Part 44 (2/2)

It is remarkable that just at the time when Sa de Miranda had returned to Portugal with the new metres from Italy and was frankly contemptuous of Gil Vicente's rough mirth and rustic verse, Gil Vicente felt his position strong enough to present this lengthy play before the King and Court at Coimbra on occasion of the birth of the King's daughter Maria.

There is no action in the play, and King Manuel would perhaps have yawned at these shepherds' quarrels, relieved not at all by the _parvo's_ wit or the hermit's grossness and only occasionally by a touch of lyric poetry; but perhaps these simple scenes were welcome to the growing artificiality of the Court. For us the beautiful _cossante Um amigo que eu havia_ stands out like a single orange gleaming from a dark-foliaged tree. The interest lies in the customs of the shepherds and their s.n.a.t.c.hes of song and in the intimate knowledge of the Serra da Estrella shown by the author.

10 The Serra da Estrella, the highest mountain-range in Portugal (6500 ft), is in the province of Beira.

17 _meyrinhas_ = _maiorinho_ (merino).

30 _esperauel_ (as here and in _Comedia de Rubena_), or _esparavel_. Cf.

Damio de Goes, _Chron. de D. Manuel_ (1617), f. 25 v.: a _modo de sobreceo d'esparavel_.

32 Cf. the _vilo's_ complaints of G.o.d in the _Romagem de Aggravados_.

35 _nega_ = _seno_.

51 As in Browning's _A Grammarian's Funeral_ they are advancing as they converse: 'thither our path lies.'

103 _Nega se meu embeleco_ = _se no me engano_. This line occurs in the _Templo de Apolo_. The _Auto da Festa_ text has _nego se meu embaleco_.

113 _mancebelhes_. Cf. Correa, _Lendas_, IV, 426: _Folgara de ser mais mancebelho_.

127 The corresponding _a_-lines might be:

Dous acores que eu amava Aqui andam nesta casa.

172 _argem_ for _prata_. Similarly in Spanish there is the old form _argen_ for _argento_ (= _plata_). Cf. the proverb _Quien tiene argen tiene todo bien_.

190 _somana_ for _semana_. So _romendo_ for _remendo_ and v. infra: _perem_ for _porem_.

225 _gingrar_. Nuno Pereira in the _Cancioneiro Geral_ (1910 ed., vol.

I, p. 305) has _o gingrar de meu caseiro_. Cf. Enzina, _Auto del Repelon_: _Hora dejalos gingrar_ (_Teatro_, 1893, p. 241).

241 _sois_. Cf. _Barca do Purgatorio_: _sem sois motrete de po_; _Farsa dos Fisicos_: _no vos quer sois olhar_.

290-1 = _odi et amo_.

322 As a rule Vicente's shepherds are natural enough but we may be permitted to doubt whether any shepherdess of the Serra da Estrella would have spoken of 'ending like Queen Dido.' She had probably been reading Lucas Fernandez, _Farsas_ (1867), p. 56.

328 A, B, C, D and E unaccountably print _quere-lo_ (through the bad attraction of _malo_) although _querer_ is needed to rhyme with _quer_.

367 _pintisirgo_ = _pintasilgo_.

410 _grauisca_. Vicente appears to have coined the word from _grave_ and _arisca_.

427 Fronteira, a village of nearly 3000 inh. in the district of Portalegre. Monsarraz is of about the same size, in the district of Evora.

435 _tinhosa cada mea hora_. Cf. Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos, _Aulegrafia_, f. 89: _he hua tinhosa que ontem guardava patas em Barquerena_.

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