Portuguese literature
famous _serões_ of King Manuel’s reign to which the courtiers thronged
at dusk, and which Sá de Miranda remembered with regret.[264] All
provide us with realistic sketches since the background is filled with
the common people, the real hero of Gil Vicente’s plays as it is of
Fernam Lopez’ chronicles. Thus the _Auto da Mofina Mendes_ (Christmas,
1534), besides its heavenly _gloria_ with the Virgin, Gabriel,
Prudence, Poverty, Humility, and Faith, has a very life-like peasant
scene in which Mofina Mendes, personifying Misfortune, represents
a Portuguese version of _Pierrette et son pot au lait_. The _Auto
Pastoril Portugues_ (Christmas, 1523) is a similar scene of peasant
life, relating the cross-currents of the shepherds’ loves and the
finding of an image of the Virgin on the hills. The _Auto da Feira_,
acted before King João at Lisbon in 1527, is a more elaborate Christmas
play. Mercury, Time, Rome, and the Devil attend a fair, and this
furnishes opportunity for a vigorous attack upon the Church of Rome,
with her indulgences for others and her self-indulgence, who has not
the kings of the Earth but herself to blame if she is rushing on ruin,
ruin that will be inevitable unless she mends her ways. But to the fair
also come the peasants Denis and Amancio, as dissatisfied with their
wives as their wives are dissatisfied with them (their conversation
is most voluble and natural), and market-girls, basket on head, come
down singing from the hills. Another Christmas play, the _Auto da
Fé_, was acted in the royal chapel at Almeirim in 1510, and consists
of a simple conversation between Faith and two shepherds. The _Breve
Summario da Historia de Deos_[265] (1527) and the _Auto da Cananea_
(written for the Abbess of Odivellas in 1534) are both based on the
Bible; the former, which contains the _vilancete_ sung by Abel (_Adorae
montanhas_), outlines the story of the Fall, of Job, and of the New
Testament to the Crucifixion, sometimes in passages of great beauty.
The latter develops the episode of the woman of Canaan (Matt. xv.
21-8). The great trilogy of _Barcas_, which ranks among Vicente’s most
important works, is of earlier date. The first part, _Auto da Barca do
Inferno_, was acted before Queen Maria _pera consolação_ as she lay
on her death-bed in 1517, the second, _Auto da Barca do Purgatorio_,
at Christmas of the following year in Lisbon, and the _Auto da Barca
da Gloria_ at Almeirim in 1519. The plot, again, is of the simplest:
the Devil, combining the parts of Charon and Rhadamanthus, ferry-man
and judge, invites Death’s victims to show cause why they should not
enter his boat; and the interest is in the light thus thrown upon the
earthly behaviour of nobleman, judge, advocate, usurer, fool, love-lorn
friar, the cheating market-woman, the cobbler who throve by deceiving
the people, the peasant who skimped his tithes, the little shepherdess
who had seen God ‘often and often’, of Count, King,[266] and Emperor,
Bishop, Cardinal, and Pope. The first part ends with a noble invocation
to the knights who had died fighting in Africa, and the second begins
with the mystic jewelled _romance_: _Remando vam remadores_.
The comedies and tragicomedies vary greatly. The _Comedia de Rubena_
(1521) is, like _A Winter’s Tale_, quite without unity of time or
place (for this primitive humanist, although he might mention Plato,
did not ‘reverence the Stagirite’), but is divided into three acts
(called scenes) as in a modern play. Cismena, like Perdita born in the
first scene, is conveyed by fairies to Crete, where she is wooed and
won by the Prince of Syria. The _Comedia do Viuvo_ (1514) is much more
compact and has a delicate charm. Don Rosvel, a prince in disguise,
serves in the house of a widower at Burgos for love of his daughters.
(He is in love with both, but his brother in search of him arrives and
marries the second.) On the other hand, the _Comedia sobre a divisa da
cidade de Coimbra_, acted before King João III in his ever-loyal city
of Coimbra in 1527, is a lengthy, far-fetched explanation of the city’s
arms, and the _Floresta de Enganos_ (played before the king at Evora
in 1536) is a succession of scenes of pure farce--the deceit practised
upon a merchant, the ludicrous predicament to which love reduced the
grave old judge who had taken his degree in Paris--with a more serious
theme, a Portuguese version of the story of Psyche and Eros. Of the
‘tragicomedies’ two, _Dom Duardos_ (1525?) and _Amadis de Gaula_
(1533), dramatize romances of chivalry: _Primaleon_, that ‘_dulce &
aplacible historia_ translated from the Greek’,[267] and _Amadis_.[268]
The work is done with skill, for Vicente succeeds here as always in
being natural, and in this twilight atmosphere of garden flowers and
romance keeps his realism.[269] Both plays contain passages of great
lyrical beauty, and _Dom Duardos_ ends with the _romance_ beginning
_Pelo mes era de Abril_. Thus in his latter age he successfully adapted
himself to pastures new. In his letter dedicating _Dom Duardos_ to King
João III he wrote: ‘Since, excellent Prince and most powerful King,
the comedies, farces and moralities which I wrote for (_en servicio
de_) the Queen your Aunt were low figures[270] in which there was no
fitting rhetoric to satisfy the delicate spirit of your Highness, I
realized that I must crowd more sail on to my poor bark.’ For us the
words have a tinge of irony, and however much some readers may admire
the hushed rapture of these idyllic scenes we miss the merry author of
the _farsas_, and gladly turn to the _Romagem de Aggravados_ (1533) in
which Vicente proves that his hand had lost none of its cunning. ‘This
tragicomedy is a satire’ says the rubric, and it introduces us to the
inimitable Frei Paço, the mincing courtier-priest with gloves, gilt
sword, and velvet cap (one of Sá de Miranda’s _clerigos perfumados_),
to the discontented peasant who brings his son to be made a priest, the
talkative fish-wives, the hypocrite Frei Narciso scheming to be made a
bishop, and awkward Giralda, the peasant Aparicianes’ daughter, whom
Frei Paço instructs so competently in Court manners. This long play
was written for a special occasion, the birth of the Infante Felipe.
Gil Vicente for many years, as poet laureate, had celebrated great
events at Court. When the Duke of Braganza was about to leave with the
expedition against Azamor in 1513 he wrote the eloquent _Exhortaçam da
Guerra_, which is introduced by a necromancer priest and ends with a
rousing call to war (_soiça_):
Avante avante, senhores,
Pois que com grandes favores
Todo o ceo vos favorece;
El Rey de Fez esmorece
E Marrocos dá clamores.
When King Manuel’s daughter, the princess Beatrice, married the Duke
of Savoy in 1521 Vicente wrote the _Cortes de Jupiter_, in which the
Providence of God bids Jupiter, King of the Elements, speed her on
her voyage, and the courtiers and inhabitants of Lisbon accompany
her ship, swimming, to the mouth of the Tagus. The _Fragoa de Amor_
(1525) was written on the occasion of the betrothal of King João and
Queen Catherina (who replaced Queen Lianor as Vicente’s protector and
patron). Into the forge, to the sound of singing, goes a negro, and
then Justice in the form of a bent old woman who is forced to disgorge
all her bribes and reappears upright and fair. A similar play, _Nao
de Amor_ (1527), in which courtiers caulk a miniature ship on the
stage, was played before their Majesties in Lisbon two years later.
The _Templo de Apolo_ (1526) was acted when another daughter of King
Manuel left Lisbon to become the wife of the Emperor Charles V. The
author introduces the play and excuses its deficiencies on the plea
that he has been seriously ill with fever. He then relates the dream
of fair women--_las hermosas que son muertas_--that he had seen in his
sickness. Apollo then enters, and after declaring that he would have
made the world otherwise mounts the pulpit and preaches a mock sermon.
The world, Fame, Victory, come to his temple and bear witness to the
greatness of the Emperor Charles V. A Portuguese peasant also comes
and has more difficulty in obtaining admittance. The author called the
play an _obra doliente_, and it was propped up by a passage from the
earlier _Auto da Festa_ (1525?), edited by the Conde de Sabugosa from
the unique copy in his possession. Its figures are Truth, two gipsies,
a fool, and seven peasants. Their speech is markedly _beirão_ and the
old woman closely resembles the _velha_ of the tragicomedy _Triunfo do
Inverno_, written to celebrate the birth of Princess Isabel in 1529,
as the _Auto da Lusitania_ celebrated that of Prince Manuel in 1532
and the _Tragicomedia Pastoril da Serra da Estrella_ that of Princess
Maria in 1527. The latter is a whole-hearted play of the Serra with
a _cossante_, a _baile de terreiro_ and _chacota_, and continual
fragments of song: one of the most Portuguese of Vicente’s plays.
The _Triunfo do Inverno_ contains some most effective scenes and a
bewildering wealth of lyrics: before one is finished another has begun,
and the whole long play goes forward at a gallop. The first triumph
of Winter is on the hills, the Serra da Estrella (_serra nevada_);
the second, on the sea, affords a telling satire against the pilots
on India-bound ships. The pilot here begins by stating that the storm
will be nothing, then he says that he is not to blame for Winter’s
conduct, finally he falls to imploring the Virgin and St. George and
St. Nicholas; and but for his incompetence the ship might have been
lying safe at Cochin. The second part of the tragicomedy is the Triumph
of Spring in the Serra de Sintra. Spring enters in a lyrical profusion
singing
Del rosal vengo, mi madre,
Vengo del rosale,
breaks off into _Afuera, afuera nublados_, and resumes his song:
A riberas de aquel rio
Viera estar rosal florido,
Vengo del rosale.
Enough has perhaps been said to suggest the variety of these plays,
the glow of colour that pervades them, and to show how far their
author, although his genius was never fully realized in his _autos_,
had travelled from the first glimmerings of the drama in Portugal and
from his first model, Enzina. Rudiments of dramatic art existed in
the Middle Ages in the ceremonies provided by an essentially dramatic
Church and in the mummeries and mimicking _jograes_ that delighted the
people. Bonamis and his companion furnished some kind of extremely
primitive play (_arremedillum_) for King Sancho I, and they were
probably only the most successful of hundreds of wandering mimics and
players. Mimicry and scenic display[271] were the principal ingredients
of the _momos_ in which Rui de Sousa excelled[272] and the _entremeses_
for which Portugal was famous: they scarcely belonged to literature,
although they might include a song and prose _breve_ such as the Conde
do Vimioso’s, printed in the _Cancioneiro Geral_. Religious processions
and Christmas, Epiphany, Passion, or Easter scenes[273] gave further
scope for dramatic display, as also popular ceremonies such as that
in which ‘Emperors’ and ‘Kings’--figures similar, no doubt, to those
still to be seen in Spanish processions (e. g. at Valencia)--were
carried in triumph to the churches, accompanied by _jograes_ who
invaded the pulpit and preached profane sermons containing ‘many
iniquities and abominations’, even while mass was in progress. The
popular tendencies darkly suggested in the _Constituições_ are manifest
in Vicente’s plays--the Christmas _representações_, the preaching of
burlesque sermons, parodies of the mass, profane litanies, parodies and
paraphrases of the Lord’s Prayer. Like the _Clercs de la Bazoche_ in
France, he represents the drama breaking its ecclesiastical fetters.