is a reference to Macias, a name which had become a commonplace in Portuguese poetry as the type of the constant lover. Spanish influence is shown in the introduction of the _alcouviteira_ Branca Gil, probably suggested by Juan Ruiz' _trotaconventos_ or by Celestina. The _Exhortação da Guerra_ begins with humorous platitudes, _perogrulladas_, after the fashion of Enzina. Gil Terron has increased his classical lore, and Trojan and Greek heroes are brought from the underworld, the _dramatis personae_ including Polyxena, Penthesilea, Achilles, Hannibal, Hector and Scipio. The influence of Enzina is still evident in the _Auto da Sibila Cassandra_, the _bellíssimo auto_ wherein Menéndez y Pelayo saw the first germ of the symbolical _autos_ in which Calderón excelled[137], and in the _Auto dos Quatro Tempos_. The immediate influence on the _Barcas_ is plainly Spanish, this being especially marked in the _Barca da Gloria_. When the _Diabo_ addresses the King:

Nunca aca senti Que aprovechase aderencia Ni lisonjas, crer mentiras ... Ni diamanes ni zafiras (I. 285)

he is copying the words of Death in the _Danza de la Muerte_:

non es tiempo tal Que librar vos pueda imperio nin gente Oro nin plata nin otro metal[138].

Vicente's Devil taxes the Archbishop with fleecing the poor (I. 294) in much the same words as those of the Spanish Death to the Dean (t. 2, p. 12). The Devil in the _Barca do Purgatorio_ (I. 251) and Death (t. 2, p. 17) both reproach the _labrador_ with the same offence: surreptitiously extending the boundaries of his land. It must be admitted that these signs of imitation are more direct than the French traces indicated in the introduction of the 1834 edition of Vicente's works. The whole treatment of the _Barcas_ closely follows the _Danza de la Muerte_. The idea of a satirical review of the dead is of course nearly as old as literature. In the _Barca da Gloria_ Vicente begins to quote Spanish _romances_[139], and this is continued on a larger scale in the _Comedia de Rubena_ (cf. also the Spanish songs in the _Cortes de Jupiter_) and in _Dom Duardos_, in which reference is also made to two Spanish books, Diego de San Pedro's _Carcel de Amor_ and Hernando Diaz' translation _El Pelegrino Amador_[140]. Maria Parda's will was probably suggested rather by such burlesque testaments as that of the dying mule in the _Cancioneiro de Resende_ than by the _Testament de Pathelin_. The criticism of the _homens de bom saber_ seems to have turned Vicente to more peculiarly Portuguese themes in the _Farsa de Ines Pereira_ and the _Auto Pastoril Portugues_, and in the _Fragoa de Amor_, written for the new Queen from Spain, he presents national types: _serranas_, pilgrims, nigger, monk, idiot. In the _Ciganas_ we have a passing reference to 'the white hands of Iseult,' a lady already well known in Spanish and Portuguese literature. _Dom Duardos_ is of course based entirely on a Spanish romance of chivalry. In _O Juiz da Beira_ he returns to the _escudeiro_ and _alcouviteira_; the figures are, however, thoroughly Portuguese with the exception of a new Christian from Castille. The title of the _Nao de Amores_ already existed in Spanish literature[141]. After this we have a group of thoroughly Portuguese plays, those presented at Coimbra, the anticlerical _Auto da Feira_, the _Triunfo do Inverno_, _O Clerigo da Beira_. It is not till _Amadis de Gaula_ that Vicente again has recourse to Spanish literature[142], and we may be sure that if he had known of a Portuguese text he would have written his drama in Portuguese.

Although Vicente owed much to Spanish literature we have only to compare his plays with those of Juan del Enzina or Bartolomé de Torres Naharro, or his first attempts with his later dramas to realize his genius and originality. The variety of his plays is very striking and the farce _Quem tem farelos?_ (1508?), the patriotic _Exhortação_ (1513), the _Barca_ trilogy (1517-9), the religious _Auto da Alma_ (1518), the three-act _Comedia de Rubena_ (1521), the character comedy _Farsa de Ines Pereira_ (1523), the idyllic _Dom Duardos_ (1525?) mark new departures in the development of his genius. No doubt his plays are 'totally unlike any regular plays and rude both in design and execution[143].' Vicente divided them into religious plays (_obras de devaçam_), farces, comedies and tragicomedies, but the kinds overlap and there is nothing to separate some of the comedies and tragicomedies from the farces, while some of the farces are religious both in subject and occasion. How artificial the division was may be seen from the rubric to the _Barca do Inferno_, which informs us that the play is counted among the religious plays because the second and third parts (_Barca do Purgatorio_ and _Barca da Gloria_) were represented in the Royal Chapel, although this first part was given in the Queen's chamber, as though the subject and treatment of the three plays were not sufficient to class them together. Again, the rubric of the _Romagem de Aggravados_ runs: 'The following tragicomedy is a satire.' Really only its length separates it from the early farces. Vicente's plays were a development of the earlier Christmas, Holy Week and Easter _representaciones_, religious shows to which special pomp was given at King Manuel's Court. When he began to write the classical drama was unknown and it is absurd to judge his work by the Aristotelean theory of the unities of time and place. His idea of drama was not dramatic action nor the development of character but realistic portrayal of types and the contrast between them. His first piece, _Auto da Visitaçam_, has not even dialogue--its alternative title is _O Monologo do Vaqueiro_--and for comic element it relies on the contrast between Court and country as shown by the herdsman's gaping wonder. The _Auto Pastoril Castelhano_ contains six shepherds and contrasts the serious mystical Gil with his ruder companions.

The action of the _Auto dos Reis Magos_ is as simple as that of the two preceding plays. _Quem tem farelos?_ however is a quite new development. 'The argument,' says the rubric, 'is that a young squire called Aires Rosado played the viola and although his salary [as one of the Court] was very small he was continually in love.' He is contrasted with another penniless _escudeiro_ who gives himself martial airs and willingly speaks of the heroic deeds of Roncesvalles, but runs away if two cats begin to fight. Only five persons appear on the stage, but with considerable skill Vicente enlarges the scene so as to include a vivid picture of the second squire as described by his servant as well as the barking of dogs, mewing of cats and crowing of cocks and the conversation of Isabel with Rosado, which is conjectured from his answers. No doubt the two _moços_ owe something to Sempronio and Parmeno of the _Celestina_, but this first farce is thoroughly Portuguese and gives us a concrete and living picture of Lisbon manners. Not all the farces have this unity. The _Auto das Fadas_ loses itself in a long series of verses addressed to the Court. The _Farsa dos Fisicos_ has no such extraneous matter: it confines itself to the lovelorn priest and the contrast between the four doctors. The _Comedia do Viuvo_ is not a farce and only a comedy by virtue of its happy ending. A merchant of Burgos laments the death of his wife and is comforted by a kindly priest and by a friend who wishes that his own wife were as the merchant's (the simple mediaeval contrast common in Vicente). Meanwhile Don Rosvel, Prince of Huxonia, has fallen in love with both the daughters of the merchant, whom he agrees to serve in all kinds of manual labour as Juan de las Brozas. His brother, Don Gilberto, arrives in search of him and a quaintly charming and technically skilful play ends with a double wedding (the Crown Prince of Portugal, present at the acting of this play, had to decide for Don Rosvel which daughter he should marry).

The _Auto da Fama_ is Vicente's second great hymn to the glory of Portugal. Portuguese Fame, in the person of a humble girl of Beira, is envied and wooed in vain by Castille, France and Italy--England and Holland were then scarcely in the running--and narrates in ringing verses the deeds of the Portuguese in the East, without, however, mentioning the great name of Albuquerque, a name which inspired many of the courtiers with more fear than affection. The _Auto dos Quatro Tempos_ is a pastoral-religious play, the main theme being, as its title indicates, a contrast between the four seasons. David appears as a shepherd and Jupiter also takes a considerable part in the conversation.

## Action there is none.

Vicente's satirical vein found excellent occasion in the ancient theme of scrutinizing the past lives of men as Death reaps them, high and low, but his profoundly religious temperament raises the _Barcas_ into an atmosphere of sublime if gloomy splendour, which is surpassed in the _Auto da Alma_, the most perfect and consistent of his religious plays--even the symbolical character of the latter part can hardly be called a defect. In the _Comedia de Rubena_ the development of Vicente's art is perhaps more superficial than real. It is divided into three long scenes or acts and is thus more like a regular comedy than his other plays. The acts, however, are isolated, the action occupies fifteen years and occurs in Castille, Lisbon and Crete. English readers of the play must be struck by its resemblance to _Pericles, Prince of Tyre_. Written fifty-five years before Lawrence Twine's _The Patterne of Painful Adventures_ (1576) and eighty-seven before George Wilkins and William Shakespeare produced their play (1608), the _Comedia de Rubena_ is in fact a link in a long chain beginning in a lost fifth century Greek romance concerning Apollonius of Tyre and continued after Gil Vicente's death in Timoneda's _Tarsiana_ and in _Pericles_. Vicente, however, in all probability did not derive his Cismena, cold and chaste predecessor of Marina, from the _Gesta Romanorum_ or the _Libro de Apolonio_ but from the version in John Gower's _Confessio Amantis_, of which a translation, as we know, was early available in Portugal. After an exclusively Court piece, the _Cortes de Jupiter_, Vicente wrote the _Farsa de Ines Pereira_, in which there is more action and development of character than in his preceding, or indeed his subsequent, plays. He represents the aspirations and repentance of Ines, the 'very flighty daughter of a woman of low estate.' Despite the warnings of her sensible mother she rejects the suit of simple and uncouth Pero Marques for that of a gentleman (_escudeiro_) whose pretensions are far greater than his possessions. The mother gives them a house and retires to a small cottage. But the _escudeiro_ married confirms the wisdom of the Sibyl Cassandra (I. 40). He keeps his wife shut up 'like a nun of Oudivellas.' The windows are nailed up, she is not allowed to leave the house even to go to church. Thus the hopes and ambitions of Ines Pereira de Grãa are tamed, although she was never a shrew[144]. Presently, however, the _escudeiro_ resolves to cross over to Africa to win his knighthood:

ás partes dalem Vou me fazer cavaleiro,

and he leaves his wife imprisoned in their house, the key being entrusted to the servant (_moço_). Ines, singing at her work, is declaring that if ever she have to choose another husband _on ne m'y prendra plus_ when a letter arrives from her brother announcing that her husband, as he fled from battle towards Arzila, had been killed by a Moorish shepherd. The faithful Pero Marques again presses his suit. He is accepted and is made to suffer the whims and infidelity of the emancipated Ines. The question of women's rights was a burning one in the sixteenth century.

Vicente's versatility enabled him to laugh at his critics to the end of the chapter. In _Dom Duardos_ he gave them an elaborate and very successful dramatization of a Spanish romance of chivalry. The treatment has both unity and lyrical charm. It was so successful that the experiment was repeated in 1533 with the earlier romance of _Amadis de Gaula_ (1508), out of which Vicente wrought an equally skilful but less fascinating play[145]. But Vicente had not given up writing farces and the sojourn of Ines Pereira's husband in town enables the author to introduce various Lisbon types in _O Juiz da Beira_. It indeed completely resembles the early farces, while the _Auto da Festa_ with its peasant scene and allegorical _Verdade_ is of the _Auto da Fé_ type but adds the theme of the old woman in search of a husband. The _Templo de Apolo_, composed for a special Court occasion, shows no development, but in the _Sumario_ we have a fuller religious play than he had hitherto written. It proves, like _Dom Duardos_, his power of concentration and his skill in seizing on and emphasizing essential points in a long action (the period here covered is from Adam to Christ[146]). It is closely moulded on the Bible and contains, besides an exquisite _vilancete_ (_Adorae montanhas_), passages of noble poetry and soaring fervour--Eve's invocation to Adam:

Ó como os ramos do nosso pomar Ficam cubertos de celestes rosas (I. 314);

Job's lament 'Man that is born of woman' (I. 324); the paraphrase or rather translation of 'I know that my Redeemer liveth' (I. 322). Nothing here, surely, to warrant the complaints of Sá de Miranda as to the desecration of the Scriptures. This play was followed by the _Dialogo sobre a Ressurreiçam_ by way of epilogue; it is a conversation between three Jews and is treated in the cynical manner that Browning brought to similar scenes. The _Sumario_ or _Auto da Historia de Deos_ was acted before the Court at Almeirim and must have won the sincere admiration of the devout João III. If the courtiers were less favourably impressed they were mollified by the splendid display of the _Nao de Amores_ with its much music, its Prince of Normandy and its miniature ship fully rigged. Vicente was now fighting an uphill battle and in the _Divisa da Cidade de Coimbra_ he attempted a task beyond the strength of a poet and more suitable for a sermon such as Frei Heitor Pinto preached on the same subject: the arms of the city of Coimbra. Even Vicente could not make this a living play; it is, rather, a museum of antiquities and ends with praises of Court families. It is pathetic to find the merry satirist reduced to admitting (in the argument of this play) that merely farcical farces are not very refined. Yet we would willingly give the whole play for another brief farce such as _Quem tem farelos?_:

Ya sabeis, senhores, Que toda a comedia começa em dolores, E inda que toque cousas lastimeiras Sabei que as farças todas chocarreiras Não sam muito finas sem outros primores (II. 108).

Fortunately he returned to the plain farce in _Os Almocreves_, the _Auto da Feira_ and _O Clerigo da Beira_ (which, however, ends with a series of Court references) with all his old wealth of satire, touches of comedy and vivid portraiture. He also returned to the pastoral play in the _Serra da Estrella_, while his exquisite lyrism flowers afresh in the _Triunfo do Inverno_, a tragicomedy which is really a medley of farces. It is not a great drama but it is a typical Vicentian piece, combining vividly sketched types with a splendid lyrical vein. Winter, that banishes the swallows and swells the voice of ocean streams, first triumphs on hills and sea and then Spring comes in singing the lovely lyric _Del rosal vengo_ in the Serra de Sintra. The play ends on a serious and mystic note, for Spring's flowers wither but those of the holy garden of God bloom without fading:

E o santo jardim de Deos Florece sem fenecer.

The _Auto da Lusitania_ is divided into two parts, the first of which is complete in itself and gives a description of a Jewish household at Lisbon, while the second is a medley which contains the celebrated scene of Everyman and Noman: Everyman seeks money, worldly honour, praise, life, paradise, lies and flattery; Noman is for conscience, virtue, truth. In the _Romagem de Aggravados_ the fashionable and affected Court priest, Frei Paço, is the connecting link for a series of farcical scenes in which a peasant brings his son to become a priest, two noblemen discourse on love, two fishwives lament the excesses of the courtiers, Cerro Ventoso and Frei Narciso betray their mounting ambition, civil and ecclesiastic, the poor farmer Aparicianes implores Frei Paço to make a Court lady of his slovenly daughter, two nuns bewail their fate and two shepherdesses discuss their marriage prospects. The _Auto da Mofina Mendes_ is especially celebrated because Mofina Mendes, personification of ill-luck, with her pot of oil is the forerunner of La Fontaine's _Pierrette et son pot au lait_: it was perhaps suggested to Vicente by the tale of Doña Truhana's pot of honey in _El Conde Lucanor_; the theme of counting one's chickens before they are hatched also forms the subject of one of the _pasos_, entitled _Las Aceitunas_, of the goldbeater of Seville, Lope de Rueda[147]. Vicente's piece consists, like some picture of El Greco, of a _gloria_, called, as Rueda's scenes, a _passo_, in which appear the Virgin and the Virtues (Prudence, Poverty, Humility and Faith) and an earthly shepherd scene. It is thus a combination of farce and religious and pastoral play. Vicente's last play, the _Floresta de Enganos_, is composed of scenes so disconnected that one of them is even omitted in the summary given after the first deceit: that in which a popular traditional theme, derived directly or indirectly from a French (perhaps originally Italian) source, _Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_, is presented, akin to that so piquantly narrated by Alarcón in _El Sombrero de Tres Picos_ in the nineteenth century, the judge playing the part of the Corregidor and the malicious and sensible servant-girl that of the miller's wife.

In these last plays we see little or no advance: there is no attempt at unity or development of plot. We cannot deny that the creator of the penniless-splendid nobleman and the mincing courtier-priest and the author of such touches as the death of Ines' husband or the sudden ignominious flight of the judge possessed a true vein of comedy, but he remained to the end not technically a great dramatist but a wonderful lyric poet and a fascinating satirical observer of life. His influence was felt throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Portugal, by Camões and in the plays of Chiado, Prestes and a score of less celebrated dramatists, as well as in a considerable number of anonymous plays, but confined itself to the _auto_, which, combated by the followers of the classical drama and the Latin plays of the Jesuits, soon tended to deteriorate and lose its charm. In Spain his influence would seem to have been more widely felt, which is not surprising when we remember how many of his plays were Spanish in origin or language[148]. We may be sure that Lope de Rueda was acquainted with his plays and that several of them were known to Cervantes--the servant Benita insisting on telling her simple stories to her afflicted mistress is Sancho Panza to the life:

_Benita._ Diz que era un escudero....

_Rubena._ O quien no fuera nacida: ¿Viendome salir la vida Paraste a contar patrañas?

_Benita._ Pues otra sé de un carnero....

Lope de Vega was likewise certainly familiar with some of Vicente's plays. If we consider these passages in _El Viaje del Alma_, the _representación moral_ contained in _El Peregrino en su Patria_ (1604), we must be convinced that the trilogy of _Barcas_, the _Auto da Alma_, and perhaps the _Nao de Amores_ were not unknown to him:

Alma para Dios criada Y hecha a imagen de Dios, etc.; Hoy la Nave del deleite Se quiere hacer a la mar: ¿Hay quien se quiera embarcar?; Esta es la Nave donde cabe Todo contento y placer[149].

The alleged imitation by Calderón in _El Lirio y la Azucena_ is perhaps more doubtful. Vicente was already half forgotten in Calderon's day. In the artificial literature of the eighteenth century he suffered total eclipse although Correa Garção was able to appreciate him, nor need we see any direct influence in that of the nineteenth[150] except that on Almeida Garrett: the similar passages in Goethe's _Faust_ and Cardinal Newman's _Dream of Gerontius_ were no doubt purely accidental. Happily, however, we are able to point to a certain influence of the great national poet of Portugal on some of the Portuguese poets of the twentieth century. The promised edition of his plays will increase this influence and render him secure from that neglect which during three centuries practically deprived Portugal and the world of one of the most charming and inspired of the world's poets.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] _Falamos do nosso Shakespeare, de Gil Vicente_ (A. Herculano, _Historia da Inquisição em Portugal_, ed. 1906, vol. I. p. 223). The references throughout are to the Hamburg 3 vol. 1834 edition.

[7] See infra _Bibliography_, p. 86, Nos. 42, 62, 79.

[8] _Bibliography_, Nos. 21, 24, 25, 26, 30, 51, 52, 59, 89.

[9] _Bibliography_, Nos. 29, 48, 57, 66, 83, 95.

[10] _Bibliography_, Nos. 53, 73, 82, 88, 97.

[11] _Bibliography_, Nos. 44, 84, 90, 101, 102.

[12] Guerra Junqueiro, _Os Simples_.

[13] Cf. André de Resende, _Gillo auctor et actor_. (For the accurate text of this passage see C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, _Notas Vicentinas_, I. p. 17.)

[14] _Os livros das obras que escritas vi_ (Letter of G. V. to King João III).

[15] 'E assi mandou de Castella e outras partes vir muitos ouriveis para fazerem arreos e outras cousas esmaltadas.' (Garcia de Resende, _Cronica del Rei D. João II_, cap. 117.)

[16] _Bibliography_, Nos. 70, 71.