Part 5 (2/2)

[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 appet.i.to 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. _pareca_--_cabeca_).

So _mucho_ rhymes with _fruto_, _demueno_ with _sueno_.

[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 este dicha_, says Enzina, and Vicente repeats the wise quotation and imitates the whole pa.s.sage. 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 _tetoi_. 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 gla.s.s slippers, on a confusion of h.o.m.onyms (see Alfred Jeanroy, _Origines de la poesie lyrique en France_, p. 329).

[132] See his _Arte de Poesia Castellana_, ap. Menendez y Pelayo, _Antologia_, 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 Menendez y Pelayo's view is more correct.

[134] In Resende's _Miscellanea_ the line _n hos quer deos jutos ver_ (1917 ed., p. 16) reads in the 1752 ed., f. 105 v. _ja hos quer_.

[135] Cf. _Tratado tercero: llevandolo a la boca comenco a dar en el tan fieros bocados_ (1897 ed., p. 50) and _Quem tem farelos?: e chanta nelle bocado coma co_ (i. 7).

[136] The _Canc. Geral_ has a _Pater noster grosado por Luys anrryquez_, vol. III. (1913), p. 87.

[137] _Antologia_, t. 7, pp. clxxii, clxxiv.

[138] _Antologia_, 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 Colon'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 t.i.tle was _Historia de los honestos amores de Peregrino y Ginebra_. Valdes (_Dialogo de la Lengua_) ranks _El Pelegrino_ as a translation with Boscan's version of _Il Cortegiano: estan mui bien romancados_.

[141] E.g. the _Nao de Amor_ of Juan de Duenas.

[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.

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