FOOTNOTES:
[6] Falamos do nosso Shakespeare, de Gil Vicente (A. Herculano, Historia da Inquisição em Portugal, ed. 1906, vol. I. p. 223). The references throughout are to the Hamburg 3 vol. 1834 edition.
[12] Guerra Junqueiro, Os Simples.
[13] Cf. André de Resende, Gillo auctor et actor. (For the accurate text of this passage see C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Notas Vicentinas, I. p. 17.)
[14] Os livros das obras que escritas vi (Letter of G. V. to King João III).
[15] 'E assi mandou de Castella e outras partes vir muitos ouriveis para fazerem arreos e outras cousas esmaltadas.' (Garcia de Resende, Cronica del Rei D. João II, cap. 117.)
[17] He argues that Vicente was not old enough to be King Manuel's tutor, but in other passages he is clearly in favour of the date 1460 or 1452. He is born 'considerably before' 1470 (Revista de Historia, t. 21, p. 11), in 1460? (ib. p. 27), in 1452? (ib. pp. 28, 31, and t. 22, p. 155), 'about 1460' (t. 22, p. 150), he is from two to seven years younger than King Manuel, born in 1469 (t. 21, p. 35). He is nearly 80 in 1531 (ib. p. 30). His marriage is placed between 1484 and 1492, preferably in the years 1484-6 (ib. p. 35).
[18] Gil Terron in the same year is alegre y bien asombrado (I. 12).
[19] Cf. Nao de Amores (1527), Viejo, vuestro mundo es ido, and II. 478 (1529).
[20] See A. Braamcamp Freire in Revista de Historia, t. 26, p. 123.
[21] Grandes baxillas y pedraria (Canc. Geral, vol. III. (1913), p. 57).
[22] Cf. Canc. Geral, vol. I. (1910), p. 259:
Vejam huns autos Damado,
Huũ judeu que foi queimado
No rressyo por seu mal.
[23] There is a slight confusion. The 'second night of the birth' of the rubric may mean the night following that of the birth (June 6-7), i.e. the evening of June 7, or the second night after the birth, i.e. the evening of June 8; but the former is the more probable.
[24] Damião de Goes, Chronica do felicissimo Rey Dom Emanuel, Pt I. cap. 69.
[25] See A. Braamcamp Freire in Revista de Historia, vol. XXII. (1917), p. 124 and Critica e Historia, vol. I. (1910), p. 325; Brito Rebello, Gil Vicente (1902), p. 106-8.
[26] Antología de poetas líricos castellanos, t. 7, p. clxiii.
[27] Orígenes de la Novela, t. 3, p. cxlv.
[28] Antol. t. 7, p. clxvi.
[29] Ib. p. clxxvi.
[30] Ib. p. clxiv.
[31] Especially that of Garcia de Resende, who in one verse (185) of his Miscellanea mentions the goldsmiths and in the next verse the plays of Gil Vicente.
[33] Cf. his earlier studies, in favour of identity, with his later works, maintaining cousinhood.
[34] Cf. Obras, I. 154 (Jupiter is the god of precious stones), I. 93, 286; II. 38, 46, 47, 210, 216, 367, 384, 405; III. 67, 70, 86, 296, etc. Cf. passages in the Auto da Alma and especially the Farsa dos Almocreves. Vicente evidently sympathizes with the goldsmith to whom the fidalgo is in debt, and if the poet took the part of Diabo in the Auto da Feira (1528) the following passage gains in point if we see in it an allusion to the debts of courtiers to him as goldsmith:
Eu não tenho nem ceitil
E bem honrados te digo
E homens de muita renda
Que tem divedo comigo (I. 158).
[35] The MS. note by a sixteenth century official written above the document appointing Gil Vicente to the post of Mestre da Balança should be conclusive as to the identity of poet and goldsmith: Gil Vte trouador mestre da balança (Registos da Cancellaria de D. Manuel, vol. XLII. f. 20 v. in the Torre do Tombo, Lisbon).
[36] Garcia de Resende († 1536) was of opinion that it had no rival in Europe:
nam ha outra igual
na Christamdade no meu ver.
(Miscellanea, v. 281, ed. Mendes dos Remedios (1917), p. 97.)
It contained 5000 moradores (ibid.). In the days of King Duarte (1433-8) the number was 3000.
[37] Cf. the dedication of Dom Duardos (folha volante of the Bib. Municipal of Oporto, N. 8. 74) to Prince João: 'Como quiera Excelente Principe y Rey mui poderoso que las Comedias, Farças y Moralidades que he compuesto en servicio de la Reyna vuestra tia....'
[38] The date 1509 is not barred by the reference to the Sergas de Esplandian, which certainly existed in an earlier edition than the earliest we now possess (1510). A certain Vasco Abul had given a girl at Alenquer a chain of gold for dancing a ballo vylam ou mourysco and could not get it back from the gentil bayladeyra. Gil Vicente contributes but a few lines: O parecer de gil vycente neste proceso de vasco abul á rraynha dona lianor.
[39] It is absurd to argue that during the years of his chief activity as goldsmith he had not time to produce the sixteen plays that may be assigned to the years 1502-17.
[40] Gil Vicente (1912), p. 11-13.
[41] The dates in the rubrics are given in Roman figures and the alteration from MDV to MDIX is very slight.
[42] Cf. Bartolomé Villalba y Estaña, El Pelegrino Curioso y Grandezas de España [printed from MS. of last third of sixteenth century]. Bibliófilos Españoles, t. 23, 2 t. 1886, 9, t. 2, p. 37: 'Almerin, un lugar que los reyes de Portugal tienen para el ynvierno, con un bosque de muchas cabras, corzos y otros generos de caza.'
[43] See A. Braamcamp Freire in Revista de Historia, vol. XXII. p. 129.
[44] A. Braamcamp Freire in Rev. de Hist. vol. XXII. p. 133-4.
[45] Luis Anriquez in Canc. Geral, vol. III. (1913), p. 106.
[46] See Rev. de Hist. vol. XXII. p. 122; vol. XXIV. p. 290.
[47] E.g. the words ahotas and chapado and the expression en velloritas (I. 41), cf. Enzina, Egloga I.: ni estaré ya tendido en belloritas = in clover, lit. in cowslips: belloritas de jacinto (Egl. III.).
[48] A. Braamcamp Freire in Rev. de Hist. vol. XXIV. p. 290.
[49] There are, however, several such psalms in the works of Enzina.
[50] Cf. I. 85: huele de dos mil maneras with Enzina, Egloga II: y ervas de dos mil maneras. In the Auto da Alma, probably written about this time, there are imitations of Gomez Manrique (c. 1415-90). Cf. the passage in the Exhortação.
[51] That the illness of the Queen would not prevent the entertainment is proved by the fact that in the month before her death King Manuel was present at a fight between a rhinoceros and an elephant in a court in front of Lisbon's India House. We do not know if Vicente was present nor what he thought of this new thing.
[52] In December 1517 El Bachiller de la Pradilla published some verses in praise of la muy esclarecida Señora Infanta Madama Leonor, Rey[na] de Portugal (v. Menéndez y Pelayo, Antología, t. 6, p. cccxxxviii).
[53] He argues that such a form as MD & viii was never used and must be a misprint for MDxviii.
[54] Cf. also the resemblance of certain passages in the Auto da Alma and in the Auto da Barca da Gloria (1519). They must strike any reader of the two plays.
[55] Goes, Chronica, IV. 34.
[56] Garcia de Resende, Hida da Infanta Dona Beatriz pera Saboya in Chronica...del Rey Dom Ioam II, ed. 1752, f. 99 V.
[57] Gil Vicente, Á morte del Rei D. Manuel (III. 347).
[58] Gil Vicente, Romance (III. 350).
[59] Goes says generally that King Manuel foi muito inclinado a letras e letrados (Chronica, 1619 ed., f. 342. Favebat plurimum literis, says Osorio, De rebus, 1561, p. 479).
[60] II. 4: Foi feita ao muito poderoso e nobre Rei D. João III. sendo principe, era de MDXXI (rubric of Comedia de Rubena).
[61] II. 364. Although 'good wine needs no bush' the custom of hanging a branch above tavern doors still prevails.
[62] A. Braamcamp Freire in Rev. de Hist. vol. XXII. p. 162.
[63] Id. ib. vol. XXIV. p. 307. It is astonishing how slight errors in the rubrics of Vicente's plays have been permitted to survive, just as Psalm LI, of which Vicente perhaps at about this time wrote a remarkable paraphrase, still appears in all editions of his works as Ps. L.
[64] Ib. vol. XXIV. p. 312-3.
[65] Th. Braga, Historia da Litteratura Portuguesa. II. Renascença (1914), p. 85.
[66] J. I. Brito Rebello, Gil Vicente (1902), p. 64.
[67] H. Thomas, The Palmerin Romances (London, 1916), p. 10-12.
[68] M. Menéndez y Pelayo, Antología, t. 7, p. cci; Oríg. de la Novela, I. cclxvii: toda la pieza es un delicioso idilio.
[69] Rev. de Hist. vol. XXIV. p. 315.
[70] It should be noted that the lines in Dom Duardos (II. 212):
Consuelo vete de ahi
No perdas tiempo conmigo
are from the song in the Comedia de Rubena (1521):
Consuelo vete con Dios (II. 53).
[71] Cf. O Clerigo da Beira: não fazem bem [na corte] senão a quem menos faz (III. 320); Auto da Festa: os homens verdadeiros não são tidos nũa palha, etc.
[72] Vejo minha morte em casa say the verses to the Conde de Vimioso; La muerte puesta a mis lados says the Templo de Apolo.
[73] Auto da Natural Invençam (Lisboa, 1917), pp. 64, 65, 68, 69, 70, 88, 89.
[74] Este nome pos-lho o vulgo (III. 4). Cf. the title Os Almocreves.
[75] Rol dos livros defesos (1551) ap. C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Notas Vicentinas, i.. p. 31. We might assume that the second part of O Clerigo da Beira (III. 250-9) was printed separately under the title Auto de Pedreanes but for the words por causa das matinas.
[76] Ib. p. 30-1.
[77] The probability is shown by the fact that the idea of their identity had occurred to me before reading the same suggestion made by Snr Braamcamp Freire in the Revista de Historia.
[78] See Notas Vicentinas, I. (1912). The Auto da Feira answers in some respects to Cardinal Aleandro's description of the Jubileu de Amores, and Rome (the Church, not the city) might conceivably have been crowned with a Cardinal's hat, but Aleandro's letter refutes this suggestion: uno principal che parlava ... fingeasi Vescovo. Rome in the Auto da Feira (I. 162) is a senhora. One can only say that the Auto da Feira may perhaps have been adapted for the occasion, with an altered title, Spanish being added, to suit the foreign audience.
[79] E como sempre isto guardasse Este mui leal autor Até que Deos enviasse O Principe nosso senhor Nam quis que outrem o gozasse (III. 276).
[80] The familiarity with which the Nuncio is treated would be more suitable if he was the Portuguese D. Martinho de Portugal, but then the date would have to be after 1527.
[81] Cf. II. 343: Salga esotra ave de pena ... Son perdices and Auto da Festa, p. 101. The latter text is corrupt (penitas for peitas, and cousas fritas has ousted the required rhyme juizes).
[82] The line nega se m'eu embeleco occurs here and in the Serra da Estrella (1527). Arguments as to date from such repetitions are not entirely groundless. Cf. com saudade suspirando (Cortes de Jupiter, 1521) and sam suspiros de saudade (Pranto de Maria Parda, 1522); Que dirá a vezinhança? III. 21 (1508-9), A vezinhança que dirá? III. 34 (1509); Ó demo que t'eu encomendo, III. 99 (1511), Ó diabo que t'eu encomendo, II. 362 (1513). The Exhortação (1513), which has passages similar to those in the Farsa de Ines Pereira (1523) and the Pranto de Maria Parda (1522), probably became a kind of national anthem and was touched up for each performance. Curiously, the mention of a pedra d'estrema in the Pranto and in the Auto da Festa might correspond to a first (1521) and second (1525) revision of the Exhortação.
[83] The very success of his plays incited emulation. A play written in Latin, Hispaniola, was acted at the Portuguese Court before his death (Gallardo, ap. Sousa Viterbo, A Litt. Hesp. em Portugal (1915), p. xxiv).
[84] See A. Braamcamp Freire in Rev. de Hist. vol. XXIV. p. 331.
[85] Francisco Alvarez arrived at the Court at Coimbra in the late summer of 1527 and he says: nam se tardou muito que el Rey nosso senhor se partisse com sua corte via dalmeirim. Verdadeira Informaçam (1540), modern reprint, p. 191.
[86] Rev. de Hist. vol. XXV. p. 89.
[87] According to Snr Braamcamp Freire this play must be assigned to the months between September 1529 and February 1530.
[88] O mandei a V. A. por escrito até lhe Deos dar descanso e contentamento... pera que por minha arte lhe diga o que aqui falece (III. 388).
[89] In this letter, written in the very year of the first Bull for the introduction of the Inquisition into Portugal, Vicente uses the expression 'May I be burnt if.'
[90] The line A quien contaré mis quejas (II. 147) is repeated from the Trovas addressed to King João in 1527. It is taken from a poem by the Marqués de Astorga printed in the Cancionero General (1511):
¿A quien contaré mis quexas
Si a ti no?
Cf. Comedia de Rubena (II. 6): ¿A quien contaré mi pena? The comical rôle of the Justiça Maior may have been taken by Garcia de Resende, who added acting to his other accomplishments. He was 66, and he died at Evora in this year.
[91] See A. Braamcamp Freire in Rev. de Hist. vol. XXVI. p. 122-3.
[92] From Gil Vicente's epitaph written by himself.
[93] Garcia de Resende (1470-1536), Miscellanea, 1752 ed., f. 113.
[94] André de Resende, Genethliacon Principis Lusitani (1532), ap. C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Notas Vicentinas, I. (1912), p. 17.
[95] Chronica do fel. Rey Dom Emanvel, Pt IV. cap. 84 (1619 ed., f. 341): Trazia continuadamente na sua corte choquarreiros castelhanos, com os motes & ditos dos quaes folgaua, nam porque gostasse tanto do q̃ diziam como o fazia das dissimuladas reprehensões [jocis perstringere mores] q̃ com geitos e palauras trocadas dauam aos moradores de sua casa fazendolhes conhecer as manhas, viços & modos que tinhão, de que se muitos tirauam & emmendauam, tomando o q̃ estes truães diziam com graças por espelho do que aviam de fazer.
[96] Auto da Cananea (1534).
[97] Auto da Lusitania.
[98] Sermão (III. 346).
[99] Carta (III. 388).
[100] Auto da Mofina Mendes (I. 120, 121).
[101] Auto da Cananea (I. 365).
[102] Sumario da Historia de Deos (I. 338).
[103] I. 69. His own knowledge of the Bible was extensive and he often follows it closely, e.g. Auto da Sibila Cassandra (I. 47, 48 = Genesis i.).
[104] III. 337, 338. His quarrel with the monks was that they did not serve the State. Cf. Fragoa de Amor (II. 345); Exhortação da Guerra (II. 367).
[105] Cf. the passage in the Sumario da Historia de Deos in which Abraham complains that men worship stocks and stones and have no knowledge of God, criador dos spiritos, eternal spirito (I. 326).
[106] III. 284. A critic upbraided Wordsworth for saying that his heart danced with the daffodils—no doubt Southey's 'my bosom bounds' was more poetical—yet Shakespeare and Vicente had used the phrase before him.
[107] Carta (III. 388).
[108] Cortes de Jupiter (II. 405).
[109] Romagem de Aggravados (II. 507).
[110] The preparation of his plays for the press was, he says, a burden in his old age. Some of the plays had been acted in more than one year, others had been composed years before they were acted, others had been printed separately. Hence the uncertainty of some of the rubric dates.
[111] Triunfo do Inverno (1529), II. 447.
[112] Romagem de Aggravados (1533), II. 524-5.
[113] Auto Pastoril Portugues (1523), I. 129.
[114] Farsa dos Almocreves (1527), III. 219.
[115] Triunfo do Inverno (1529), II. 487.
[116] Auto da Feira (1528), I. 175.
[117] See the Fragoa de Amor and the Auto da Festa.
[118] iii. 289 (1532).
[119] ii. 363 (as early as 1513).
[120] ii. 467-75.
[121] iii. 122.
[122] iii. 148 (cf. i. 40, iii. 41).
[123] Goes, Chronica do fel. Rey Dom Emanvel, Pt i. cap. 33 (1619 ed., f. 20).
[124] E.g. Novella 35: sotto apparenza onesta di religione ogni vizio di gola, di lussuria e degli altri, como loro appetito desidera, sanza niuno mezzo usano; Novella 36: hanno meno discrezione che gli animali irrazionali.
[125] Auto da Festa, ed. 1906, p. 115.
[126] Vicente, who could write such pure and idiomatic Portuguese, often used peculiar Spanish, not perhaps so much from ignorance as from a wish to make the best of both languages. Thus he uses the personal infinitive and makes words rhyme which he must have known could not possibly rhyme in Spanish, e.g. parezca with cabeza (Portug. pareça—cabeça). So mucho rhymes with fruto, demueño with sueño.
[127] The miser, o verdadeiro avaro (iii. 287), is barely mentioned. Perhaps Vicente felt that he would have been too much of an abstract type, not a living person.
[128] The boastful Spaniard appears (in Goethe's Italienische Reise) in the Rome Carnival at the end of the eighteenth century.
[129] There are abundant signs of the cosmopolitanism of Lisbon: A Basque and a Castilian tavernkeeper, a Spanish seller of vinegar and a red-faced German friar are mentioned, while Spaniards, Jews, Moors, negroes, a Frenchman, an Italian are among Vicente's dramatis personae.
[130] It is very curious to find echoes of Enzina in Vicente's apparently quite personal prose as well as in his poetry. No ay cosa que no esté dicha, says Enzina, and Vicente repeats the wise quotation and imitates the whole passage. Enzina addressing the Catholic Kings speaks of himself as muy flaca para navegar por el gran mar de vuestras alabanzas. Vicente similarly speaks of 'crowding more sail on his poor boat.' Enzina, in his dedication to Prince Juan, mentions, like Vicente, maliciosos and maldizientes.
[131] In this play the French tais-toi is written tétoi. In an age of few books such phonetic spelling must have been common. It has been suggested that the vair (grey) of early French poetry was mistaken for vert (green). The green eyes of the heroines in Portuguese literature from the Cancioneiro da Vaticana to Almeida Garrett would thus be based not on reality but, like Cinderella's glass slippers, on a confusion of homonyms (see Alfred Jeanroy, Origines de la poésie lyrique en France, p. 329).
[132] See his Arte de Poesía Castellana, ap. Menéndez y Pelayo, Antología, t. 5, p. 32.
[133] Os autos de Gil Vicente resentem-se muito dos Mysterios franceses. This was, in 1890, the opinion of Sousa Viterbo (A Litteratura Hespanhola em Portugal (1915), p. ix), but surely Menéndez y Pelayo's view is more correct.
[134] In Resende's Miscellanea the line nõ hos quer deos jũtos ver (1917 ed., p. 16) reads in the 1752 ed., f. 105 v. ja hos quer.
[135] Cf. Tratado tercero: llevandolo a la boca començó a dar en el tan fieros bocados (1897 ed., p. 50) and Quem tem farelos?: e chanta nelle bocado coma cão (i. 7).
[136] The Canc. Geral has a Pater noster grosado por Luys anrryquez, vol. iii. (1913), p. 87.
[137] Antología, t. 7, pp. clxxii, clxxiv.
[138] Antología, t. 2, p. 6.
[139] i. 298. Vuelta vuelta los Franceses from the romance Domingo era de Ramos, la Pasion quieren decir.
[140] Comedia de Rubena, ii. 40. The earliest known edition of the Spanish version of Jacopo Caviceo's Il Pellegrino (1508) is dated 1527 but that mentioned in Fernando Colón's catalogue (no. 4147) was no doubt earlier. In 1521 Vicente can already bracket the Spanish translation with the popular Carcel de Amor printed in 1492, and indeed it ran to many editions. Its full title was Historia de los honestos amores de Peregrino y Ginebra. Valdés (Dialogo de la Lengua) ranks El Pelegrino as a translation with Boscán's version of Il Cortegiano: estan mui bien romançados.
[141] E.g. the Nao de Amor of Juan de Dueñas.
[142] The Everyman-Noman theme in the Auto da Lusitania is, like that of Mofina Mendes, common to many countries and old as the hills.
[143] Henry Hallam, Introduction to the Literature of Europe (Paris, 1839), vol. i. p. 206.
[144] Cf. the story del mancebo que casó con una mujer muy fuerte et muy brava in Don Juan Manuel's El Conde Lucanor (c. 1535). Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew was written exactly a century after Ines Pereira; the anonymous Taming of a Shrew in 1594.
[145] The author of a sixteenth century Spanish play published in Biblióf. Esp. t. 6 (1870) declares that, in order to write it, he has 'trastornado todo Amadis y la Demanda del Sancto Grial de pe a pa.' The result, according to the colophon, is 'un deleitoso jardin de hermosas y olientes flores,' a description which would better suit a Vicente-play.
[146] Cf. the twelfth century Représentation d'Adam. The Sumario has 18 figures. The Auto da Feira has 22, but over half of these consist of a group of peasants from the hills.
[147] Obras (1908), t. 2, p. 217-24.
[148] The anonymous Tragicomedia Alegórica del Paraiso y del Inferno (Burgos, 1539) followed hard upon his death. It is not the work of Vicente, who, although in his Spanish he used allen, would not have translated nas partes de alem into an African town: en Allen.
[149] 3a impr. (Madrid, 1733), p. 35; p. 37 (the 1733 text has Oi and Ai); p. 39.
[150] As late as 1870 Dr Theophilo Braga could say 'Nobody now studies Vicente' (Vida de Gil Vicente, p. 59).