Four Plays of Gil Vicente.

by Gil Vicente.

PREFACE

Gil Vicente, that sovereign genius[1], is too popular and indigenous for translation and this may account for the fact that he has not been presented to English readers. It is hoped, however, that a fairly accurate version, with the text in view[2], may give some idea of his genius. The religious, the patriotic-imperial, the satirical and the pastoral sides of his drama are represented respectively by the _Auto da Alma_, the _Exhortaco_, the _Almocreves_ and the _Serra da Estrella_, while his lyrical vein is seen in the _Auto da Alma_ and in two delightful songs: the _serranilha_ of the _Almocreves_ and the _cossante_ of the _Serra da Estrella_. Many of his plays, including some of the most charming of his lyrics, were written in Spanish and this limited the choice from the point of view of Portuguese literature, but there are others of the Portuguese plays fully as well worth reading as the four here given.

The text is that of the exceedingly rare first edition (1562). Apart from accents and punctuation, it is reproduced without alteration, unless a pa.s.sage is marked by an asterisk, when the text of the _editio princeps_ will be found in the foot-notes, in which variants of other editions are also given.

In these notes A represents the _editio princeps_ (1562): _Copilacam de todalas obras de Gil Vicente, a qual se reparte em cinco livros. O primeyro he de todas suas cousas de deuacam. O segundo as comedias. O terceyro as tragicomedias. No quarto as farsas. No quinto as obras meudas. Empremiose em a muy n.o.bre & sempre leal cidade de Lixboa em casa de Ioam Aluarez impressor del Rey nosso senhor. Anno de MDLXII_. The second (1586) edition (B) is the _Copilacam de todalas obras de Gil Vicente... Lixboa, por Andres Lobato, Anno de MDLx.x.xVJ_. A third edition in three volumes appeared in 1834 (C): _Obras de Gil Vicente, correctas e emendadas pelo cuidado e diligencia de J. V. Barreto Feio e J. G.

Monteiro_. Hamburgo, 1834. This was based, although not always with scrupulous accuracy, on the _editio princeps_, and subsequent editions have faithfully adhered to that of 1834: _Obras_, 3 vol. Lisboa, 1852 (D), and _Obras_, ed. Mendes dos Remedios, 3 vol. Coimbra, 1907, 12, 14 [_Subsidios_, vol. 11, 15, 17][3] (E). Although there has been a tendency of late to multiply editions of Gil Vicente, no attempt has been made to produce a critical edition. It is generally felt that that must be left to the master hand of Dona Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos[4]. Since the plays of Vicente number over forty the present volume is only a tentative step in this direction, but it may serve to show the need of referring to, and occasionally emending, the _editio princeps_ in any future edition of the most national poet of Portugal[5].

AUBREY F. G. BELL.

_8 April 1920._

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Este soberano ingenio._ Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo, _Antologia_, tom. 7, p. clxiii.

[2] Although the text has been given without alteration it has not been thought necessary to provide a precise rendering of the coa.r.s.er pa.s.sages.

[3] The Paris 1843 edition is the Hamburg 1834 edition with a different t.i.tle-page. The _Auto da Alma_ was published separately at Lisbon in 1902 and again (in part) in _Autos de Gil Vicente. Compilaco e prefacio de Affonso Lopes Vieira_, Porto, 1916; while extracts appeared in _Portugal. An Anthology, edited with English versions, by George Young_.

Oxford, 1916. The present text and translation are reprinted, by permission of the Editor, from _The Modern Language Review_.

[4] I understand that the eminent philologist Dr Jose Leite de Vasconcellos is also preparing an edition.

[5] Facsimiles of the t.i.tle-pages of the two early editions of Vicente's works are reproduced here through the courtesy of Senhor Anselmo Braamcamp Freire.

INTRODUCTION

I. LIFE AND PLAYS OF GIL VICENTE

Those who read the voluminous song-book edited by jolly Garcia de Resende in 1516 are astonished at its narrowness and aridity. There is scarcely a breath of poetry or of Nature in these Court verses. In the pages of Gil Vicente[6], who had begun to write fourteen years before the _Cancioneiro Geral_ was published, the Court is still present, yet the atmosphere is totally different. There are many pa.s.sages in his plays which correspond to the conventional love-poems of the courtiers and he maintains the personal satire to be found both in the _Cancioneiro da Vaticana_ and the _Cancioneiro de Resende_. But he is also a child of Nature, with a marvellous lyrical gift and the insight to revive and renew the genuine poetry which had existed in Galicia and the north of Portugal before the advent of the Provencal love-poetry, had sprung into a splendid harvest in rivalry with that poetry and died down under the Spanish influence of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He was moreover a national and imperial poet, embracing the whole of Portuguese life and the whole rapidly growing Portuguese empire. We can only account for the difference by saying that Gil Vicente was a genius, the only great genius of that day in Portugal, and the most gifted poet of his time. It is therefore all the more tantalizing that we should know so little about him. A few doc.u.ments recently unearthed, one or two scanty references by contemporary or later authors, are all the information we have apart from that which may be gleaned from the rubrics and colophons of his plays and from the plays themselves. The labours of Dona Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos, Dr Jose Leite de Vasconcellos[7] and Snr Anselmo Braamcamp Freire are likely to provide us before long with the first critical edition of his plays. The ingenious suppositions of Dr Theophilo Braga[8] have, as usual, led to much discussion and research. He is the Mofina Mendes of critics, putting forward a hypothesis, translating it a few pages further on into a certainty and building rapidly on these foundations till an argument adduced or a doc.u.ment discovered by another critic brings the whole edifice toppling to the ground. The doc.u.ments brought to light by General Brito Rebello[9] and Senhor Anselmo Braamcamp Freire[10] enable us to construct a sketch of Gil Vicente's life, while D. Carolina Michaelis has shed a flood of light upon certain points[11]. The chronological table at the end of this volume is founded mainly, as to the order of the plays, on the doc.u.ments and arguments recently set forth by one of the most distinguished of modern historical critics, Senhor Anselmo Braamcamp Freire. The plays, read in this order, throw a certain amount of new light on Gil Vicente's life and give it a new cohesion. Whether we consider it from the point of view of his own country or of the world, or of literature, art and science, his life coincides with one of the most wonderful periods in the world's history.

At his birth Portugal was a st.u.r.dy mediaeval country, proud of her traditions and heroic past. Her heroes were so national as scarcely to be known beyond her own borders. Nun' Alvarez (1360-1431), one of the greatest men of all time, is even now unknown to Europe. And Portugal herself as yet hardly appraised at its true worth the life and work of Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), at whose incentive she was still groping persistently along the western coast of Africa. His nephew Afonso V, the amiable grandson of Nun' Alvarez' friend, the Master of Avis, and the English princess Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt, was on the throne, to be succeeded by his stern and resolute son Joo II in 1481. In his boyhood, spent in the country, somewhere in the green hills of Minho or the rugged grandeur and bare, flowered steeps of the Serra da Estrella, all _ossos e burel_[12], Gil Vicente might hear dramatic stories of the doings at the capital and Court, of the beginning of the new reign, of the beheadal of the Duke of Braganza in the Rocio of Evora, of the stabbing by the King's own hand of his cousin and brother-in-law, the young Duke of Viseu, of the baptism and death at Lisbon of a native prince from Guinea.

The place of his birth is not certain. Biographers have hesitated between Lisbon, Guimares and Barcellos: perhaps he was not born in any of these towns but in some small village of the north of Portugal. We can at least say that he was not brought up at Lisbon. The proof is his knowledge and love of Nature and his intimate acquaintance with the ways of villagers, their character, customs, amus.e.m.e.nts, dances, songs and language. It is legitimate to draw certain inferences--provided we do not attach too great importance to them--from his plays, especially since we know that he himself staged them and acted in them[13]. His earliest compositions are especially personal and we may be quite sure that the parts of the herdsman in the _Visitacam_ (1502) and of the mystically inclined shepherd, Gil Terron, in the _Auto Pastoril Castelhano_ (1502) and the _rustico pastor_ in the _Auto dos Reis Magos_ (1503) were played by Vicente himself. It is therefore well to note the pa.s.sage in which Silvestre and Bras express surprise at Gil's learning:

_S._ Mudando vas la pelleja, Sabes de achaque de igreja!

_G._ Ahora lo deprendi....

_B._ Quien te viese no dira Que naciste en serrania.

_G._ Dios hace estas maravillas.

It is possible that Gil Vicente, like Gil Terron, had been born _en serrania_. Dr Leite de Vasconcellos was the first to call attention to his special knowledge of the province of Beira, and the reference to the Serra da Estrella dragged into the _Comedia do Viuvo_ is of even more significance than the conventional _beiro_ talk of his peasants.

Nor is the learning in his plays such as to give a moment's support to the theory that he had, like Enzina, received a university education, or, as some, relying on an unreliable _n.o.biliario_, have held, was tutor (_mestre de rhetorica_) to Prince, afterwards King, Manuel. The King, according to Damio de Goes, 'knew enough Latin to judge of its style.'

Probably he did not know much more of it than Gil Vicente himself. His first productions are without the least pretension to learning: they are close imitations of Enzina's eclogues. Later his outlook widened; he read voraciously[14] and seems to have pounced on any new publication that came to the palace, among them the works of two slightly later Spanish playwrights, Lucas Fernandez and Bartolome de Torres Naharro.

With the quickness of genius and spurred forward by the malicious criticism of his audience, their love of new things and the growing opposition of the introducers of the new style from Italy, he picked up a little French and Italian, while Church Latin and law Latin early began to creep into his plays. The parade of erudition (which is also a satire on pedants) at the beginning of the _Auto da Mofina Mendes_ is, however, that of a comparatively uneducated man in a library, of rustic Gil Vicente in the palace. Rather we would believe that he spent his early life in peasant surroundings, perhaps actually keeping goats in the scented hills like his Prince of Wales, Dom Duardos: _De mozo guarde ganado_, and then becoming an apprentice in the goldsmith's art, perhaps to his father or uncle, Martim Vicente, at Guimares. It is extremely probable that he was drawn to the Court, then at Evora, for the first time in 1490 by the unprecedented festivities in honour of the wedding of the Crown Prince and Isabel, daughter of the Catholic Kings, and was one of the many goldsmiths who came thither on that occasion[15]. If that was so, his work may have at once attracted the attention of King Joo II, who, as Garcia de Resende tells us, keenly encouraged the talents of the young men in his service, and the protection of his wife, Queen Lianor. He may have been about 25 years old at the time. The date of his birth has become a fascinating problem, over which many critics have argued and disagreed. As to the exact year it is best frankly to confess our ignorance. The information is so flimsy and conflicting as to make the acutest critics waver. While a perfectly unwarranted importance has been given to a pa.s.sage in Vicente's last _comedia_, the _Floresta de Enganos_ (1536), in which a judge declares that he is 66 (therefore Gil Vicente was born in 1470), sufficient stress has perhaps not been laid on the lines in the play from the Conde de Sabugosa's library, the _Auto da Festa_, in which Gil Vicente is declared to be 'very stout and over 60.' This cannot be dismissed like the former pa.s.sage, for it is evidently a personal reference to Gil Vicente. It was the comedian's ambition to raise a laugh in his audience and this might be effected by saying the exact opposite of what the audience knew to be true: e.g. to speak of Gil Vicente as very stout and over 60 if he was very young and spectre-thin. But Vicente was certainly not very young when this play was written and we may doubt whether the victim of _calentura_ and hater of heat (he treats summer scurvily in his _Auto dos Quatro Tempos_) was thin. We have to accept the fact that he was over 60 when the _Auto da Festa_ was written. But when was it written?

Its editor, the Conde de Sabugosa, to whom all Vicente lovers owe so deep a debt of grat.i.tude[16], a.s.signed it to 1535, while Senhor Braamcamp Freire, who uses Vicente's age as a double-edged weapon[17], places it twenty years earlier, in 1515. This was indeed necessary if the year 1452 was to be maintained as the date of his birth. The theory of the exact date 1452 was due to another pa.s.sage of the plays: the old man in _O Velho da Horta_, formerly a.s.signed to 1512, is 60 (III. 75).

Yet there is something slightly comical in stout old Gil Vicente beginning his actor's career at the age of 50 and keeping it up till he was 86. Other facts that may throw light on his age are as follows: in 1502 he almost certainly acted the boisterous part of _vaqueiro_ in the _Visitacam_[18]. In 1512 he is over 40 and married (inference from his appointment as one of the 24 representatives of Lisbon guilds in that year). In 1512 a 'son of Gil Vicente' is in India. His son Belchior is a small boy in 1518. In 1515 he received a sum of money to enable his sister Felipa Borges to marry. In 1531 he declares himself to be 'near death'[19], although evidently not ill at the time. He died very probably at the end of 1536 or beginning of 1537[20]. Accepting the fact that the _Auto da Festa_ was written before the _Templo de Apolo_ (1526) I would place it as late as possible, i.e. in the year 1525, and subtracting 60 believe that the date _c._ 1465 for Gil Vicente's birth will be found to agree best with the various facts given above.

The wedding of the Crown Prince of Portugal and the Infanta Isabel was celebrated most gorgeously at Evora. The Court gleamed with plate and jewellery[21]. There were banquets and tournaments, _ricos momos_ and _singulares antremeses_, pantomimes or interludes produced with great splendour--e.g. a sailing ship moved on the stage over what appeared to be waves of the sea, a band of twenty pilgrims advanced with gilt staffs, etc., etc.--all the luxurious show which had made the _entremeses_ of Portugal famous and from which Vicente must have taken many an idea for the staging of his plays. Next year the tragic death of the young prince, still in his teens, owing to a fall from his horse at Santarem, turned all the joy to ashes. Gil Vicente was certainly not less impressed than Luis Anriquez, who laments the death of Prince Afonso in the _Cancioneiro Geral_, or Juan del Enzina, who made it the subject of his version or paraphrase of Virgil's 5th eclogue. Vicente's acquaintance with Enzina's works may date from this period, although we need not press Enzina's words _yo vi_ too literally to mean that he was actually present at the Portuguese Court. Vicente may have accompanied the King and Queen to Lisbon in October of this year, but for the next ten years we know as much of his life as for the preceding twenty, that is to say, we know nothing at all. The only reference to his sojourn at the Court of King Joo II occurs in the mouth of Gil Terron (I, 9):

Conociste a Juan domado Que era pastor de pastores?

Yo lo vi entre estas flores Con gran hato de ganado Con su cayado real.

A note in the _editio princeps_ declares the reference to be to King Joo II. If we read _domado_ it can only be applied to the indomitable Joo II in the sense of having yielded to the will of Queen Lianor in acknowledging as heir her brother Manuel in preference to his illegitimate son Jorge. Perhaps however it is best to read _damado_, which recurs in the same play. Perhaps we may even see in the pa.s.sage an allusion merely to an incident occurring in the time of Joo II and not to the King himself[22]. We may surmise that about this time, perhaps as early as 1490, Vicente became goldsmith to Queen Lianor. The events of this wonderful decade must have moved him profoundly, events sufficient to stir even a dullard's imagination as new world after new world swept into his ken: the conquest of Granada from the Moors in 1492, the arrival of Columbus at Lisbon from America in 1493, the similar return of Vasco da Gama six years later from India, the discovery of Brazil in 1500. Two years later Vicente emerges into the light of day. King Manuel had succeeded to the throne on the death of King Joo (25 Oct. 1495) and had married the princess Maria, daughter of the Catholic Kings. Their eldest son, Joo, who was to rule Portugal as King Joo III from 1521 to 1557, was born on June 6, 1502, on which day a great storm swept over Lisbon. On the following evening[23] or on the evening of June 8 Gil Vicente, dressed as a herdsman, broke into the Queen's chamber in the presence of the Queen, King Manuel, his mother Dona Beatriz, his sister Queen Lianor, who was one of the prince's G.o.dmothers, and others, and recited in Spanish a brief monologue of 114 lines. Having expressed rustic wonder at the splendour of the palace and the universal joy at the birth of an heir to the throne he calls in some thirty companions to offer their humble gifts of eggs, milk, curds, cheese and honey. Queen Lianor was so pleased with this 'new thing'--for hitherto there had been no literary entertainments to vary either the profane _seros de dansas e bailos_ or the religious solemnities of the court--that she wished Vicente to repeat the performance at Christmas. He preferred, however, to compose a new _auto_ more suitable to the occasion and duly produced the _Auto Pastoril Castelhano_. King Manuel had just returned to Lisbon from a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in thanksgiving for the discovery of the sea-route to India. He found the Queen in the palace of Santos o Velho and was received _com muita alegria_. But no allusion to great contemporary events troubles the rustic peace of this _auto_, which is some four times as long as the _Visitacam_, and which introduces several simple shepherds to whom the Angel announces the birth of the Redeemer. Queen Lianor was delighted (_muito satisfeita_) and a few days later, on the Day of Kings (6 Jan. 1503), a third pastoral play, the _Auto dos Reis Magos_, was acted, the introduction of a knight and a hermit giving it a greater variety. The _Auto da Sibila Ca.s.sandra_ has been a.s.signed to the same year, and the _Auto dos Quatro Tempos_ and _Quem tem farelos?_ to 1505, but there are good reasons for giving them a later date. The only play that can be confidently a.s.serted to have been produced by Vicente between January 1503 and the end of 1508 is the brief dialogue between the beggar and St Martin: the _Auto de S. Martinho_, in ten Spanish verses _de rima cuadrada_, recited before Queen Lianor in the Caldas church during the Corpus Christi procession of 1504. The reasons for this silence are not far to seek. In September 1503, Dom Vasco da Gama returned from his second voyage to India with the first tribute of gold: 'The lords and n.o.bles who were then at Court went to visit him on his ship and accompanied him to the palace. A page went before him bearing in a bason the 2000 _miticaes_ of gold of the tribute of the King of Quiloa and the agreement made with him and the Kings of Cananor and Cochin. Of this gold King Manuel ordered a monstrance to be wrought for the service of the altar, adorned with precious stones, and commanded that it should be presented to the Convent of Bethlehem[24].' At this monstrance, still the pride of Portuguese art, Gil Vicente worked during three years (1503-6). He was perhaps already living in the Lisbon house in the _Rua de Jerusalem_ a.s.signed to him by his patroness, Queen Lianor[25]. There were other reasons for his silence. The death of Queen Isabella of Spain in 1504 and again the death of King Manuel's mother, Dona Beatriz, in 1506, threw the Portuguese Court into mourning. Plague and famine raged at Lisbon from 1505 to 1507, while, after the awful ma.s.sacre of Jews at Easter 1506, during which some thousands were stabbed or burnt to death, the city of Lisbon was placed under an interdict which was not raised till 1508.

Let us take advantage of Vicente's long silence to explain why it can be a.s.serted so confidently that he was now at work on the Belem _custodia_.

The burden of producing some definite doc.u.ment to show that Gil Vicente the poet and Gil Vicente the goldsmith were two different persons rests on the opponents of ident.i.ty. The late Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo, whose death in 1912 was a great blow to Portuguese as well as to Spanish literature, would certainly have changed his view if he had lived. In his brilliant study of Gil Vicente, a 'sovereign genius,' 'the most national playwright before Lope de Vega[26],' 'the greatest figure of our primitive theatre[27],' he remarked that if Vicente had been a goldsmith and one of such skill he must infallibly have left some trace of it in his dramatic works and that the contemporaries who mention him would not have preserved a profound silence as to his artistic talent[28]; yet Menendez y Pelayo himself speaks of Vicente's _alma de artista_[29] and of the plastic character which the most fantastic allegorical figures receive at his hands[30]. If we were a.s.sured that the dreamy Bernardim Ribeiro had fashioned the Belem monstrance we might well remain sceptical, but Vicente stands out from among the vaguer poets of Portugal in having, like Garcia de Resende, an extremely definite style, and his imagination, as in his dream of fair women in the _Templo de Apolo_, coins concrete figures, not intellectual abstractions. Resende, we know, was a skilled draughtsman as well as poet, chronicler and musician, and it is curious that the very phrase applied by Vicente to Resende, _de tudo entende_ (II, 406), is used of Vicente himself in an anecdote quoted by Senhor Braamcamp Freire. As to his own silence and that of his contemporaries, their silence[31]

concerning the presence of two Gil Vicentes at Court would be quite as astonishing, especially as they distinguish between other h.o.m.onyms of the time, and the silent satellite dogged the poet Vicente's steps with the strangest persistence. According to the discoveries or inventions of the Visconde Sanches de Baena[32] he was the poet's uncle; according to Dr Theophilo Braga they were cousins[33]. The poet, as many pa.s.sages in his plays show, was interested in the goldsmith's art[34]; the goldsmith wrote verses[35]. The poet made his first appearance in 1502, the artist in 1503. Splendid as was the Portuguese Court and although its members had almost doubled in number in less than a century[36], the King did not keep men there merely on the chance of their producing 'a new thing.' The sovereign of a great and growing empire had something better to do than to indulge in forecasts as to the potential talents of his subjects. When Gil Vicente in 1502 produced a new thing in Portugal his presence in the palace can only be explained by his having an employment there, and since we know that Queen Lianor had a goldsmith called Gil Vicente who wrote verses and since the poet wrote all his earlier plays for Queen Lianor[37], it is rational to suppose that this employment was that of goldsmith to the Queen-Dowager. His presence at Court was certainly not by right of birth: Vicente was not a 'gentleman of good family,' as Ticknor and others have supposed, but the n.o.ble art of the goldsmith (its practice was forbidden in the following century to slaves and negroes) would enable him to a.s.sociate familiarly with the courtiers. In 1509 or later[38] the poet joined, at the request of Queen Lianor, in a poetical contest concerning a gold chain, in which another poet, addressing Vicente, refers especially to necklaces and jewels. In the same year Gil Vicente is appointed overseer of works of gold and silver at the Convent of the Order of Christ, Thomar, the Hospital of All Saints, Lisbon, and the Convent of Belem. At the Hospital of All Saints the poet staged one of his plays. To Thomar and its fevers he refers more than once and presented the _Farsa de Ines Pereira_ there in 1523. In 1513 he is appointed _Mestre da Balanca_, in 1517 he resigns and in 1521 the poet alludes to the goldsmith's former colleagues: _os da Moeda_, while his production as playwright increases after the resignation and his complaints of poverty become more frequent[39]. In 1520 Gil Vicente the goldsmith is entrusted by King Manuel with the preparations for the royal entry into Lisbon, an _auto_ figuring in the programme. If there was nothing new in a goldsmith writing verses the drama of Vicente was an innovation and Joo de Barros would quite naturally refer (as Andre de Resende before him) to the poet-goldsmith as _Gil Vicente comico_. On the other hand there is an almost brutal egoism in the silence concerning his unfortunate uncle (or cousin) maintained by Gil Vicente, who refers to himself as poet more than once, with evident pride in his _autos_. Recently General Brito Rebello (1830-1920), whose researches helped to give shape and substance to Gil Vicente's life, discovered a doc.u.ment of 1535 in which the poet's signature differs notably from that of the goldsmith in 1515[40]. It is, however, possible to maintain that the former signature is not that of Gil Vicente at all and that the words of the doc.u.ment _per seu filho Belchior Vicente_ mean that Belchior signed in his father's name; or, alternatively, we can only say that Gil Vicente's handwriting had changed, a change especially frequent in artists. To those who examine all the evidence impartially there can remain very little doubt that Gil Vicente was first known at Court for his skill as goldsmith, and that he began writing verses and plays at the suggestion of his patroness, Queen Lianor.

On March 3, 1506, Vicente momentarily resumed his literary character and composed for Queen Lianor a long lay sermon, spoken before the King on the occasion of the birth of the Infante Luis (1506-55), who was himself a poet and the friend and patron of men of letters. The envious feared that Vicente was playing too many parts and contended that this was no time for a sermon by a layman, but Vicente excused himself with the saying, commonly attributed to Garci Sanchez de Badajoz, that if they would permit him to play the fool this once he would leave it to them for the rest of their lives, and launched into the exposition of his text: _Non volo, volo et deficior_. His next play _Quem tem farelos?_ is a.s.signed by Senhor Braamcamp Freire to December 1508 or January 1509[41]. The reference to the _embate_ in Africa in all probability alludes to the siege of Arzila in 1508. King Manuel had made preparations to set sail for an African campaign in 1501 and 1503, but the word _embate_ implies something more definite. The later date (it was formerly a.s.signed to 1505) is more suitable to the finished art of this first farce and to the fact that its success--so great that the people gave it the name by which it is still known, i.e. the first three words of the play--would be likely to cause its author to produce another farce without delay. Its successor, the _Auto da India_, acted before Queen Lianor at Almada in 1509, has not the same unity and its action begins in 1506 and ends in 1509. It displays a broader outlook and the influence of the discovery of India on the home-life of Portugal. In 1509 the fleet sailed from Lisbon under Marshal Coutinho on March 12 and _Maio_ (III. 28) might be a misprint for _Marco_; the _partida_ alluded to, however, is that of Tristo da Cunha and Afonso de Albuquerque in 1506. It is just possible that _Quem tem farelos?_ was begun in 1505 (the date of its rubric) and the _Auto da India_ in 1506.

Early in this year 1509 (Feb. 15) Vicente received the appointment of _Vedor_ and at Christmas of the following year he produced a play at Almeirim, a favourite residence of King Manuel, who spent a part of most winters there in the pleasures of the chase[42]. This _Auto da Fe_ is but a simple conversation between Faith and two peasants, who marvel at the richness of the Royal Chapel. In 1511, perhaps at Carnival[43], the _Auto das Fadas_ further shows the expansion, perhaps we may say the warping, of his natural genius, for although we may rejoice in the presentation of the witch Genebra Pereira, the play soon turns aside to satirical allusions to courtiers, while the Devil gabbles in picardese.

Peasants' _beiro_ with a few sc.r.a.ps of biblical Latin had hitherto been Vicente's only theatrical resource as regards language. The _Farsa dos Fisicos_ is now[44] a.s.signed to 1512, early in the year. It is leap year (III. 317) and Senhor Braamcamp Freire sees in the lines (III. 323):

Voyme a la huerta de amores Y traere una ensalada Por Gil Vicente guisada Y diz que otra de mas flores Para Pascoa tien sembrada

a reference to _O Velho da Horta_, acted before King Manuel in 1512. In August of the following year James, Duke of Braganza, set sail from Lisbon with a fleet of 450 ships to conquer Azamor:

Foi hua das cousas mais para notar Que vimos nem vio a gente pa.s.sada[45].

Gil Vicente was in the most successful period of his life. In December 1512 he was chosen by the Guild of Goldsmiths to be one of the twenty-four Lisbon guild representatives and some months later he was selected by the twenty-four to be one of their four proctors, with a seat in the Lisbon Town Council. On February 4, 1513, he had become Master of the Lisbon Mint. For the departure of the fleet against Azamor he comes forward as the poet laureate of the nation and vehemently inveighs against sloth and luxury while he sings a hymn to the glories of Portugal. The play alludes to the gifts sent to the Pope in the following year and this probably led to the date of the rubric (1514), but it also refers to the royal marriages of 1521, 1525 and 1530, and we may thus a.s.sume that it was written in 1513 and touched up for a later production or for the collection of Vicente's plays. Perhaps at Christmas of this year was acted before Queen Lianor in the Convent of Enxobregas at Lisbon the _Auto da Sibila Ca.s.sandra_, hitherto placed ten years earlier. Senhor Braamcamp Freire points out that the Convent was only founded in 1509[46]. A scarcely less cogent argument for the later date is the finish of the verse and the exquisiteness of the lyrics, although the action is simple and the reminiscences of Enzina are many[47] (a fact which does not necessarily imply an early date: Enzina's echo verses are imitated in the _Comedia de Rubena_, 1521). We may note that the story of Troy is running in Vicente's head as in the _Exhortaco_ of 1513 (he had probably just read the _Cronica Troyana_).

The last lyric, _A la guerra, caballeros_, is out of keeping with the rest of the play, but fighting in Africa was so frequent that it cannot help to determine the play's date. It is in this period (1512-14) that it is customary to place the death of Vicente's first wife Branca Bezerra, leaving him two sons, Gaspar and Belchior. She was buried at Evora with the epitaph:

Aqui jaz a mui prudente Senhora Branca Becerra Mulher de Gil Vicente Feita terra.

This gives the _Comedia do Viuvo_, acted in 1514, a personal note, which is emphasized by the names of the widower's daughters, Paula, the name of Gil Vicente's eldest daughter, and Melicia, the name of his second wife. In the following year private grief was merged in the growing renown of Portugal in the _Auto da Fama_, which the rubric attributes to 1510, although it alludes to the siege of Goa (1510), the capture of Malaca (1511), the victorious expedition against Azamor (1513), and the attack on Aden (1513). It was acted first before Queen Lianor and then before King Manuel at Lisbon, and we may surmise that it was written or begun when the first news of Albuquerque's successes reached Lisbon and recast in 1515. The year 1516 has also been suggested, but the death of King Ferdinand the Catholic in January of that year and the death of Albuquerque in December 1515 render this date unsuitable. Even if the play was acted at Christmas 1515, there is the ironical circ.u.mstance that, at the moment when the Court was ringing with praises of the Portuguese deeds in India, the great Governor was lying dead at Goa. The date of the _Auto dos Quatro Tempos_ is equally problematic. It was acted before King Manuel at the command of Queen Lianor in the S. Miguel Chapel of the Alcacova palace on a Christmas morning. The name of the palace indicates the year 1505 or an earlier date[48], and it has been a.s.signed to the year 1503 or 1504; but the superior development of the play's structure and even of its thought (e.g. I. 78), its resemblance to the _Triunfo do Inverno_ (1529), the introduction of a French song, of the G.o.ds of Greece and of a psalm similar to that in the _Auto da Mofina Mendes_ (1534)[49] and the perfection of the metre all indicate a fairly late date, while imitations of Enzina[50] are not conclusive. On the whole the intrinsic evidence counterbalances the statement of the rubric as to the Alcacova palace and we may boldly a.s.sign this delightful piece to Christmas 1516[51], while admitting that in a rougher form it may have been presented to Queen Lianor[52] at a much earlier date.

The approximate date of the next play, the _Auto da Barca do Inferno_, is certain. This first part of Vicente's remarkable trilogy of _Barcas_ was acted 'in the Queen's chamber for the consolation of the very catholic and holy Queen Dona Maria in the illness of which she died in 1517.' If we manipulate the commas so as to make the date refer to the play as well as to the Queen's death, the remedy proved fatal, for she died on March 7, but it is possible that it was acted earlier, towards the end of 1516. The subject was a gloomy one but its treatment was intended to raise many a laugh and it ends with the famous brief invocation of the Angel to the knights who had died fighting in Africa.

On August 6, 1517, Vicente resigned the post of Master of the Mint in favour of Diogo Rodriguez and probably about this time he married his second wife, Melicia Rodriguez. The second and third parts of the _Barcas_ trilogy were given in 1518 and 1519, but between the first and third parts Senhor Braamcamp Freire now places the _Auto da Alma_, and his scholarly suggestion[53] is amply borne out by the maturity and perfection of this beautiful play[54] and by the likelihood that Vicente when he wrote it was acquainted with Lucas Fernandez' _Auto de la Pasion_ (1514). The _Auto da Barca do Purgatorio_ was acted before Queen Lianor on Christmas morning, 1518, at the _Hospital de Todolos Santos_ (Lisbon). King Manuel had been at Lisbon in July of this year, going thence to Sintra, Collares, Torres Vedras and Almeirim, whence at the end of November he proceeded to Crato to welcome his new Queen, Dona Lianor. They returned together to Almeirim and the next months were spent there 'in great bullfights, jousts, b.a.l.l.s and other entertainments till the beginning of Spring [May] when the King went to Evora[55].' The _Auto da Barca da Gloria_ was played before his Majesty in Holy Week, 1519, and the fact that it is in Spanish and treats not of 'low figures,' but of n.o.bles and prelates, reveals the taste of the Court and the wish to please the young Queen. In the following year (Nov. 29, 1520) Vicente was sent from Evora to Lisbon to prepare for the entry of the King and Queen into their capital (January 1521). He seems to have worked hard in arranging and directing the festivities, and in the same year (1521) he staged both the _Comedia de Rubena_ and the _Cortes de Jupiter_. The latter is the only Vicente play of which we have a contemporary description. It was acted on the departure of the King's daughter, Beatriz, at the age of sixteen to espouse the Duke of Savoy.

Her dowry, including precious stones, pearls and necklaces, was magnificent, and after brilliant rejoicings at Lisbon she embarked on a ship of a thousand tons in a fleet commanded by the Conde de Villa Nova.

She was accompanied by the Archbishop of Lisbon and many n.o.bles. On the evening of August 4, in the Ribeira palace 'in a large hall all adorned with rich tapestry of gold, well carpeted, with canopy, chairs and cushions of rich brocade, began a great ball in which the King our lord danced with the lady Infanta d.u.c.h.ess his daughter and the Queen our lady with the Infanta D. Isabel, and the Prince our lord and the Infante D. Luis with ladies they chose; and so all the courtiers danced who were going to Savoy and many other gentlemen and courtiers for a long s.p.a.ce.

And the dancing over, began an excellent and well devised comedy with many most natural and well adorned figures, written and acted for the marriage and departure of the Infanta; and with this very skilful and suitable play the evening ended[56].'

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 pa.s.sing 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 Joo 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 Joo 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.