Gil Vicente

“ Though so large a proportion of his pieces are in Spanish, they are all eminently national in idea, texture and subject. No other Portuguese writer reflects so faithfully the language, types, customs and colour of his age as Gil Vicente, and the rudest of his dramas are full of genuine comic feeling. If they never attain to perfect art, they possess the supreme gift of life. ”

“ The stage of Lisbon has been occupied almost exclusively by the Italian opera and Spanish comedy. Only one poet of any name has written in the Portuguese spirit. This was Gil Vicente (1490-1556) . He resided constantly at the court, and was employed in providing occasional pieces for its civil and religious festivities. It is probable that he was an actor, and it is certain that he educated for the stage his daughter, Paula, who was equally celebrated as an actress, a poetess, and a musician. The dramas of Vicente consist of autos, comedies, tragi- comedies, and farces. ”

“ In the conflict with the new style introduced by Saa de Miranda’s school, Gil Vicente appeared as the representative of the yet enduring national taste, which even at court, where the adherents of the new party were most honourably distinguished, preserved a co-equal authority with that party. That each party should under such circumstances maintain its credit is not a little remarkable. Perhaps they became accommodated to each other merely because the Portuguese had no relish for literary feuds. ”

“ At the rise of the modern theatre in Spain and Portugal all dramas were denominated farces,98 and that the name has been continued to be applied to Vicente’s comedies, is an accident arising merely from the want of a better term of classification. It is in like manner the result of accident, that in France, England and Germany, the same term is still employed to distinguish precisely that species of drama to which Gil Vicente’s farces belong. ”

“ But Gil Vicente was a contemporary of Torres Naharro; and the dramatic compositions of the Portuguese poet, so far approximate to the ruder forms of the Spanish comedy, as to entitle Portuguese writers to claim for their own country the honour of the invention of that comedy. Spanish Autos either did not exist in the beginning of the sixteenth century, or if they did, they have disappeared from the domain of literature. A whole series of Autos by Gil Vicente are, however, extant ”

“ The invention and the execution of Gil Vicente’s Autos present an equal degree of rudeness. The least artificial are also those in which the most decided traits of national character appear. The shepherds and shepherdesses who are introduced into these Autos are Portuguese and Spanish both in their names and manners. Their simple phrases and turns of language are similar to those employed by the characters in Saa de Miranda’s eclogues, except that their discourse is more negligent and occasionally more coarse. ”

“ The text of the dramas is printed in gothic characters, but the introduction which precedes each piece is printed in the modern roman type. In the dramas themselves the Portuguese and Spanish languages are indiscriminately employed, and though the introductions are chiefly written in Portuguese, some of them are also in Spanish. I know of no later edition of Gil Vicente’s works. Barbosa Machado mentions none of subsequent date. How can the Portuguese public so completely forget an old favourite? Only a few of Gil Vicente’s Autos were printed singly in the seventeenth century. ”

“ The greater number of the old Portuguese lyric poets, does not, as to intrinsic value, raise the Portuguese lyric poetry above the Spanish. The dramatic works of Gil Vicente, which are completely thrown into shade by those of Lope de Vega and Calderon, would still be eclipsed, did they even possess the riper cultivation of the few dramas of Saa da Miranda, Ferreira, and Vasconcellos; which, however, is again more than counterbalanced by the dramatic energy and lofty poetry of the works of Moreto, Antonio de Solis, and other Spanish authors. ”

“ Thus mistakes, arising from personal resemblances, exchanges of children, and such like commonplace subjects of intrigue, form the groundwork of his stories, none of which are remarkable for ingenuity of invention. There is [Pg 213] usually a multitude of characters in his dramas, and jests and witticisms are freely introduced, but these in general consist of burlesque disputes in which some clown is engaged. [799]
[799] P. 282.
Gil Vicente. 40. The Portuguese Gil Vicente may perhaps compete with Torres Naharro for the honour of leading the dramatists of the peninsula. ”

“ Silva is the legitimate representative in the 18th century of the popular theatre inaugurated by Gil Vicente, and though born in Brazil, whence he brought the modinha, he is essentially a national writer. Like Silva’s operas, the comedies of Nicolao Luiz contain a faithful picture of contemporary society and enjoyed considerable popularity. Luiz divided his attention between heroic comedies and comedies de capa y espada, but of the fifty-one ascribed to him, all in verse, only one bears his name, the rest appeared anonymously. ”

“ There is nothing strange in this usage of Castilian by a Portuguese writer. We have already recorded the names of Gil Vicente, Sâ de Miranda, and Silvestre among those of Castilian poets; the lyrics and comedies of Camões, the Austriada of Jerónimo Corte Real, continue a tradition which begins [204] as early as the General Cancioneiro of García de Resende (1516) , wherein twenty-nine Portuguese poets prefer Castilian before their own language. A Portuguese writer, Innocencio da Silva, has gone the length of asserting that Montemôr wrote nothing but Castilian. ”

“ On the other hand Portugal gave birth to no considerable dramatist from the time of Gil Vicente, in the 16th century, until that of Garrett in the 19th, and it has failed to develop a national drama.
Its geographical position and history have rendered Portugal very dependent for intellectual stimulus and literary culture on foreign countries, and writers on Portuguese literature are wont to divide their subjects into periods corresponding to the literary currents from abroad which have modified its evolution. ”

“ For the rise, as in Spain, of a national party, which might rouse and incite a poet to advance from the point at which Gil Vicente had stopped, became now much more difficult. Thus the art of dramatic invention and composition long wavered amidst heterogeneous forms, until the Portuguese poets who wished to write for the theatre, had no alternative but to become imitators of the Spanish authors who had preceded them, or entirely to renounce the formation 138 of any thing like a national drama. No Portuguese Lope de Vega arose ”

“ From the reign of Emanuel the Great, to the period when the dynasty of that monarch became extinct, the kings of Portugal were more disposed to encourage adventurous enterprises in the two Indies than to devote themselves to the cultivation of poetry. John III. however, seems to have possessed a strong taste for dramatic amusements; at least it is related that he himself used to perform parts in the plays of Gil Vicente, which were represented at his court. ”

“ All of them, it is true, are extremely rude; but nearly all contain elements of the coming drama, and some of them, like “Don Duardos,” which is longer than a full-length play ordinarily is, are quite long enough to show what was their dramatic tendency. But the real power of Gil Vicente does not lie in the structure or the interest of his stories. It lies in his poetry, of which, especially in the lyrical portions of his dramas, there is much. [462]
[p. 293]
CHAPTER XV. Drama continued. — Escriva. — Villalobos. — Question de Amor. — Torres Naharro, in Italy. — His Eight Plays. ”

“ Later novels are “El Comendador Mendoza,” “Doña Luz,” and “Doctor Faustino.” Valera occupies a pre-eminent position as politician, journalist, author, and critic, and is at present at Vienna as Spanish ambassador to the Austrian Court.
[Pg 361]
Vicente, Gil, a Portuguese, but who ranks among Spanish dramatists, as he wrote ten plays in Castilian. (It was a not uncommon practice for Portuguese authors to employ Castilian. Saa de Miranda, the pastoral poet and contemporary of Gil Vicente, wrote six of his eight eclogues in the more sonorous Castilian.) ”

“ To give them models, he proceeded to write a series of prose dramas, choosing his subjects from Portuguese history. He began in 1838 with the Auto de Gil Vicente, considering that the first step towards the recreation of the Portuguese drama was to revive the memory of its founder, and he followed this up in 1842 by the Alfageme de Santarem, dealing with the Holy Constable, and in 1843 by Frei Luiz de Sousa, one of the few great tragedies of the 19th century, a work as intensely national as The Lusiads. ”

“ The Jealous One, which was perhaps the earliest comedy of character ever produced in Europe, and finally, a tragedy, Inez de Castro, the national tragedy, a tragedy so orthodox and regular in form that the author felt bound to introduce a chorus in the classic manner; it is charged with pathos and handled with much art.
GIL VICENTE.—Gil Vicente, a prolific poet who wrote forty-two dramatic pieces, two thirds in Spanish and the rest in Portuguese, touched every branch of theatrical literature; he produced religious plays (autos) , tragedies, romantic dramas, comedies, and farces. ”

“ But in this new edition the punctuation is as faulty as in Portuguese books of older date; and thus the foreigner experiences additional difficulty in studying a poet whose works, even if correctly printed, would not be very easily understood.
81 Nicolas Antonio and Barbosa Machado are the authorities for the particulars here collected. Dieze has likewise quoted from the above-mentioned writers, the account given in his appendix to Velasquez, p. 86, respecting Gil Vicente, and Paula Vicente, the daughter of the poet. ”

“ Leaving San Vicente behind us, we travelled for some leagues on the seashore, crossing occasionally a narrow inlet or firth. The country at last began to improve, and in the neighbourhood of Santillana was both beautiful and fertile. About a league before we reached the country of Gil Blas we passed through an extensive wood, in which were rocks and precipices; it was exactly such a place as that in which the cave of Rolando was situated, as described in the novel. The wood has an evil name, and our guide informed us that robberies were occasionally committed in it. ”

“ Here, under the admonition and tuition of his wife, he became a personage of some consequence, for she made the worthy little man array his long body and short legs in doublet and hose, with a feather in his hat and a sword by his side, and laying aside his familiar appellation of Peregil, assume the more sonorous title of Don Pedro Gil: his progeny grew up a thriving and merry-hearted, though short and bandy-legged generation, while Señora Gil, befringed, belaced, and betasselled from her head to her heels, with glittering rings on every finger, became a model of slattern fashion and finery. ”

“ Then, señor, if you would be treated like a devil-born gringo," said Don Gil with increasing anger, "whip a Spaniard! Steal their horses, pay men to kill them, harm their daughters, take their land, curse them for dogs, call them greasers! Does it mean nothing that I, I, Don Gil Diego, who hate all Americanos, have respect for you—and show it? Bah!" he cried, flinging his hands. "You, too, are a fool! I thought long and twice before I gave the gun back to you so that he might see and know you were my friend. ”

“ He’ll have to go on a pilgrimage to the boss——if Don Vicente does not help him out of this scrape it’ll be all up with him. But he’ll help him; one is as bad as the other. By the power of Don Vicente’s protection, they can do what they please in this province. As your uncle is to go to live in Madrid, they are going to hire his house in Pontevedra for the post-office—another fat thing for him! Nowadays, everybody has to be wide awake. A pretty state of things! I am not a man, but if I were, I’d go on a pilgrimage to the boss’s house, like everybody else. ”

“ But after it, I loved you—and then I had your cross set in gold—and betrayed you into Don Luis' mad old hands. All this trouble is my fault—you are here through me—you must be got out through me. Gil Perez is a better man than I am ever likely to be. He loves you sincerely. ”

“ Consequently, a little later, he rented a store in the Calle de la Zapatería.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
“What’s the matter with you, Don Gil?” asked Quentin, as he saw the narrator looking about for something.
“Why, you’re not pouring wine for me.”
“There’s none left.”
“Then call Señora Patrocinio.”
“What will you have, Don Gil? Falernus? Or shall we devote ourselves this time to the vines of Calais?”
“No, no; Montilla.”
“Can’t we make a change?”
“Mix one wine with another? Never! It’s very dangerous. But are you, or are you not going to call that old woman? ”

“ Morisco, a tall mule hitched to a pole, and blindfolded so that he should not grow dizzy, walked round and round in a circle, faithfully pumping the water, while Vicente alternately slept and exhorted him to “go!” The red-haired waiter told us Vicente’s story. In his youth he had been head gardener on a Grandee’s estate. For twenty years he had been attached to the hotel. He was now ninety-five years old. A few months before his wife had died, at the age of one hundred. Until then, Vicente had lived at home. ”