Portuguese literature
break of a line of 5 or 6 syllables after every four lines. Most of
Gil Vicente’s plays are in octosyllabic _redondilhas_ with or without
breaks of a line of four syllables, as in the poems of Duarte de Brito
and others in the _Cancioneiro Geral_. Lightness, grace, and ease mark
this metre in Vicente’s hands.
[266] This splendour-loving king bears an unmistakable resemblance to
King Manuel, before whom the play was acted, but in no other instance
does Vicente allow his satire to touch the king or royal family:
_cumpre attentar como poemos as mãos_ (_Cortes de Jupiter_).
[267] 1598 ed. (colophon). The date of the first edition is 1512.
[268] Montalvo’s _Amadis_ clearly. Vicente, who invariably suits his
language to his subject, would have written in Portuguese had the text
before him been Portuguese. If Montalvo’s _Amadis_ became fashionable
in Portugal this was characteristic of the Portuguese, who would
welcome foreign books while they despised and neglected their own.
[269] When Flerida meets D. Duardos disguised as a gardener she
supposes that his ordinary fare is garlic.
[270] For the words _quanto en caso de amores_ the Censorship is
evidently responsible.
[271] Cf. Zurara, _Cronica de D. João I_, 1899 ed., i. 116: _Alli houve
momos de tão desvairadas maneiras que a vista delles fazia mui grande
prazer_.
[272] _Cancioneiro Geral_, 1910 ed., i. 326.
[273] The Portuguese in the East in the sixteenth century maintained
these customs. We read of Christmas _autos_ in India and a
_representaçam dos Reis_ in Ethiopia. Cf. the Good Friday _centurios_
in Barros, II. i. 5.
[274] i. 103. The word was of course not new in the Peninsula. Cf. the
thirteenth(?)-century _El Misterio de los Reyes Magos_.
[275] _Breve Summario da Historia de Deos_ (i. 309).
[276] In the _Pranto de Maria Parda_ ‘because she saw so few branches
on the taverns in the streets of Lisbon and wine so dear and she could
not live without it’.
[277] _Do macho rruço de Luys Freyre estando pera morrer._ See also Dr.
H. R. Lang, C. G. C., pp. 174-8, note on the will of the Archdeacon of
Toro; and the extract from a manuscript _testamento burlesco_ in J.
Leite de Vasconcellos, _De Campolide a Melrose_ (1915).
[278] As neither of them is printed in his plays we cannot say whether
they were two or one and the same, or whether the French of his
song was more intelligible than the version preserved in Barbieri’s
_Cancionero Musical_ (No. 429).
[279] For instance, the following lines and phrases of the _Cancioneiro
Geral_: _Hirmee a tierras estrañas_, _Oo morte porque tardais_, _Vos
soes o mesmo paço_, _E outras cousas que calo_, _O eco pelos vales_.
The Portuguese fifteenth-century poet by whom he was most influenced
was probably Duarte de Brito.
[280] They were published separately in the following century: Lisboa,
1649.
[281] Many writers note the large number of priests. The north of
Portugal is _chea de muitos sacerdotes_ says Dr. João de Barros in
his _Libro de Antiguidades_, &c., a book full of curious information
collected by the author when he was a magistrate (_ouvidor_) at Braga,
and written in 1549. [A different work, _Compendio e Summario de
Antiguidades_, &c., variously attributed to Ruy de Pina and to Mestre
Antonio, surgeon to King João II, appeared in 1606.] Gil Vicente was
never in India, otherwise he would certainly have borne witness to
the devotion and courage of monks and priests in the East and on the
dangerous voyages to and from India.
[282] The anonymity may have been intentional, to emphasize the fact
that there was no personal allusion to any of the poor _escudeiros_ who
thronged the capital and Court.
[283] _Ep._ ii. 57.
[284] Letter from Evora, March 26, 1535.
[285] In the same play reappears Vicente’s Spaniard: _Castelhano muy
fanfarrão_.
[286] According to the _Arte de Furtar_, _decimas_ and sonnets were
written on the subject of a poor _fidalgo_ who was in the habit of
sending his _moço_ to two shoemakers for a shoe on trial from each,
since they would not trust him with a pair.
[287] If the _Dialogo da Resurreiçam_ be counted separately we have
forty-four in all.
[288] Index of 1551. See C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, _Notas
Vicentinas_, i (1912), p. 31. But here again the _Auto da Vida do Paço_
might be the _Romagem de Aggravados_.
[289] Cf. Barros, prefatory letter to _Ropica Pnefma_ (May 25, 1531):
_falam tam solto como se estivessem em Alemanha nas rixas de Luthero_.
[290] _Notas Vicentinas_, p. 21, where the letter is given in the
original Italian and in Portuguese. The Legate had lent a cardinal’s
hat for the occasion, little realizing that it was to be worn by one
of the actors in such a play (a witness to the realism with which
Vicente’s plays were staged).
[291] His tolerant spirit, expressed in his letter to the King in 1531,
was remarkable in an age not very remote from the day when Duarte de
Brito wrote to Anton de Montoro (_c._ 1405-80) that he would have been
burnt had he written in Portugal the blasphemous lines addressed to
Queen Isabella of Spain:
Si no pariera Sanctana
hasta ser nacida vos,
de vos el hijo de Dios,
rescibiera carne humana.
[292] As indeed they were to Milton: ‘Mombasa and Quiloa and Melind’.
On the other hand, Garcia de Resende in one of the _decimas_ of his
_Miscellania_ has twenty-six names: _Tem Ceita_, _Tanger_, _Arzilla_,
&c., ordered rather for the rhyme than for harmony.
[293] He does not attack them without exception. There is much good
sense in the _clerigo_ of Beira, and true charity in the _frade_ of the
_Comedia do Viuvo_.
[294]
os lavradores
Fazem os filhos paçãos,
Cedo não ha de haver villãos:
Todos d’ El Rei, todos d’ El Rei (_Farsa dos Almocreves_).
[295] Cf. the _balho vylam ou mourisco_ which cost Abul his gold
chain in the _Cancioneiro Geral_, and Lopo de Almeida’s third letter,
from Naples: _Mandaram bailar meu sobrinho com Beatriz Lopez o baylo
mourisco e despois o vilão_. A century after Vicente the shepherds’
dances are but a memory: _as danças e bailios antigamente tão usados
entre os pastores_ (Faria e Sousa, _Europa Portuguesa_, vol. iii, pt.
4).
[296] Cf. _Ulysippo_, iii. 6: _aquellas mayas que punhão, aquellas
lampas, aquellas alvoradas_, and D. Francisco de Portugal, _Prisoens e
Solturas de hũa Alma_: _Ines_ [of Almada] _moça de cantaro, a gabadinha
dos ganhõis do lugar, requestada da velanao dos barbeiros, a cuja porta
nunca faltou Mayo florido em dia de Santiago nem ramos verdes com
perinhas no de S. João a que os praticos daquella noute chamão lampas._
[297] _Á morte d’ El Rei D. Manoel._
[298] His occasional coarseness is popular, rustic, and as a rule
contrasts favourably with that of the _Cancioneiro Geral_.
[299] For a list containing about a hundred see T. Braga, _Eschola de
Gil Vicente_, p. 545, or the _Diccionario Universal_, vol. i (1882), p.
1884, s.v. _Auto_.
[300] _Flores de España_, cap. 5.
[301] _Bib. Nova_, ii. 158. Elsewhere he speaks of him as _poetae
comoediarum suo tempore celebratissimi_, and in the Appendix says:
_cuius comoedias Lusitani admodum celebrant_. But after the sixteenth
century Vicente was little more than a name. Faria e Sousa could
say that his plays had been esteemed [_con_] _poquísima causa_ (the
accidental omission of the _con_ led to the invention _poquísima
cosa_); and a learned Coimbra professor, Frei Luis de Sotomaior, caught
reading _as semsaborias de Gil Vicente, que em seus tempos foi mui
celebrado_, felt bound to be apologetic: _Aurum colligo ex stercore_
(Francisco Soares Toscano, _Parallelos de Principes_ (Evora, 1623), f.
159).
§ 2
_Lyric and Bucolic Poetry_
The romantic story of Macias had not been given literary form, but it
exercised a wide influence over the Portuguese poets of the sixteenth
century. Together perhaps with Diego de San Pedro’s _Carcel de Amor_,
the Spanish version of Boccaccio’s _Fiammetta_, and especially
Rodriguez de la Cámara’s _El siervo libre de Amor_ (containing the
_Estoria de los dos amadores Ardanlier e Liesa_), it must have been
in the mind of BERNARDIM RIBEIRO (1482-1552) when he wrote that
‘gentle tale of love and languishment’ the book of _Saudades_, which
is always known (like the first farce of Gil Vicente) from its first
three words as _Menina e moça_. Yet it is not really an imitative
work, being, indeed, remarkable for its unaffected sincerity, as the
expression of a personal experience. Its passionate truth continues to
delight many readers.[302] Almost all our information about Ribeiro’s
life is derived from his writings, which are in part evidently
autobiographical, and it shrinks or expands according to the degree
of the critic’s wariness or ingenuity. His birthplace is declared to
have been the quaint Alentejan village of Torrão. A passage in the
eclogue _Jano e Franco_ says that Jano fled thence at the time of the
great famine. The unhappy frequency of famines makes the date doubtful,
but if the year of Ribeiro’s birth be correctly stated in an official
document of May 6, 1642, as 1482, we may suppose--since Jano was
twenty-one--that he left his native Alentejo for Lisbon in 1503. It
is possible that he studied law and took his degree at the University
(at Lisbon) a few years later (1507-11?),[303] and became secretary
to King João III in 1524. As a _cavalleiro fidalgo_ he had his place
at Court, as poet he contributed to the _Cancioneiro Geral_ (1516).
A hopeless passion drove him from the Court, drove him perhaps to
Italy, and finally deprived him of his reason, so that his last years
were spent in the Lisbon Hospital de Todos os Santos.[304] Successive
generations have busied themselves over the object of his passion. The
romantic tradition that it was the Princess Beatriz, twenty-two years
his junior, the daughter of King Manuel for whose marriage to the Duke
of Savoy in 1521 Gil Vicente wrote the _Cortes de Jupiter_, is now
definitely discarded. That it was Queen Juana la Loca of Castille no
one except Varnhagen has ever imagined. But literary critics continue
to be tempted by the transparent anagrams of Ribeiro’s novel (adopted
evidently in order to make the story unintelligible to all except the
inner circle of the Court). Dr. Theophilo Braga has an ingeniously
fabricated theory that Aonia was Ribeiro’s cousin, Joana Tavares
Zagalo. Lamentor at least can scarcely have been King Manuel, since
he sends his daughter to the king’s Court. The scenery appears to be
a combination of that of the Serra de Sintra near Lisbon with that of
Alentejo. The story opens with an introductory chapter in which a young
girl (_menina e moça_), who has taken refuge in the _serra_ far from
all human society, announces her intention of writing down what she had
seen and heard in a small book (_livrinho_), not for the happy to read
but for the sad, or rather for none at all, seeing that of him for whom
alone it is intended she has had no news since his and her misfortune
bore him away to far-distant lands. Thus we have the thirteenth-century
_amiga_ mourning for her lover. _Ai Deus! e u é?_ Presently, as she
shelters from the noonday _calma_ beneath trees that overhang a gently
flowing stream, a nightingale pours forth its song, and then dying
with its song falls with a shower of leaves and is borne away songless
by the silent stream.[305] She is still bewailing its fate when
another, older but equally sad, lady (_dona_) appears, and the _menina_
becomes an almost silent listener to the end of the book while the
_dona_ unfolds the tale which is its true subject, the history of two
friends Narbindel and Bastião. But it begins with the love adventure