Part 2 (2/2)
The windows are nailed up, she is not allowed to leave the house even to go to church. Thus the hopes and ambitions of Ines Pereira de Gra are tamed, although she was never a shrew[144]. Presently, however, the _escudeiro_ resolves to cross over to Africa to win his knighthood:
as partes dalem Vou me fazer cavaleiro,
and he leaves his wife imprisoned in their house, the key being entrusted to the servant (_moco_). Ines, singing at her work, is declaring that if ever she have to choose another husband _on ne m'y prendra plus_ when a letter arrives from her brother announcing that her husband, as he fled from battle towards Arzila, had been killed by a Moorish shepherd. The faithful Pero Marques again presses his suit. He is accepted and is made to suffer the whims and infidelity of the emanc.i.p.ated Ines. The question of women's rights was a burning one in the sixteenth century.
Vicente's versatility enabled him to laugh at his critics to the end of the chapter. In _Dom Duardos_ he gave them an elaborate and very successful dramatization of a Spanish romance of chivalry. The treatment has both unity and lyrical charm. It was so successful that the experiment was repeated in 1533 with the earlier romance of _Amadis de Gaula_ (1508), out of which Vicente wrought an equally skilful but less fascinating play[145]. But Vicente had not given up writing farces and the sojourn of Ines Pereira's husband in town enables the author to introduce various Lisbon types in _O Juiz da Beira_. It indeed completely resembles the early farces, while the _Auto da Festa_ with its peasant scene and allegorical _Verdade_ is of the _Auto da Fe_ type but adds the theme of the old woman in search of a husband. The _Templo de Apolo_, composed for a special Court occasion, shows no development, but in the _Sumario_ we have a fuller religious play than he had hitherto written. It proves, like _Dom Duardos_, his power of concentration and his skill in seizing on and emphasizing essential points in a long action (the period here covered is from Adam to Christ[146]). It is closely moulded on the Bible and contains, besides an exquisite _vilancete_ (_Adorae montanhas_), pa.s.sages of n.o.ble poetry and soaring fervour--Eve's invocation to Adam:
o como os ramos do nosso pomar Ficam cubertos de celestes rosas (I. 314);
Job's lament 'Man that is born of woman' (I. 324); the paraphrase or rather translation of 'I know that my Redeemer liveth' (I. 322). Nothing here, surely, to warrant the complaints of Sa de Miranda as to the desecration of the Scriptures. This play was followed by the _Dialogo sobre a Ressurreicam_ by way of epilogue; it is a conversation between three Jews and is treated in the cynical manner that Browning brought to similar scenes. The _Sumario_ or _Auto da Historia de Deos_ was acted before the Court at Almeirim and must have won the sincere admiration of the devout Joo III. If the courtiers were less favourably impressed they were mollified by the splendid display of the _Nao de Amores_ with its much music, its Prince of Normandy and its miniature s.h.i.+p fully rigged. Vicente was now fighting an uphill battle and in the _Divisa da Cidade de Coimbra_ he attempted a task beyond the strength of a poet and more suitable for a sermon such as Frei Heitor Pinto preached on the same subject: the arms of the city of Coimbra. Even Vicente could not make this a living play; it is, rather, a museum of antiquities and ends with praises of Court families. It is pathetic to find the merry satirist reduced to admitting (in the argument of this play) that merely farcical farces are not very refined. Yet we would willingly give the whole play for another brief farce such as _Quem tem farelos?_:
Ya sabeis, senh.o.r.es, Que toda a comedia comeca em dolores, E inda que toque cousas lastimeiras Sabei que as farcas todas chocarreiras No sam muito finas sem outros primores (II. 108).
Fortunately he returned to the plain farce in _Os Almocreves_, the _Auto da Feira_ and _O Clerigo da Beira_ (which, however, ends with a series of Court references) with all his old wealth of satire, touches of comedy and vivid portraiture. He also returned to the pastoral play in the _Serra da Estrella_, while his exquisite lyrism flowers afresh in the _Triunfo do Inverno_, a tragicomedy which is really a medley of farces. It is not a great drama but it is a typical Vicentian piece, combining vividly sketched types with a splendid lyrical vein. Winter, that banishes the swallows and swells the voice of ocean streams, first triumphs on hills and sea and then Spring comes in singing the lovely lyric _Del rosal vengo_ in the Serra de Sintra. The play ends on a serious and mystic note, for Spring's flowers wither but those of the holy garden of G.o.d bloom without fading:
E o santo jardim de Deos Florece sem fenecer.
The _Auto da Lusitania_ is divided into two parts, the first of which is complete in itself and gives a description of a Jewish household at Lisbon, while the second is a medley which contains the celebrated scene of Everyman and Noman: Everyman seeks money, worldly honour, praise, life, paradise, lies and flattery; Noman is for conscience, virtue, truth. In the _Romagem de Aggravados_ the fas.h.i.+onable and affected Court priest, Frei Paco, is the connecting link for a series of farcical scenes in which a peasant brings his son to become a priest, two n.o.blemen discourse on love, two fishwives lament the excesses of the courtiers, Cerro Ventoso and Frei Narciso betray their mounting ambition, civil and ecclesiastic, the poor farmer Aparicianes implores Frei Paco to make a Court lady of his slovenly daughter, two nuns bewail their fate and two shepherdesses discuss their marriage prospects. The _Auto da Mofina Mendes_ is especially celebrated because Mofina Mendes, personification of ill-luck, with her pot of oil is the forerunner of La Fontaine's _Pierrette et son pot au lait_: it was perhaps suggested to Vicente by the tale of Dona Truhana's pot of honey in _El Conde Lucanor_; the theme of counting one's chickens before they are hatched also forms the subject of one of the _pasos_, ent.i.tled _Las Aceitunas_, of the goldbeater of Seville, Lope de Rueda[147]. Vicente's piece consists, like some picture of El Greco, of a _gloria_, called, as Rueda's scenes, a _pa.s.so_, in which appear the Virgin and the Virtues (Prudence, Poverty, Humility and Faith) and an earthly shepherd scene.
It is thus a combination of farce and religious and pastoral play.
Vicente's last play, the _Floresta de Enganos_, is composed of scenes so disconnected that one of them is even omitted in the summary given after the first deceit: that in which a popular traditional theme, derived directly or indirectly from a French (perhaps originally Italian) source, _Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_, is presented, akin to that so piquantly narrated by Alarcon in _El Sombrero de Tres Picos_ in the nineteenth century, the judge playing the part of the Corregidor and the malicious and sensible servant-girl that of the miller's wife.
In these last plays we see little or no advance: there is no attempt at unity or development of plot. We cannot deny that the creator of the penniless-splendid n.o.bleman and the mincing courtier-priest and the author of such touches as the death of Ines' husband or the sudden ignominious flight of the judge possessed a true vein of comedy, but he remained to the end not technically a great dramatist but a wonderful lyric poet and a fascinating satirical observer of life. His influence was felt throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Portugal, by Cames and in the plays of Chiado, Prestes and a score of less celebrated dramatists, as well as in a considerable number of anonymous plays, but confined itself to the _auto_, which, combated by the followers of the cla.s.sical drama and the Latin plays of the Jesuits, soon tended to deteriorate and lose its charm. In Spain his influence would seem to have been more widely felt, which is not surprising when we remember how many of his plays were Spanish in origin or language[148]. We may be sure that Lope de Rueda was acquainted with his plays and that several of them were known to Cervantes--the servant Benita insisting on telling her simple stories to her afflicted mistress is Sancho Panza to the life:
_Benita._ Diz que era un escudero....
_Rubena._ O quien no fuera nacida: Viendome salir la vida Paraste a contar patranas?
_Benita._ Pues otra se de un carnero....
Lope de Vega was likewise certainly familiar with some of Vicente's plays. If we consider these pa.s.sages in _El Viaje del Alma_, the _representacion moral_ contained in _El Peregrino en su Patria_ (1604), we must be convinced that the trilogy of _Barcas_, the _Auto da Alma_, and perhaps the _Nao de Amores_ were not unknown to him:
Alma para Dios criada Y hecha a imagen de Dios, etc.; Hoy la Nave del deleite Se quiere hacer a la mar: Hay quien se quiera embarcar?; Esta es la Nave donde cabe Todo contento y placer[149].
The alleged imitation by Calderon in _El Lirio y la Azucena_ is perhaps more doubtful. Vicente was already half forgotten in Calderon's day. In the artificial literature of the eighteenth century he suffered total eclipse although Correa Garco was able to appreciate him, nor need we see any direct influence in that of the nineteenth[150] except that on Almeida Garrett: the similar pa.s.sages in Goethe's _Faust_ and Cardinal Newman's _Dream of Gerontius_ were no doubt purely accidental. Happily, however, we are able to point to a certain influence of the great national poet of Portugal on some of the Portuguese poets of the twentieth century. The promised edition of his plays will increase this influence and render him secure from that neglect which during three centuries practically deprived Portugal and the world of one of the most charming and inspired of the world's poets.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] _Falamos do nosso Shakespeare, de Gil Vicente_ (A. Herculano, _Historia da Inquisico em Portugal_, ed. 1906, vol. I. p. 223). The references throughout are to the Hamburg 3 vol. 1834 edition.
[7] See infra _Bibliography_, p. 86, Nos. 42, 62, 79.
[8] _Bibliography_, Nos. 21, 24, 25, 26, 30, 51, 52, 59, 89.
[9] _Bibliography_, Nos. 29, 48, 57, 66, 83, 95.
[10] _Bibliography_, Nos. 53, 73, 82, 88, 97.
[11] _Bibliography_, Nos. 44, 84, 90, 101, 102.
[12] Guerra Junqueiro, _Os Simples_.
[13] Cf. Andre de Resende, _Gillo auctor et actor_. (For the accurate text of this pa.s.sage see C. Michaelis de Vasconcellos, _Notas Vicentinas_, I. p. 17.)
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