Portuguese literature
de Miranda, as those of three other famous poets, give no sign of the
coming greatness of the contributor. The names of the other three are
Bernardim Ribeiro, Cristovam Falcão, and the prince of all these poets,
here the humblest of Cinderellas, Gil Vicente.
FOOTNOTES:
[206] _Historiadores Portugueses_ in _Opusculos_ (1907), ii. 27.
The author of the _Theatrum_ has a similar verdict: _Scripsit
Chronicam Ioannis II ut quidem potuit sed longe impar regis et rerum
magnitudinis._
[207] _Sem letras e sem saber_, he says modestly, _me fui nisto meter._
[208] The book has as many titles as editions, that of 1545 being
_Lyuro das Obras de Garcia de Resẽde que trata da vida e grãdissimas
virtudes_, &c.
[209] Or he would seek to obtain them through a friend as in the case
of _o Cancioneiro do abade frei Martinho_ of Alcobaça. It is improbable
that Resende, who valued friendship above good poetry, altered the
manuscripts he received, in spite of Francisco de Sousa’s permission:
_as quaes podeys enmendar_.
[210] _Prologo._ ‘Had you forgotten that _trovas_ are still written in
Portugal?’ asks Nuno Pereira of one of his victims; and of a dress it
is said that it would be _certo de leuar Trouas de riso e mote_. Cf.
the phrase _dar causa a trovadores_.
[211] Or Albuquerque would be mentioned in a game of _Porque’s_ (why’s)
common among the _praguentos da India_: _Porque Afonso d’Albuquerque Dá
pareas a el rey de Fez?_
[212] Zurara, _Cr. de D. Joam_, cap. 29.
[213] The _Cancioneiro_ contains many references to Venice. The
_pimenta de Veneza_ mentioned in one of the poems must have sounded
strange to Portuguese readers in 1516.
[214] e. g. _Meu bem, sem vos ver Se vivo um dia, Viver nam queria.
Caland’ e sofrendo Meu mal sem medida, Mil mortes na vida Sinto nam vos
vendo, E pois que vivendo Moiro toda via, Viver nam queria._
[215] _La t’arreda Satanas, Cristo Jesu a ti chamo, A ti amo, Tu Senhor
me salvarás. O sinal da cruz espante Minha torpe tentaçam, Com devaçam
Espero dir adiante._
[216] One of his poems has the heading: _Outro vilançete seu estãdo em
Azamor antes ̃q se fynasse_.
[217] e.g. _A culpa de quem se ama doe mais & perdoase mais asinha, Nam
pede louvor quem o merece, Da fee nace a rezam da fee_, &c.
[218] D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos goes so far as to call the
Portuguese _Cancioneiro Geral_ a mere supplement or second part of the
Spanish _Cancionero General_ (_Estudos sobre o Romanceiro_, p. 303).
III
The Sixteenth Century [1502-80]
§ 1
_Gil Vicente_
In Portugal a splendid dawn ushered in the sixteenth century. The
discovery of the sea route to India, while it gave an impulse to
science and literature, also increased religious fervour, since the
Portuguese who contended against the Moors in India were but carrying
on the work of their ancestors five centuries earlier in Portugal.
Old-fashioned Portugal thus only gradually welcomed the Renaissance
and stood firm against the Reformation. But in the reign of João III
(1521-57) the University of Coimbra came to be one of the best-known
universities in Europe. André de Gouvêa (†1548), whom Montaigne called
‘sans comparaison le plus grand principal de France’,[219] and Diogo
de Teive returned from the Collège de Sainte-Barbe to inaugurate
its studies, and many of its chairs were offered to distinguished
Portuguese and foreign scholars, such as Ayres Barbosa (†1540) and
George Buchanan (1506-82), as well as to Portuguese humanists such
as Antonio de Gouvêa and Achilles Estaço (†1581). Nicholas Cleynarts
or Nicolaus Clenardus (1493 or 1494-1542), Professor of Greek and
Hebrew at Louvain, came to Portugal from Salamanca as tutor to
the Infante Henrique in 1533, and from Portugal wrote some of his
wittiest letters.[220] He found Coimbra a second Athens, and few great
Portuguese writers of the century had not spent some years there or
at the University before it was transferred to Coimbra from Lisbon
in 1537. King João III and especially his son, the young prince João
(1537-54), Cardinal Henrique (1512-80), and the many-sided Infante Luis
(1506-55), _favorecedor de toda habilidad_, himself a poet of no mean
order[221] and pupil of Pedro Nunez, eagerly patronized letters; the
household of the accomplished Infanta Maria (1521-77) became the ‘home
of the Muses’[222]; learned Luisa Sigea (†1560), of French origin,
but born at Toledo and brought up in Portugal, wrote a Latin poem in
praise of _Syntra_; her sister Angela, Joana Vaz, and Publia Hortensia
de Castro were likewise noted for their learning, and D. Lianor de
Noronha (1488-1563), daughter of Fernando, Marques de Villareal, did
good service to Portuguese prose by her encouragement of translations.
But Portuguese literature lost something by its latinization, and it is
pleasant to turn back half a century to a time when it was humbler and
more national. The ‘very prosperous’ Manuel I, Lord of the Ocean,[223]
Lord of the East,[224] had been seven years king, Vasco da Gama had
returned triumphantly from Calicut (1497-9), Cabral had discovered
Brazil for Portugal (1500), Afonso de Albuquerque (†1515) stood on the
threshold of his career of conquests and glory, the Portuguese Empire
was advancing from North Africa to China,[225] the gold and spices were
beginning to arrive in plenty from the East, and hope of honour and
riches was drawing nobleman and peasant to Lisbon, when GIL VICENTE
(_c._ 1465-1536?) introduced the drama into his
dear, dear land,
Dear for its reputation through the world.
Dressed as a herdsman on the night of June 7, 1502, he congratulated
the queen on the birth of the Infante, later King João III (born
during the night of June 6), in a Spanish monologue of 114 lines. This
speech gives promise of two qualities apparent in his later work:
extreme naturalness (the embarrassed peasant wonders open-mouthed at
the grand palace and his thoughts turn at once to his village) and
love of Nature (mountain and meadow are aflower for joy of the new
prince born). But, it may reasonably be asked, where is the drama? It
consists principally in the _vaqueiro_, who is restless as one of the
wicked in a Basque _pastorale_. He rushes into the queen’s chamber,
has a look at its luxuries, turns to address the queen, declares that
he is in a hurry and must be going, leaps in gladness, and finally
introduces some thirty courtiers in herdsman’s dress who offer gifts
of milk, eggs, cheese, and honey. There is little in this simple
piece--the _Visitaçam_, or _Monologo do Vaqueiro_--to foreshadow the
sovereign genius,[226] the Plautus, the Shakespeare[227] of Portugal
that was Gil Vicente. His life is wrapped in obscurity, and the known
existence of half a dozen contemporary Gil Vicentes makes research a
risky operation. There was a page (1475) and an _escudeiro_ (1482) of
King João II, an official at Santarem, a Santarem carpenter (†1500),
there was a Gil Vicente in India in 1512,[228] and a Gil Vicente
goldsmith at Lisbon. We know that the poet spoke of himself as near
death (_visinho da morte_) in 1531, although apparently in good health.
This would seem to place his birth a few years before 1470.[229]
Unfortunately the _Auto da Festa_, in which he says that he is over
sixty, is undated. As, however, it was written before the _Templo de
Apolo_ (1526) we may place it probably about 1525. We are thus brought
back to about the same date (_c._ 1465). Almost certainly he was not of
exalted parentage.[230] Indeed, he would appear to have been slighted
for his humble birth, and sarcastically spoke of himself as the son
of a pack-saddler and born at Pederneira (Estremadura).[231] He may
have been the son of Luis Vicente or of Martim Vicente, ‘said to have
been a silversmith of Guimarães’ (Minho).[232] The frequent mention
of the province of Beira is, however, noticeable in his plays. If it
were only that his peasants use words such as _nega_, _nego_, which
according to the grammarian Fernam d’Oliveira were peculiar to Beira
(in 1536),[233] it might pass for a dramatic device, since Oliveira
remarks that old-fashioned words will not be out of place if we assign
them to an old man of Beira or a peasant.[234] Indeed, the grammarian
seems to have had Gil Vicente especially in view (he mentions him in
another connexion) since three of the six words that he notes--_abem_,
_acajuso_, _algorrem_--occur in three successive lines of the _Barca
do Purgatorio_, and another, _samicas_, is as great a favourite with
Vicente as at first was _soncas_,[235] derived from Enzina. But it is
impossible to explain all the references to Beira by the supposition
that _beirão_ is equivalent to rustic and Beira to Boeotia, for Beira
and the Serra da Estrella intrude constantly and indeed pervade his
work. He shows personal knowledge of the country between Manteigas and
Fundão, and we may suspect that it was in order to connect ‘Portuguese
Fame desired of all nations’ with Beira ‘our province’ rather than with
rusticity that he makes her keep ducks as a _mocinha da Beira_. We do
not know when Vicente came to Lisbon, nor whether, as José de Cabedo
de Vasconcellos, another (17th c.) genealogist, would have us believe,
he became the tutor (_mestre de rhetorica_) of King Manuel, then Duke
of Beja. Of his life at Lisbon our information is almost as meagre.
We know, of course, that he accompanied the Court to Evora, Coimbra,
Thomar, Almeirim, and other towns to set up and act in his plays, that
besides acting in his plays he wrote songs for them and music for the
songs. We know that he received considerable gifts in money and in kind
both from King Manuel and from João III, in whose reign he complains
of being penniless and neglected. Some hold that he married his first
wife, Branca Bezerra, in 1512, that he owned the _Quinta do Mosteiro_
near Torres Vedras (a supposition no longer tenable), that the name
of his second wife was Melicia Rodriguez, but we have no certainty
as to this, nor as to the number of his children. The accomplished
Paula became musician and lady-in-waiting to the Infanta Maria before
the death of her father, whom she helped--runs the legend--in the
composition of his plays,[236] as she helped her brother Luis in
editing them in 1562. From a document concerning another brother,
Belchior, we know that Gil Vicente (_seu pae que Deus haja_) died
before April 16, 1540. There is some reason to believe that he died in
the year of his last play (1536) or early in 1537. From his assertion
that the mere collection of his works was a great burden to his old
age[237] we might judge him to have been very old, but he may have been
worn out with labour in many fields and his health had not always been
good. He suffered from fever and plague, which brought him to death’s
door in 1525, and he had grown stout with advancing age. An incident
at Santarem on the occasion of the great earthquake of 1531, so
vividly described by Garcia de Resende, shows him in a very attractive
light, for by his personal prestige and eloquent words he succeeded in
restraining the monks and quieting the half-maddened populace, and thus
saved the ‘new Christians’ from ill-treatment or massacre.
We know a little more about him if we identify him with Gil Vicente,
the goldsmith of Queen Lianor (1458-1525), sister of King Manuel and
widow of King João II, whose most famous work is the beautiful Belem
monstrance, wrought of the first tribute of gold from the East (from
Quiloa or Kilwa).[238] The probabilities in favour of identity are
so convincing that we are bound to assume it unless an insuperable
obstacle presents itself. Our faith in manuscript documents and