Part 2 (1/2)

Are they merely literary types? It is obvious that these themes were a great resource for the satirists of that time but their value to the satirist lay in their truth. The sad existence of the poor gentleman and the splendour maintained by penniless n.o.bles are all too well attested.

As to the priests, when we find King Manuel joining with King Ferdinand of Spain in a protest to the Pope to the effect that the whole of Christendom was scandalized by the dissolute life of the clergy and by the traffic in Bulls[123], and grave ecclesiastics in Spain and friends of grave ecclesiastics, like Franco Sacchetti[124] earlier in Italy, using language even more violent than that of Vicente, we need not doubt the truth of his sketches. He was perhaps more vivid than the other critics and his satire penetrated deeply for the very reason that he was a realist. There was no doubt some professional exaggeration in the language of his _beiro_ rustics, but his sympathy with the peasants and his wide knowledge of the province of Beira prove that his object was not merely mockery: _zombar da gente da Beira_[125]. Many of his types are foreshadowed in the _Cancioneiro Geral_, and especially in the _Arrenegos_ of Gregorio Afonso, of the household of the Bishop of Evora: the 'priest who lives like a layman,' 'the gentleman who has not enough to eat,' 'the man of great estate and small income,' the _preciosos_, the _borrachas_, the _fantasticos_, the _alcouviteira_, 'the peasants placed in a position of importance.' In developing these figures Vicente was always careful to keep close to Nature. Each speaks in his own language, 'the negro as a negro, the old man as an old man.' This is carried to such a length that the Spanish Queen in the lament on the death of King Manuel is made to speak her few lines in Spanish, the rest of the poem being in Portuguese[126].

Vicente is not an easy writer because his styles are so many and his allusions so local. But we must be infinitely grateful to him for the way in which he portrays a type in a few lines and for the fact that although they are types they are evidently taken from individuals whom he had observed and who continue to live for us in his pages. His gallery of priests is for all time. Frei Paco comes, with his velvet cap and gilt sword, 'mincing like a very sweet courtier'; Frei Narciso starves and studies, tinging his complexion to an artificial yellow in the hope that his hypocritical asceticism may win him a bishopric; the worldly courtier monk fences and sings and woos; the Lisbon priest, like his confessor one of Love's train, fares well on rabbits and sausages and good red wine, even as the portly pleasure-loving Lisbon canons; the country priest resembles a kite pouncing on chickens; the ambitious chaplain accepts the most menial tasks, compared with whom the sporting priest of Beira is at least pleasantly independent; and there are the luxurious hermit, the dissipated village priest who never prayed the hours, the inconstant monk who had been carrier and carpenter and now wishes to be unfrocked in order to join more freely in dance and pilgrimage, the mad friar Frei Martinho persecuted by dogs and Lisbon _gamins_, the ambitious preacher who glosses over men's sins. If the priests fared well in this life the satirists were determined that they should not be equally fortunate after their death. Vicente's proud Bishop is to be boiled and roasted, the grasping Archbishop is left perpetually aboiling, the ambitious Cardinal is to be devoured by dogs and dragons in a den of lions, while the sensual and simoniacal Pope is to have his flesh torn with red-hot iron. And we have--although here Vicente discreetly went to the _Danza de la Muerte_ for his satire--the vainglorious and tyrannical Emperor, the Duke who had adored himself and the King who had allowed himself to be adored. There are the careless hedonistic Count more given to love than to charity or churchgoing, the _fidalgo de raca_, the haughty _fidalgo de solar_ with a page to carry his chair, the judge who through his wife accepts bribes from the Jews, the rhetorical goldsmith, the usurer (_onzeneiro_) with his heart in his _ca.s.sette_ (_arca_)[127]. There too the pert servant-girl, the gossiping maidservant, the witch busy at night over a hanged man at the cross-roads, the faithless wife of the India-bound _lisboeta_, the Lisbon old woman copious in malediction, her genteel daughter Isabel, the wife who in her husband's absence only leaves her house to go to church or pilgrimage, the _mal maridada_ imprisoned by her husband, the peasant bride singing and dancing in skirt of scarlet, the woman superst.i.tiously devout, the _beata alcouviteira_ who would not have escaped the Inquisition had she been printed like Aulegrafia in the seventeenth century, lisping gypsies, the _alcouviteiras_ Anna and Branca and Brigida, the _curandera_ with her quack remedies, the poor farmer's daughter brought to be a Court lady and still stained from the winepress, the old woman desirous of a young husband, the slattern Catherina Meigengra, the market-woman who plays the _pandero_ in the market-place, the peasant girls with pretentious names coming down to market basket on head from the hills, the shrew Branca and the timid wife Marta, the two irrepressible Lisbon fishwives, the voluble _saloia_ who sells milk well watered and charges cruel prices for her eggs and other wares, the country priest's greedy 'wife' who eats the baptism cake and is continually roasting chestnuts, the mystical ingenuous little shepherdess Margarida who sees visions on the hills, the superior daughter of the peasant judge who had once spoken to the King, the small Beira girl keeping ducks, Ledica the affectedly ingenuous daughter of the Jewish tailor, Cezilia of Beira possessed by a familiar spirit.

Or, again, we have the ceremonious Lisbon lover Lemos, the high-flown Castilian of fearful presence and a lion's heart, however threadbare his _capa_[128], the starving gentleman who makes a _tosto_ (= _5d._) last a month and dines off a turnip and a crust of bread, another--a sixteenth century Porthos--who imagines himself a _grand seigneur_ and has not a sixpence to his name but hires a showy suit of clothes to go to the palace, another who is an intimate at Court (_o mesmo paco_) but who to satisfy a pa.s.sing pa.s.sion has to sell boots and viola and p.a.w.n his saddle, the poor gentleman's servant (_moco_) who sleeps on a chest, or is rudely awakened at midnight to light the lamp and hold the inkpot while his master writes down his latest inspiration in his song-book, the incompetent Lisbon doctors with their stereotyped formulas, the frivolous persons who are bored by three prayers at church but spend nights and days listening to _novellas_, the _parvo_, predecessor of the Spanish _gracioso_, the Lisbon courtier descended from Aeneas, the astronomer, unpractical in daily life as he gazes on the stars, the old man amorous, rose in b.u.t.tonhole, playing on a viola, the Jewish marriage-brokers, the country b.u.mpkin, the lazy peasant lying by the fire, the poor but happy gardener and his wife, the quarrelsome blacksmith with his wife the bakeress, the carriers jingling along the road and amply acquainted with the wayside inns, the aspiring _vilo_, the peasant who complains bitterly of the ways of G.o.d, the _lavrador_ with his plough who did not forget his prayers and was charitable to tramps but skimped his t.i.thes, the illiterate but not unmalicious _beiro_ shepherd who had led a hard life and whose chief offence was to have stolen grapes from time to time, the devout bootmaker who had industriously robbed the people during thirty years, the card-player blasphemous as the _taful_ of King Alfonso's _Cantigas de Santa Maria_, the delinquent from Lisbon's prison (the _Limoeiro_) whom his confessor had deceived before his hanging with promises of Paradise, the peasant _O Moreno_ who knows the dances of Beira, the negro chattering in his pigeon-Portuguese 'like a red mullet in a fig-tree,' the deceitful negro expressing the strangest philosophy in Portuguese equally strange, the rustic clown Goncalo with his baskets of fruit and capons, who when his hare is stolen turns it like a canny peasant to a kind of posthumous account: _leve-a por amor de Deos pola alma de meus finados_, the Jew Alonso Lopez who had formerly been prosperous in Spain but is now a poor new Christian cobbler at Lisbon, the Jewish tailor who in the streets gives himself _fidalgo_ airs and is overjoyed at the regard shown him by officials and who at home sings songs of battle as he sits at his work[129].

In the actions and conversation of this motley crowd of persons high and low we are given many a glimpse of the times: the beflagged s.h.i.+p from India lying in the Tagus, the modest dinner (_a panela cosida_) of the rich _lavrador_, the supper of bread and wine, sh.e.l.lfish and cherries bought in Lisbon's celebrated Ribeira market, the Lisbon Jew's dinner of kid and cuc.u.mber, the distaff bought by the shepherd at Santarem as a present for his love, the rustic gifts of acorns, bread and bacon, the shepherdess' simple dowry or the more considerable dowry of a girl somewhat higher in society (consisting of a loom, a donkey, an orchard, a mill and a mule), the migratory shepherds' a.s.s, laden with the milk-jugs and bells, and with a leathern wallet, yokes and shackles, the sheepskin coats of the shepherds, bristling masks for their dogs (as a defence against wolves), loaves of bread, onions and garlic. Thus in town and village, palace and attic, house and street, on road and mountain and sea the Portugal of the early sixteenth century is clearly and charmingly conveyed to us, and we can realize better the conditions of Gil Vicente's life at Court or as he journeyed on muleback to Evora or Coimbra, Thomar or Santarem or Almeirim.

IV. ORIGINALITY AND INFLUENCE

In 1523 the 'men of good learning' doubted Vicente's originality. They might point to the imitations of Enzina or to the resemblance between the trilogy of _Barcas_ and the _Danza de la Muerte_ or they might reveal the origin of many a verse and phrase used by Vicente in his plays and already familiar in the song-books of Spain and Portugal.

Vicente could well afford to let his critics strain at these gnats. He had the larger originality of genius and while realizing that 'there is nothing new under the sun[130]' he could transform all his borrowings into definite images or lyrical magic. (There are flashes of poetry even in the absurd _ensalada_ of III. 323-4.) He was the greatest lyrical poet of his day and, in a strictly limited sense, the greatest dramatist. He is Portugal's only dramatist, without forerunners or successors, for the playwrights of the Vicentian school lacked his genius and only attain some measure of success when they closely copy their master, while the cla.s.sical school produced no great drama in Portugal: it is impossible to except even Antonio Ferreira's _Ines de Castro_ from this sweeping a.s.sertion. But that is not to say that Vicente stands entirely isolated, self-sufficing and self-contained.

Genius is never self-sufficing. Talent may live apart in an ivory palace but genius overflows in many relations, is acted on and reacts and has the generosity to receive as well as to give. The influences that acted upon Gil Vicente were numerous: the Middle Ages and the humanism of the first days of the Renaissance, the old national Portugal with its popular traditions and the new imperial Portugal of the first third of the sixteenth century, the Bible and the _Cancioneiro de Resende_, the whole literature of Spain and Portugal, the services of the Church, the book of Nature. But before examining how these influences work out in his plays it may be well to consider whether their sources may be yet further extended.

Court relations between Portugal and France had never entirely ceased and the 1516 _Cancioneiro_ contains many allusions to the prevailing familiarity with things French. But Vicente's genius was not inspired by the Court: it would be truer to say that, while he was encouraged by Queen Lianor and the King, the Court's taste for new things, superficial fas.h.i.+ons and personal allusions tended to thwart his genius. When he introduces a French song in his plays this does not imply any intimate acquaintance with the lyrical poetry of France but rather deference to the taste of the Court. He would pick up words of foreign languages with the same quickness with which he initiated himself into the way of witch or pilot, fishwife or doctor, but we have an excellent proof that his knowledge of neither French nor Italian was profound. We know how consistently he makes his characters speak each in his own language. Yet in the _Auto da Fama_, whereas the Spaniard speaks Spanish only, the Frenchman and Italian murder their own language and eke it out with Portuguese[131]. Vicente read what he could find to read, but we may be sure that his reading was mainly confined to Portuguese and Spanish. The very words in his letter to King Joo III in which he speaks of his reading are another echo of Enzina[132], and although it cannot be a.s.serted that he was not acquainted with this or that piece of French literature and with the early French drama, it may be maintained that whatever influence France exercised upon him came mainly through Spain, whether the connecting link is extant, as in the case of the _Danza de la Muerte_, or lost, as in that of the _Sumario da Historia de Deos_.

Probably Vicente knew of French _mysteres_ little more than the name[133]. As to the literature of Greece, Rome and Italy the conclusion is even more definite. Vicente had not read Plautus or Terence, his knowledge of _el gran poeta Virgilio_ (III. 104) does not extend beyond the quotation _omnia vincit amor_. Aristotle is a name _et praeterea nihil_. With the cla.s.sical tragedy of Trissino and others he had nothing in common, and if he lived to read or see Sa de Miranda's _Cleopatra_ he probably had his own very marked opinion as to its value. Dante was, of course, a closed book to him as to most of his contemporaries. With Spanish literature the case is very different. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were the most Spanish period of Portuguese literature. The _Cancioneiro de Resende_ is nearly as Spanish as it is Portuguese. Portuguese poets were, almost without exception, bilingual.

The hors.e.m.e.n stationed to bring the news of the wedding from Seville to Evora in 1490 were emblematic of the close relations between the two countries. Men were in continual expectation that they would come to form one kingdom[134]. King Manuel's infant son was heir to Spain and Portugal and the empires in Africa and America.

Vicente's close acquaintance with Spanish literature shows itself at every turn, and if we examine his plays we find but slight traces of the influence of any other literature. His first pieces were written in Spanish, and the Spanish is that of Enzina. Lines and phrases are taken bodily from the Spanish poet and words belonging to the conventional _sayagues_ (in which there was already a Portuguese element: cf. _ollos_ for _ojos_) placed on the lips of _charros_ by Enzina are transferred from Salamanca to Beira. The Enzina eclogues imitated by Vicente were based on those of Virgil, but in Vicente's imitation there is no vestige of any knowledge of the cla.s.sics. The only Latin that occurs is the quotation by Gil Terron of three lines from the Bible. A little later the hungry _escudero_ of _Quem tem farelos?_ was in all probability derived from Spanish literature, either from the Archpriest of Hita's _Libro de Buen Amor_ or from some popular sketch such as that contained later in _Lazarillo de Tormes_ (1554)[135]. The only French element in the _Auto da Fe_ is the _fatrasie_ or _enselada_ 'which came from France,' but its text is not given. The cla.s.sical allusions to Virgil and the Judgment of Paris in the _Auto das Fadas_ are perfectly superficial. A little medical Latin is introduced in the _Farsa dos Fisicos_. _O Velho da Horta_, which opens with the Lord's Prayer, half in Latin, half in Portuguese[136], is written in Portuguese with the exception of the fragment of song and the lyric _Cual es la nina?_ There is a reference to Macias, a name which had become a commonplace in Portuguese poetry as the type of the constant lover. Spanish influence is shown in the introduction of the _alcouviteira_ Branca Gil, probably suggested by Juan Ruiz' _trotaconventos_ or by Celestina. The _Exhortaco da Guerra_ begins with humorous plat.i.tudes, _perogrulladas_, after the fas.h.i.+on of Enzina. Gil Terron has increased his cla.s.sical lore, and Trojan and Greek heroes are brought from the underworld, the _dramatis personae_ including Polyxena, Penthesilea, Achilles, Hannibal, Hector and Scipio. The influence of Enzina is still evident in the _Auto da Sibila Ca.s.sandra_, the _bellissimo auto_ wherein Menendez y Pelayo saw the first germ of the symbolical _autos_ in which Calderon excelled[137], and in the _Auto dos Quatro Tempos_. The immediate influence on the _Barcas_ is plainly Spanish, this being especially marked in the _Barca da Gloria_. When the _Diabo_ addresses the King:

Nunca aca senti Que aprovechase aderencia Ni lisonjas, crer mentiras ... Ni diamanes ni zafiras (I. 285)

he is copying the words of Death in the _Danza de la Muerte_:

non es tiempo tal Que librar vos pueda imperio nin gente Oro nin plata nin otro metal[138].

Vicente's Devil taxes the Archbishop with fleecing the poor (I. 294) in much the same words as those of the Spanish Death to the Dean (t. 2, p.

12). The Devil in the _Barca do Purgatorio_ (I. 251) and Death (t. 2, p.

17) both reproach the _labrador_ with the same offence: surrept.i.tiously extending the boundaries of his land. It must be admitted that these signs of imitation are more direct than the French traces indicated in the introduction of the 1834 edition of Vicente's works. The whole treatment of the _Barcas_ closely follows the _Danza de la Muerte_. The idea of a satirical review of the dead is of course nearly as old as literature. In the _Barca da Gloria_ Vicente begins to quote Spanish _romances_[139], and this is continued on a larger scale in the _Comedia de Rubena_ (cf. also the Spanish songs in the _Cortes de Jupiter_) and in _Dom Duardos_, in which reference is also made to two Spanish books, Diego de San Pedro's _Carcel de Amor_ and Hernando Diaz' translation _El Pelegrino Amador_[140]. Maria Parda's will was probably suggested rather by such burlesque testaments as that of the dying mule in the _Cancioneiro de Resende_ than by the _Testament de Pathelin_. The criticism of the _homens de bom saber_ seems to have turned Vicente to more peculiarly Portuguese themes in the _Farsa de Ines Pereira_ and the _Auto Pastoril Portugues_, and in the _Fragoa de Amor_, written for the new Queen from Spain, he presents national types: _serranas_, pilgrims, n.i.g.g.e.r, monk, idiot. In the _Ciganas_ we have a pa.s.sing reference to 'the white hands of Iseult,' a lady already well known in Spanish and Portuguese literature. _Dom Duardos_ is of course based entirely on a Spanish romance of chivalry. In _O Juiz da Beira_ he returns to the _escudeiro_ and _alcouviteira_; the figures are, however, thoroughly Portuguese with the exception of a new Christian from Castille. The t.i.tle of the _Nao de Amores_ already existed in Spanish literature[141].

After this we have a group of thoroughly Portuguese plays, those presented at Coimbra, the anticlerical _Auto da Feira_, the _Triunfo do Inverno_, _O Clerigo da Beira_. It is not till _Amadis de Gaula_ that Vicente again has recourse to Spanish literature[142], and we may be sure that if he had known of a Portuguese text he would have written his drama in Portuguese.

Although Vicente owed much to Spanish literature we have only to compare his plays with those of Juan del Enzina or Bartolome de Torres Naharro, or his first attempts with his later dramas to realize his genius and originality. The variety of his plays is very striking and the farce _Quem tem farelos?_ (1508?), the patriotic _Exhortaco_ (1513), the _Barca_ trilogy (1517-9), the religious _Auto da Alma_ (1518), the three-act _Comedia de Rubena_ (1521), the character comedy _Farsa de Ines Pereira_ (1523), the idyllic _Dom Duardos_ (1525?) mark new departures in the development of his genius. No doubt his plays are 'totally unlike any regular plays and rude both in design and execution[143].' Vicente divided them into religious plays (_obras de devacam_), farces, comedies and tragicomedies, but the kinds overlap and there is nothing to separate some of the comedies and tragicomedies from the farces, while some of the farces are religious both in subject and occasion. How artificial the division was may be seen from the rubric to the _Barca do Inferno_, which informs us that the play is counted among the religious plays because the second and third parts (_Barca do Purgatorio_ and _Barca da Gloria_) were represented in the Royal Chapel, although this first part was given in the Queen's chamber, as though the subject and treatment of the three plays were not sufficient to cla.s.s them together. Again, the rubric of the _Romagem de Aggravados_ runs: 'The following tragicomedy is a satire.' Really only its length separates it from the early farces. Vicente's plays were a development of the earlier Christmas, Holy Week and Easter _representaciones_, religious shows to which special pomp was given at King Manuel's Court.

When he began to write the cla.s.sical drama was unknown and it is absurd to judge his work by the Aristotelean theory of the unities of time and place. His idea of drama was not dramatic action nor the development of character but realistic portrayal of types and the contrast between them. His first piece, _Auto da Visitacam_, has not even dialogue--its alternative t.i.tle is _O Monologo do Vaqueiro_--and for comic element it relies on the contrast between Court and country as shown by the herdsman's gaping wonder. The _Auto Pastoril Castelhano_ contains six shepherds and contrasts the serious mystical Gil with his ruder companions.

The action of the _Auto dos Reis Magos_ is as simple as that of the two preceding plays. _Quem tem farelos?_ however is a quite new development.

'The argument,' says the rubric, 'is that a young squire called Aires Rosado played the viola and although his salary [as one of the Court]

was very small he was continually in love.' He is contrasted with another penniless _escudeiro_ who gives himself martial airs and willingly speaks of the heroic deeds of Roncesvalles, but runs away if two cats begin to fight. Only five persons appear on the stage, but with considerable skill Vicente enlarges the scene so as to include a vivid picture of the second squire as described by his servant as well as the barking of dogs, mewing of cats and crowing of c.o.c.ks and the conversation of Isabel with Rosado, which is conjectured from his answers. No doubt the two _mocos_ owe something to Semp.r.o.nio and Parmeno of the _Celestina_, but this first farce is thoroughly Portuguese and gives us a concrete and living picture of Lisbon manners. Not all the farces have this unity. The _Auto das Fadas_ loses itself in a long series of verses addressed to the Court. The _Farsa dos Fisicos_ has no such extraneous matter: it confines itself to the lovelorn priest and the contrast between the four doctors. The _Comedia do Viuvo_ is not a farce and only a comedy by virtue of its happy ending. A merchant of Burgos laments the death of his wife and is comforted by a kindly priest and by a friend who wishes that his own wife were as the merchant's (the simple mediaeval contrast common in Vicente). Meanwhile Don Rosvel, Prince of Huxonia, has fallen in love with both the daughters of the merchant, whom he agrees to serve in all kinds of manual labour as Juan de las Brozas. His brother, Don Gilberto, arrives in search of him and a quaintly charming and technically skilful play ends with a double wedding (the Crown Prince of Portugal, present at the acting of this play, had to decide for Don Rosvel which daughter he should marry).

The _Auto da Fama_ is Vicente's second great hymn to the glory of Portugal. Portuguese Fame, in the person of a humble girl of Beira, is envied and wooed in vain by Castille, France and Italy--England and Holland were then scarcely in the running--and narrates in ringing verses the deeds of the Portuguese in the East, without, however, mentioning the great name of Albuquerque, a name which inspired many of the courtiers with more fear than affection. The _Auto dos Quatro Tempos_ is a pastoral-religious play, the main theme being, as its t.i.tle indicates, a contrast between the four seasons. David appears as a shepherd and Jupiter also takes a considerable part in the conversation.

Action there is none.

Vicente's satirical vein found excellent occasion in the ancient theme of scrutinizing the past lives of men as Death reaps them, high and low, but his profoundly religious temperament raises the _Barcas_ into an atmosphere of sublime if gloomy splendour, which is surpa.s.sed in the _Auto da Alma_, the most perfect and consistent of his religious plays--even the symbolical character of the latter part can hardly be called a defect. In the _Comedia de Rubena_ the development of Vicente's art is perhaps more superficial than real. It is divided into three long scenes or acts and is thus more like a regular comedy than his other plays. The acts, however, are isolated, the action occupies fifteen years and occurs in Castille, Lisbon and Crete. English readers of the play must be struck by its resemblance to _Pericles, Prince of Tyre_.

Written fifty-five years before Lawrence Twine's _The Patterne of Painful Adventures_ (1576) and eighty-seven before George Wilkins and William Shakespeare produced their play (1608), the _Comedia de Rubena_ is in fact a link in a long chain beginning in a lost fifth century Greek romance concerning Apollonius of Tyre and continued after Gil Vicente's death in Timoneda's _Tarsiana_ and in _Pericles_. Vicente, however, in all probability did not derive his Cismena, cold and chaste predecessor of Marina, from the _Gesta Romanorum_ or the _Libro de Apolonio_ but from the version in John Gower's _Confessio Amantis_, of which a translation, as we know, was early available in Portugal. After an exclusively Court piece, the _Cortes de Jupiter_, Vicente wrote the _Farsa de Ines Pereira_, in which there is more action and development of character than in his preceding, or indeed his subsequent, plays. He represents the aspirations and repentance of Ines, the 'very flighty daughter of a woman of low estate.' Despite the warnings of her sensible mother she rejects the suit of simple and uncouth Pero Marques for that of a gentleman (_escudeiro_) whose pretensions are far greater than his possessions. The mother gives them a house and retires to a small cottage. But the _escudeiro_ married confirms the wisdom of the Sibyl Ca.s.sandra (I. 40). He keeps his wife shut up 'like a nun of Oudivellas.'