Portuguese literature

After Gil Vicente’s death the autos continued to flourish in number if not in excellence, and evidently answered to a very real popular demand. It was in vain that the Jesuits produced their Latin plays and that serious poets of high reputation sought to wean the affections of the people from the auto to the classical drama.[353] This opposition of the educated did, however, conduce to the swift deterioration of the auto, although some of those of a religious character, chiefly the Nativity plays, still succeeded in reflecting a part of the charm that characterized the Vicentian drama. To Gil Vicente’s lifetime probably belongs the Obra famosissima tirada da Sancta Escriptura chamada da Geração humana, onde se representam sentenças muy catolicas & proueitosas pera todo christã: Feita por huũ famoso autor (1536?). Indeed, the verse runs so easily, the peasants are so natural, that one might almost suspect him of having had a hand in its composition. But the metre (8 8 4 8 8 4) is more monotonous than he would have used throughout. The dramatis personae are angels, peasants,[354] Adam, Justice, Reason, Malice, two devils, a priest, four saints and doctors of the Church, a Levite, the Church, the Heavenly Samaritan. Adam in a scene closely resembling that of the Auto da Alma is tempted by Malice. Justice intervenes, and finally the Samaritan leads him to the estalagem of Holy Mother Church. The Auto de ds [Deus] padre & justiça & mia [Misericordia] belongs to the same period. It is written in octosyllabic verse and contains a similar medley of peasants, prophets, and abstract virtues. In the first part the angels in Portuguese announce to the Virgin the birth of Christ, and in the second part the peasants, who speak Spanish, go to offer rustic gifts to el muy chiquito donzel. Another early and anonymous play is the Auto do Dia do Juizo, included in the Index of 1559, which for its subject closely follows Gil Vicente’s Auto da Barca do Inferno. A peasant, a false and lying notary, a market-woman who had offered weekly bread and wax to Santa Catharina but had ’robbed the poor people’, a butcher, a miller who had mixed bran in his sacks of flour, are introduced in turn and duly consigned by Lucifer to Hell.

If we only knew the quondam Franciscan monk Antonio Ribeiro Chiado (c. 1520?-91) and his contemporary and rival, the mulatto servant of the Bishop of Evora, by their mutual abuse, we could form no very high opinion of their character or their wit. In bitter quintilhas Chiado reviles the latter for his dark complexion; Afonso Alvarez answers by upbraiding nonno Chiado as the son of a cobbler and a market-woman and for the habits which had made the cloister seem so dismal a place to Frei Antonio do Espirito Santo. Fortunately some of the plays of both of them survive, and we are better able to judge of their merits. The mulatto, who was a valued member of his master’s household and prides himself that Chiado has nothing worse to throw in his face than the colour of his skin, was certainly Chiado’s inferior in wit and talent. Both imitate Gil Vicente without having a vestige of his lyrical genius or greater skill in devising a plot. Alvarez preferred religious subjects. In his Auto de Santo Antonio St. Anthony restores to life the drowned son of two peasants, who are imitated from Vicente’s Auto da Feira.[355] The only other of his plays that we have is the Auto de Santa Barbara, but we know that he also wrote an Auto de S. Vicente Martyr and an Auto de Santiago Apostolo.

Chiado’s plays and witty sayings, avisos para guardar and parvoices, appear to have made him extremely popular in Lisbon, Camões recognized his talent, and Lisbon’s most famous street still bears his name in common speech. His boisterous life at Lisbon after leaving his convent may have given him his name Chiado (cf. the chiar of ox-carts), but it existed as a surname earlier. His Pratica de Oito Figuras (1543?), Auto das Regateiras (1568 or 1569), and Pratica dos Compadres (1572), are the work of an accomplished wit who was intimately acquainted with the farces of Gil Vicente and, in the last two, with the prose plays of Jorge Ferreira. Many of Vicente’s types are present, but all in a town atmosphere, in which cards take the place of the rustic dances and lyric yields to epigram, the natural genius of Vicente to a laboured smartness. We have the clerigo de vintem, the ratinho from Beira, the vain pação, the poor fidalgo or escudeiro, the negro with his pidgin Portuguese, the witch, the ill-tempered velha, the trovador chaplain, the ambitious priest, the corrupt judge. The scenes are even more disconnected and less dramatic, and the ingenious redondilhas necessarily seem artificial because their author so often challenges comparison with the more genuine skill of his master, Gil Vicente. Chiado’s Auto de Gonçalo Chambão was reprinted several times in the seventeenth century, but is now unknown. Of his Auto da Natural Invençam (c. 1550) a single copy survives, in the library of the Conde de Sabugosa, whose edition (1917) is of exceptional interest. The play, as reminiscent of Vicente as are the other plays of Chiado, describes the acting of an auto in a private house in the reign of João III, and bears witness to the frequency of such representations at Lisbon and to their extraordinary popularity.

Balthasar Diaz, a blind poet (or jogral) of Madeira, in the first half of the sixteenth century wrote plays which have retained their popularity. He versified at great length traditions of chivalry and of mediaeval saints. We do not possess his Trovas written on the death of D. João de Castro (1548), and many of his plays, Auto da Paixam de Christo, Auto de El Rei Salomão, Auto da Feira da Ladra, have become rare or unknown. One of the best of them, the Auto de Santo Aleixo, perhaps owes its survival to its subject, akin to the popular theme of a prince in disguise. The rich and noble Aleixo wanders in rags to the Holy Land. The Devil, who tempts him in the form of a wayfarer, declares that now—the eternal querulous ‘now’ of the poets—only the rich are honoured and learning is neglected. Later the Devil becomes a courtier and again tempts St. Aleixo, who is defended by an angel. The Auto de Santa Catherina is a long devout play of which the persons are St. Catherine, her mother, her page, the Emperor Maxentius, a hermit, three doutores, Christ, the Virgin, angels. The saint, who receives news of her mother’s death with admirable equanimity, suffers martyrdom at the end of the play with equal fortitude. Diaz also dramatized the story of the Marques de Mantua. Although devoid of dramatic or lyric talent, he is sometimes interesting. Women, whose dresses and fashions are contrasted in the Auto de Santo Aleixo with the hard toil of the men, are represented in the Auto da Malicia das Mulheres as treating their husbands ‘like negroes’. We do not know whether Diaz spoke from experience, his life is very obscure; but he may have spent his last years in Beira if the passage in his O Conselho para bem casar:

be not merely a reference to Boeotia, any place far from Lisbon.

Traces of Vicente and the Celestina[356] are apparent in Anrique Lopez’ Cena Policiana or O Estvdante, in which a fidalgo and a student[357] figure. The poor escudeiro and his fasting moço are prominent in Jorge Pinto’s Auto de Rodrigo e Mendo. Spanish romances are quoted with great frequency, and Vicente’s En el mes era de Abril is parodied by the moços.[358] Indeed, their knowledge of literature was become embarrassing since, when his master’s guest, invited to a dinner which did not exist, recites some verses that he has made, Rodrigo has already read them in Boscán and heard them sung in the street.[359]

The exact dates of Antonio Prestes, of Torres Novas, are unknown, but seven of his plays, after having been acted at Lisbon and published in folhas volantes, were first collected by Afonso Lopez half a century after Gil Vicente’s death in the Primeira Parte dos Avtos e Comedias Portuguesas, &c. (1588). The Auto da Ave Maria, written between 1563 and 1587, is an allegorical play in which Reason is vanquished by Sensuality; Heraclitus mourns over her fall while Democritus laughs. A knight in league with the Devil[360] robs in turn an almoner, a ratinho, and Fast, but his pious habit of saying an Ave Maria causes St. Michael to rescue him from the Devil and reconcile him with Reason. Of the profane plays, that with the most definite plot is the Auto dos Dous Irmãos, in which an old man, after refusing to see his sons who have married without his permission, divides all his money between them and is then neglected by both: he is sent from one to the other like King Lear. But the story is feebly worked out here as in the other plays. Their action is mostly that of a puppet show. Sometimes the moço, who always plays a prominent part, seems to be the only link in the plot, as Duarte in the Autos dos Cantarinhos. These moços, who show the author’s acquaintance with Gil Vicente[361] and Lazarillo de Tormes,[362] are quite unlike either Lazarillo or Apariço. They are certainly hungry, but they combine starvation with laziness, presumption and abundant learning. The names of Petrarca and Seneca are on their lips; they read Palmeirim and quote romances of chivalry and Spanish romances glibly.[363] Indeed, the chief interest of these artificial plays is the light thrown on the times: the position of women, the bribery of judges and lawyers, the aping of foreign manners, the mixed styles of architecture. They contain no poetry, little drama, and their wit is seldom natural. Like Prestes, Jeronimo Ribeiro, perhaps a brother of Chiado, was born apparently at Torres Novas. Only one of his plays was published: the Auto do Fisico, written in the last third of the sixteenth century. It has some farcical Vicentian scenes, the inevitable hits against the doctors and lawyers—the moço dresses up as a doutor to receive a simple fisherman from Alfama—and is generally more popular and natural than Prestes’ plays.

Simão Machado (c. 1570-c. 1640), who as a Franciscan monk—Frei Boaventura—ended his life at Barcelona, was also born at Torres Novas. His plays—Comedias portvgvesas (1601?)—are two: Comedia de Dio and Comedia da Pastora Alfea. They are written in Spanish and Portuguese indiscriminately despite Gonçalo’s admonition palrar como Pertigues.[364] The author explains that, well aware of his countrymen’s love of what is foreign, he uses Castilian to save his plays from the neglect often bestowed in Portugal upon works written in Portuguese. His verse is ordinarily the redondilha, although Nuno da Cunha in the first part of O Cerco de Dio makes a speech in oitavas. He has lyrical facility and his peasant scenes are full of life, for instance, the dialogue between the cowherd Gil Cabaço and Tomé the goatherd in Alfea.

The Gospel story was dramatized by Frei Francisco Vaz of Guimarães in a long Auto da Paixão. The oldest edition we have is dated 1559, and it has been often reprinted, with thirty rough woodcuts. Some of these are very spirited, as that of the cock crowing after St. Peter’s denial, or that of Judas hanging himself. After a long introductory speech in versos de arte maior the play proceeds in redondilhas (over 2,000 lines). Religious subjects have always been favourites with the Portuguese, especially those affording scope for lavish scenic display, not only those of martyred saints, as the Auto de Santa Genoveva, but those based on the New Testament, as the later play Acto figurado da degolação dos Innocentes (1784) in seven scenes.[365]

Two plays, the Auto da Donzella da Torre and Auto de Dom André, are attributed to Gil Vicente’s grandson, Gil Vicente de Almeida. The latter, written before 1559, in which a peasant brings his unlettered son (nem nunca falei Gramatica) to Court, and a ratinho, on becoming a page, promises himself to learn to sing and play on the guitar within a month, has a Vicentian character.

To the beginning of the seventeenth century also belongs the Pratica de Tres Pastores (1626), a Christmas play by Frei Antonio da Estrella, who may perhaps be identified with Frei Antonio de Lisboa, author of the lost Auto dos Dous Ladrões (1603). The three shepherds, Rodrigo, Loirenço, and Sylvestre, are awakened by an angel singing cousas de preço. They agree that the song echoing over the hills is no earth-born music but algum Charubim ou Anjo ou Charafim, and presently they go to Bethlehem to offer their rustic gifts. The author has caught the charm and spontaneity of the earlier Christmas autos. Another seventeenth-century auto of the same kind is the Colloquio do Nascimento do Menino Jesus by the Lisbon bookseller, Francisco Lopez. The scene and conversation of the three shepherds, Gil, Silvestre, and Paschoal, with their assorda ou migas de alho in the cold night—mas como queima o rocio, says Gil—are very naturally drawn. An echo of the satirical side of Gil Vicente’s genius is to be found in the Auto das Padeiras chamado da Fome (1638),[366] in which the various frauds of the bakeresses, sardine-sellers, market-women, pastry-cooks, and tavern-keepers of Lisbon are shown up by the devils Palurdam and Calcamar, as in the Barca do Purgatorio. There is nothing of Vicente in the Auto novo da Barca da Morte (1732) by a Lisbon author who wrote under the name of Diogo da Costa (Innocencio da Silva, ii. 153, believed that his real name was André da Luz). It consists of a single scene crowded with classical allusions. Death has deprived Midas of his gold, Alexander of his victories, Aristotle of his learning. The actors here are a rich miser, a poor man, a youth, an old man, and Death, whose boat Time steers. The title of the Auto novo e curioso da Forneira de Aljubarrota (1815), also attributed to Diogo da Costa, is misleading, since it is a prose narrative of the experiences of that valorosa matrona, who, dressed as an almocreve, comes to Lisbon with her two bestinhas laden with wine.

Of the twenty-five plays contained in the Musa entretenida de varios entremeses (1658) edited by Manuel Coelho Rebello, No. 17 (Castigos de vn Castelhano) is in Spanish and Portuguese, six are in Portuguese,[367] all the rest in Spanish. Popular plays continued to be written long after the introduction of the classical drama and in spite of the antagonism of the priests. They were often composed in a variety of metres, as the Acto de Sᵗᵃ Genoveva, Princesa de Barbante (1735) by Balthasar Luis da Fonseca, if its verse can be called metre,[368] or the Comedia famosa intitulada A Melhor Dita de Amor (1745) by Rodrigo Antonio de Almeida,[369] which opens with a sonnet and proceeds in redondilhas, hendecasyllables, and prose.

In the Christmas plays and peasant scenes some of Gil Vicente’s poetry had lingered; the plays of more fashionable authors caught no gleam of his lyrism, but sketched types and satirized manners successfully, none more so than Mello’s Auto do Fidalgo Aprendiz, written, it must be remembered, before Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670). Both kinds, consciously or unconsciously, were derived from Vicente’s genius as manifested in his plays for the Court and of the people.

During Gil Vicente’s lifetime, perhaps, Sá de Miranda had written the two plays, Os Estrangeiros (c. 1528) and Os Vilhalpandos (1538?),[370] with which he introduced classical comedy into Portugal (nearly a quarter of a century before its introduction into France and England). Os Estrangeiros was a novelty[371] in more ways than one, for it was written in prose. Both plays were, as the author admitted, imitated from Plautus and Terence and also from Ariosto, whose comedies were composed in the first third of the century. Os Estrangeiros was, he further observed in a brief introductory letter to the Cardinal Henrique, rustic and clumsy.[372] Its only claim to be called rustic, in character as apart from treatment, consists in a few allusions to popular customs. We would have had it more indigenous. The scene is Palermo, the plot, à la Plautus, consists of the difficulties and differences between father and son, and there is the aio, the vainglorious soldier Briobris, nas armas um Roldão, and the truão who plays the part of gracioso. The action advances in long soliloquies to the final reconciliation between father and son. The character of Os Vilhalpandos, which Mello called ‘a mirror of courtly wit’, is similar, with the difference that Fame instead of Comedy speaks the prologue and the action between son, father, and courtesan is placed in Rome. Both the plays were acted before Cardinal Henrique and printed by his command. As if to mark his initiative in every field, Miranda also composed a classical tragedy entitled Cleopatra (c. 1550), the title of which is of interest as preceding the plays of Shakespeare and Samuel Daniel (1562-1619). The twelve octosyllabic lines (abcabcdefdef) that survive (from a chorus?) give no idea of its character, but it probably followed closely the Sofonisba (1515) of Gian Giorgio Trissino (1478-1550). A Spanish version of Sophocles’ Electra by Hernan Perez de Oliva appeared in 1528, and in 1536 Anrique Ayres Victoria had translated this into Portuguese octosyllabic verse: A Vingança de Agamemnon. The date of the first edition is unknown; the second appeared in 1555. Nor do we know when Cleopatra was written,[373] although it must have been prior to Antonio Ferreira’s classical tragedy acted at Coimbra, Inés de Castro (c. 1557), which has hitherto been considered the first of its kind in Portugal. Written when the author was about thirty, that is, about the time of Miranda’s death, it copied the form of Greek tragedies and, the better to acclimatize this, a thoroughly national subject was chosen—the death of Inés—whereas Miranda had gone to Rome and Egypt. As might be expected from Ferreira’s other work the conception was executed with the careful skill of a conscientious craftsman. The drama has unity, the style is purest Portuguese, the chorus sometimes soars into poetry, as in the celebrated passage Quando amor naceo. That the same high language is spoken throughout, that, as has often been observed, scenes of dramatic opportunity—a meeting between D. Pedro and his father or Inés—are omitted, merely shows that Ferreira had no dramatic instinct. Perhaps the only dramatic passage—and even so it is of more psychological than dramatic interest—is that in Act III: Inés. ‘Ah, woe is me! what ill, what fearful ill dost thou announce?’ Chorus. ‘It is thy death.’ Inés. ‘Is my lord dead?’ Nevertheless, the play was a remarkable achievement, carried out without faltering and with a sustained loftiness worthy of its subject. No one any longer believes that Ferreira copied from the Nise lastimosa by Geronimo Bermudez, published under the pseudonym Antonio da Silva eight years after Ferreira’s death. This is a slightly expanded Spanish translation, closely following the 1587 edition[374] of Inés de Castro, which differs considerably from that of 1598. The Nise laureada which accompanied it is perfectly insignificant. Like Miranda, Ferreira wrote, besides one tragedy, two comedies, Bristo and O Cioso. There are indications that he had in mind Ferreira de Vasconcellos’ Eufrosina as well as Miranda’s comedies. Bristo soliloquizing is the counterpart of Philtra, and in his dedication of Bristo to Prince João he acknowledges his debt to previous plays.[375] In this comedy, written during some vacation days at Coimbra University, the action is very primitive, but the braggart Annibal and the charlatan Montalvão account for some farcical scenes. His later play, O Cioso (the jealous husband is also handled by Gil Vicente and Prestes), belongs to a higher plane, i. e. to comedy rather than farce, although Bristo is not entirely devoid of character-drawing. Bristo was ‘made public’ (publicada) before 1554, but neither play was published till 1622. Both are remarkable for the correctness and concise vigour of their prose.

The three plays of Camões, written perhaps between the years 1544 and 1549 during his first stay at Lisbon, belong entirely neither to the classical drama nor to the more ancient autos, but combine elements of both. They are written in redondilhas, mostly quintilhas. The third, El Rei Seleuco (1549?), is slighter even than a Vicentian farce. It has a curious prologue scene (Vorspiel auf dem Theater) in prose. The versification is easy, but its chief interest is the important part it may have played in its author’s life. The earliest in date, Filodemo, although it lacks Vicente’s savour of the soil, has a graceful charm and faintly recalls the Comedia do Viuvo. Filodemo, orphan son of a Danish princess and a Portuguese fidalgo, is in love with Dionysa, daughter of his father’s brother, whose son Venadoro is in love with Filodemo’s sister Florimena. Their relationship is unknown, but the discovery of their true birth smoothes the path of love and ends the play. Os Amphitriões, in Portuguese and Spanish,[376] is based on the Amphitruo of Plautus. The predicaments resulting from the appearance of Jupiter as Amphitrião’s double and Mercury as the double of Sosia are

deftly and humorously worked out in delightfully spontaneous verse.

For those so fastidious as to be satisfied neither by the popular autos nor the staid classical plays, yet another kind was provided in the shape of Celestina comedies in prose. Of the life of their author we know scarcely more than that he was very well known in his day. Judging by literary merit only, one might assign the verses written by Jorge de Vasconcellos in the Cancioneiro Geral to Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos (c. 1515-63?), since the poems, alike in the new and the old style, interspersed in his works do not prove him to have possessed high poetical talent. It is as a dramatist and still more as a writer of Portuguese prose that the distinguished courtier of King João III’s reign[377]—deserves a higher place in Portuguese literature than his ungrateful countrymen have habitually accorded him. But the dates forbid the identification of the dramatist with the earlier poet, who was also a notable courtier since he is specially mentioned in Vicente’s Cortes de Jupiter (ii. 404). One of the few definite facts known to us concerning Jorge Ferreira is that affirmed in the preface of his Eufrosina: that this play was the first fruit of his genius, written in his youth.[378] The exact date of Eufrosina is unknown, but it was written after the University had been finally established at Coimbra in 1537—the date of the letter from India (December 20, 1526[379]) is clearly a misprint since mention is made of the siege of Diu (1538). Ferreira de Vasconcellos evidently studied law at the University. If he was born, not at Coimbra but at Lisbon, he may have begun his studies in the capital. At the time of Prince Duarte’s death (1540) he was in his service, as moço da camara, and he continued as a Court official, first, perhaps, in the service of the heir to the throne, Prince João, who died on January 2, 1554, and then in that of King Sebastião. In 1563 he was succeeded as Secretary (escrivão do Tesouro) by Luis Vicente, probably son of the poet Gil. The document[380] which nominates his successor by no means implies his death, since, as Menéndez y Pelayo[381] observed, his name is unaccompanied by the formula que Deus perdoe or aja. But it is strange, if he did not die till 1585, the date given by Barbosa Machado, that nothing more is heard of him after 1563 (we are told that his son died at the battle of Alcacer Kebir), and that his son-in-law called Aulegrafia, written before the death of Prince Luis (1555), his swan-song.[382] Apart from manuscript treatises which were never published, Jorge Ferreira is the author of four works in prose, the three plays, Eufrosina, Ulysippo, Aulegrafia, and the Memorial da Segunda Tavola Redonda. The latter is an involved romance of chivalry[383] which describes the adventures of the Knight of the Crystal Arms, emulator of the Knights of the Round Table and Amadis of Gaul. Each chapter commences with a brief sententious reflection, from which the reader is plunged into mortal combats of knights, centaurs, giants, and dragons. It begins by giving an account of King Arthur, his disappearance, and the prosperous reign of Sagramor. It ends with a vivid description of the tournament (August 5, 1552) at Enxobregas (= Xabregas) in which the ill-fated Prince João was the principal figure. Barbosa Machado included among Ferreira de Vasconcellos’ works Triunfos de Sagramor em que se tratão os feitos dos Cavalleiros da Segunda Tavola Redonda (Coimbra, 1554). A passage in the Memorial[384] may have led to the belief that this was a second part of the Memorial, of which the first known edition is that of Coimbra, 1567, but from the preface[385] it appears that the Memorial is the Triunfos. The title Triunfos de Sagramor may have been given to an earlier edition,[386] or it may have been the title of the second half of the work. The author himself declares that his story had been ‘presented’ to Prince João.[387] The editor of Ulysippo in 1618 says that the Memorial had been printed at least twice during the author’s lifetime.[388] Yet it is difficult not to suspect that the date 1554 was a confusion with the year of the death of the prince to whom the work was dedicated. The same uncertainty, as we have seen, prevails as to the date of the first edition of the author’s masterpiece Eufrosina. (He published his plays anonymously, partly perhaps for the same reason that made him insist that his characters represented no definite persons but types.) The earliest edition that we have is that of Evora, 1561, that of Coimbra, 1560, having disappeared, if it ever existed.[389] The words on the title-page, de nouo reuista & em partes acrecentada, need not imply more than that, as we know, the manuscript had circulated among his friends: por muitas mãos deuassa e falsa. As a novelty, invençam noua nesta terra, Eufrosina with its proverbs and its ingenious thoughts and phrases was appreciated in Portugal, whose inhabitants were justifiably proud now to possess a Celestina of their own, a Celestina with less action and rhetoric but more thought and sentiment.[390] Quevedo was loud in its praises, Lope de Vega perhaps quoted it,[391] its influence on the style of Mello and other Portuguese writers is clear. It was a legitimate success and its modern neglect is all the more deplorable because in this play the Portuguese language, the richness, concision, and grace of which are exalted in the preface, appears in its purest, raciest form. The author’s vocabulary is immense, his sentences admirably vigorous and clear. After heading the E’s in the Index of 1581 (Evphrosina simply, without author) it was reprinted by the poet Rodriguez Lobo in 1616, in a slightly modified form, shorn, that is, of some of the coarser passages and of all reference to the Scriptures.[392] The style is not the only merit of Eufrosina. Despite the lack of proportion in some of the scenes, in which Jorge Ferreira proves himself to have been, like Richardson, ‘a sorry pruner’ (four scenes out of the thirty-nine constitute a quarter of the play), there is a certain unity in this story of the love of the poor courtier Zelotipo de Abreu for Eufrosina, proud and beautiful daughter of the rich fidalgo D. Carlos, Senhor das Povoas, in the little ancient university town above the green waters and willows of Mondego. The numerous other persons are strictly subordinate, and both scenes and characters are skilfully drawn. The artificial construction, the convention by which emotion finds vent in a string of classical allusions, scarcely mar the exceedingly natural presentment of many of the scenes. Charming, for instance, is that in which Eufrosina and her companion and friend Silvia de Sousa, Zelotipo’s cousin, watch from the terrace of their house the river’s gentle flow and along its bank the citizens and students taking the air in the cool of the evening. The play contains as many characters as a modern novel. There is Cariofilo, a gay good-hearted Don Juan; his friend, the more serious Zelotipo, type of the Portuguese lover, the galante contemplativo; D. Carlos, quick to anger but easily appeased; the pedantic, unscrupulous Dr. Carrasco, whose conversation with D. Carlos gives scope for a vigorous attack on the legal profession; Silvia, who sacrifices her love and gives up to Eufrosina her cousin’s verses that she had so carefully kept; the moços Andrade and Cotrim, greedy, timid, and talkative; the gentleman of Coimbra, Philotimo, a wise and kindly man of the world. Other phases of Coimbra life are shown in the moças de rio and de cantaro, who fetch water or wash clothes in the Mondego and metaphorically toss in a blanket Galindo, the rich D. Tristão’s agent from Lisbon; in the love-lorn student with his Latin, the morose and jealous workman Duarte, proud of his position as official, the resolute goldsmith and his languid daughter Polinia, the old servant Andresa and the merry servant girl Vitoria, and, most prominent of all, Philtra the alcoviteira, deploring the wickedness and degeneracy of the world and full of wise saws—the play contains many hundreds. Eufrosina herself is first described by the lover—brow of Diana, lips of Venus, limbs of Pallas, clear green eyes[393] of Juno, quietly mirthful; then by his servant Andrade—the fairest thing that ever he thought to see, fan in hand, the sleeves of her dress like a ship at full sail[394]—so that we have an effective impression of her beauty. Besides Coimbra life we obtain glimpses of that of the Court at Lisbon and Almeirim in a letter from the courtier Crisandor, of India in a very real and interesting letter from Silvia’s brother, even of Cotrim’s native village. That the unity was not sacrificed to these many by-scenes says much for the author’s skill. This praise cannot be given to his second play written some ten years after the first, Ulysippo (1547?), for here the reader loses his way among the many courses of true love. There are twenty-one dramatis personae, but the principal interest is in the sketch of Constança d’Ornellas, the hypocritical beata,[395] or, rather, that is the most original part, since in the play as a whole there is a certain monotony after Eufrosina, and many of the proverbs are the same.[396] Excellent as the earlier play in its terse and idiomatic prose,[397] full of interest in the insight it gives into the customs and life of the people, its chief fault is the intricacy, or absence, of plot which makes it difficult reading, and of course it would naturally please less on its first appearance as being no longer a new thing. The author, who knew how the Portuguese prized novidades, appears to have been conscious of this, since his third play, Aulegrafia, written perhaps in 1555,[398] and first published in 1619, was developed on somewhat different lines. It is concerned, as its name implies, exclusively with the Court, and the people and popular proverbs are in abeyance. In its fifty scenes we are introduced to typical Court ladies, noble fidalgos, poor gentlemen and their servants, one of whom considers it mais fidalgo nam saber ler. The play is by its author termed ‘a long treatise on Court manners’,[399] and as such it is admirable and full of interest, however negligible it may be as drama. Its style, moreover, even excels in atticism Ferreira’s other works. The most remarkable character is that of the young (menina e moça) and very wily aunt of Filomela. She is twice described in detail (f. 46 and f. 153 v.), and we perceive that Philtra of the people, the middle-class Constança d’Ornellas, and the aristocratic Aulegrafia are really three persons and one spirit. In Ulysippo one of the lesser personages was the Spanish Sevilhana (mentioned also in Eufrosina), and here a boastful Spanish adventurer is introduced in the person of Agrimonte de Guzman, who disdains to speak Portuguese. The scene of both the later plays is Lisbon. The author drew from his experience here, as previously at Coimbra, and often describes to the life the persons that he had met. Scarcely any other writer gives us so intimate an idea of the times—of this the latter heyday of Portugal’s greatness—or of the gallant, lovesick, dreaming Portuguese, who considers love as much a monopoly of his country as the ivory and spices of India.[400]