{"product_id":"four-plays-of-gil-vicente-gb-28399","title":"Four Plays of Gil Vicente","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFour Plays of Gil Vicente\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThose who read the voluminous song-book edited by jolly Garcia\r\nde\r\nResende in 1516 are astonished at its narrowness and aridity. There is\r\nscarcely a breath of poetry or of Nature in these Court verses. In the\r\npages of Gil Vicente[6],\r\nwho had begun to write fourteen years before the\r\nCancioneiro Geral was published, the Court is still\r\npresent, yet the\r\natmosphere is totally different. There are many passages in his plays\r\nwhich correspond to the conventional love-poems of the courtiers and he\r\nmaintains the personal satire to be found both in the [Pg\r\nx]Cancioneiro da\r\nVaticana and the Cancioneiro de Resende.\r\nBut he is also a child of Nature,\r\nwith a marvellous lyrical gift and the insight to revive and renew the\r\ngenuine poetry which had existed in Galicia and the north of Portugal\r\nbefore the advent of the Provenal love-poetry, had sprung\r\ninto a splendid\r\nharvest in rivalry with that poetry and died down under the Spanish\r\ninfluence of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He was moreover a\r\nnational and imperial poet, embracing the whole of Portuguese life and\r\nthe whole rapidly growing Portuguese empire. We can only account\r\nfor the difference by saying that Gil Vicente was a genius, the only\r\ngreat genius of that day in Portugal, and the most gifted poet of his\r\ntime.\r\nIt is therefore all the more tantalizing that we should know so little\r\nabout him. A few documents recently unearthed, one or two scanty\r\nreferences by contemporary or later authors, are all the information we\r\nhave apart from that which may be gleaned from the rubrics and\r\ncolophons of his plays and from the plays themselves. The labours of\r\nDona\r\nCarolina Michalis de Vasconcellos, Dr Jos Leite de\r\nVasconcellos[7]\r\nand\r\nSnr Anselmo Braamcamp Freire are likely to provide us before long with\r\nthe first critical edition of his plays. The ingenious suppositions of\r\nDr Theophilo Braga[8]\r\nhave, as usual, led to much discussion and research.\r\nHe is the Mofina Mendes of critics, putting forward a hypothesis,\r\ntranslating\r\nit a few pages further on into a certainty and building rapidly on\r\nthese foundations till an argument adduced or a document discovered by\r\nanother critic brings the whole edifice toppling to the ground. The\r\ndocuments\r\nbrought to light by General Brito Rebello[9] and Senhor Anselmo\r\nBraamcamp Freire[10]\r\nenable us to construct a sketch of Gil Vicente's life,\r\nwhile D. Carolina Michalis has shed a flood of light upon\r\ncertain points[11].\r\nThe chronological table at the end of this volume is founded mainly, as\r\nto the order of the plays, on the documents and arguments recently set\r\nforth by one of the most distinguished of modern historical critics,\r\nSenhor\r\nAnselmo Braamcamp Freire. The plays, read in this order, throw a\r\ncertain\r\namount of new light on Gil Vicente's life and give it a new cohesion.\r\nWhether we consider it from the point of view of his own country or of\r\nthe world, or of literature, art and science, his life coincides with\r\none of\r\nthe most wonderful periods in the world's history. At his birth\r\nPortugal\r\nwas a sturdy mediaeval country, proud of her traditions and heroic\r\npast.\r\nHer heroes were so national as scarcely to be known beyond her own\r\nborders. Nun' Alvarez (1360-1431), one of the greatest men of all time,\r\nis even now unknown to Europe. And Portugal herself as yet hardly[Pg\r\nxi]\r\nappraised at its true worth the life and work of Prince Henry the\r\nNavigator\r\n(1394-1460), at whose incentive she was still groping persistently\r\nalong the western coast of Africa. His nephew Afonso V, the amiable\r\ngrandson of Nun' Alvarez' friend, the Master of Avis, and the English\r\nprincess Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt, was on the\r\nthrone, to be succeeded by his stern and resolute son Joo II\r\nin 1481. In\r\nhis boyhood, spent in the country, somewhere in the green hills of\r\nMinho\r\nor the rugged grandeur and bare, flowered steeps of the Serra da\r\nEstrella,\r\nall ossos e burel[12], Gil Vicente might hear\r\ndramatic stories of the doings at\r\nthe capital and Court, of the beginning of the new reign, of the\r\nbeheadal\r\nof the Duke of Braganza in the Rocio of Evora, of the stabbing by the\r\nKing's own hand of his cousin and brother-in-law, the young Duke of\r\nViseu, of the baptism and death at Lisbon of a native prince from\r\nGuinea.\nThe place of his birth is not certain. Biographers have\r\nhesitated\r\nbetween Lisbon, Guimares and Barcellos: perhaps he was not\r\nborn in\r\nany of these towns but in some small village of the north of Portugal.\r\nWe can at least say that he was not brought up at Lisbon. The proof\r\nis his knowledge and love of Nature and his intimate acquaintance with\r\nthe ways of villagers, their character, customs, amusements, dances,\r\nsongs and language. It is legitimate to draw certain\r\ninferencesprovided\r\nwe do not attach too great importance to themfrom his plays,\r\nespecially\r\nsince we know that he himself staged them and acted in them[13].\r\nHis earliest compositions are especially personal and we may be quite\r\nsure that the parts of the herdsman in the Visitaam\r\n(1502) and of the\r\nmystically inclined shepherd, Gil Terron, in the Auto\r\nPastoril Castelhano\r\n(1502) and the rustico pastor in the Auto\r\ndos Reis Magos (1503) were\r\nplayed by Vicente himself. It is therefore well to note the passage in\r\nwhich Silvestre and Bras express surprise at Gil's learning:\nIt is possible that Gil Vicente, like Gil Terron, had been\r\nborn en\r\nserrana. Dr Leite de Vasconcellos was the first to\r\ncall attention to his\r\nspecial knowledge of the province of Beira, and the reference to the[Pg\r\nxii]\r\nSerra da Estrella dragged into the Comedia do Viuvo\r\nis of even more\r\nsignificance than the conventional beiro\r\ntalk of his peasants. Nor is the\r\nlearning in his plays such as to give a moment's support to the theory\r\nthat\r\nhe had, like Enzina, received a university education, or, as some,\r\nrelying\r\non an unreliable nobiliario, have held, was tutor (mestre\r\nde rhetorica) to\r\nPrince, afterwards King, Manuel. The King, according to Damio\r\nde Goes,\r\n'knew enough Latin to judge of its style.' Probably he did not know\r\nmuch more of it than Gil Vicente himself. His first productions are\r\nwithout the least pretension to learning: they are close imitations of\r\nEnzina's eclogues. Later his outlook widened; he read voraciously[14]\r\nand seems to have pounced on any new publication that came to the\r\npalace, among them the works of two slightly later Spanish playwrights,\r\nLucas Fernndez and Bartolom de Torres Naharro. With\r\nthe quickness\r\nof genius and spurred forward by the malicious criticism of his\r\naudience,\r\ntheir love of new things and the growing opposition of the introducers\r\nof\r\nthe new style from Italy, he picked up a little French and Italian,\r\nwhile\r\nChurch Latin and law Latin early began to creep into his plays. The\r\nparade\r\nof erudition (which is also a satire on pedants) at the beginning of\r\nthe Auto\r\nda Mofina Mendes is, however, that of a comparatively\r\nuneducated man\r\nin a library, of rustic Gil Vicente in the palace. Rather we would\r\nbelieve\r\nthat he spent his early life in peasant surroundings, perhaps actually\r\nkeeping goats in the scented hills like his Prince of Wales, Dom\r\nDuardos:\r\nDe mozo guard ganado, and then becoming an\r\napprentice in the goldsmith's\r\nart, perhaps to his father or uncle, Martim Vicente, at\r\nGuimares.\r\nIt is extremely probable that he was drawn to the Court, then at Evora,\r\nfor the first time in 1490 by the unprecedented festivities in honour\r\nof\r\nthe wedding of the Crown Prince and Isabel, daughter of the Catholic\r\nKings, and was one of the many goldsmiths who came thither on that\r\noccasion[15].\r\nIf that was so, his work may have at once attracted the\r\nattention of King Joo II, who, as Garcia de Resende tells us,\r\nkeenly\r\nencouraged the talents of the young men in his service, and the\r\nprotection\r\nof his wife, Queen Lianor. He may have been about 25 years old\r\nat the time. The date of his birth has become a fascinating problem, [Pg\r\nxiii]over\r\nwhich many critics have argued and disagreed. As to the exact year it\r\nis best frankly to confess our ignorance. The information is so flimsy\r\nand\r\nconflicting as to make the acutest critics waver. While a perfectly\r\nunwarranted\r\nimportance has been given to a passage in Vicente's last\r\ncomedia, the Floresta de Enganos\r\n(1536), in which a judge declares that\r\nhe is 66 (therefore Gil Vicente was born in 1470), sufficient stress\r\nhas\r\nperhaps not been laid on the lines in the play from the Conde de\r\nSabugosa's\r\nlibrary, the Auto da Festa, in which Gil Vicente is\r\ndeclared to be\r\n'very stout and over 60.' This cannot be dismissed like the former\r\npassage, for it is evidently a personal reference to Gil Vicente. It\r\nwas the\r\ncomedian's ambition to raise a laugh in his audience and this might be\r\neffected by saying the exact opposite of what the audience knew to be\r\ntrue: e.g. to speak of Gil Vicente as very stout and over 60 if he was\r\nvery young and spectre-thin. But Vicente was certainly not very young\r\nwhen this play was written and we may doubt whether the victim of\r\ncalentura and hater of heat (he treats summer\r\nscurvily in his Auto dos\r\nQuatro Tempos) was thin. We have to accept the fact that he\r\nwas over\r\n60 when the Auto da Festa was written. But when was\r\nit written? Its\r\neditor, the Conde de Sabugosa, to whom all Vicente lovers owe so deep\r\na debt of gratitude[16], assigned it to 1535, while\r\nSenhor Braamcamp\r\nFreire, who uses Vicente's age as a double-edged weapon[17],\r\nplaces it\r\ntwenty years earlier, in 1515. This was indeed necessary if the year\r\n1452\r\nwas to be maintained as the date of his birth. The theory of the exact\r\ndate 1452 was due to another passage of the plays: the old man in O\r\nVelho\r\nda Horta, formerly assigned to 1512, is 60 (III. 75). Yet\r\nthere is something\r\nslightly comical in stout old Gil Vicente beginning his actor's career\r\nat\r\nthe age of 50 and keeping it up till he was 86. Other facts that may\r\nthrow light on his age are as follows: in 1502 he almost certainly\r\nacted\r\nthe boisterous part of vaqueiro in the Visitaam[18].\r\nIn 1512 he is over 40\r\nand married (inference from his appointment as one of the 24\r\nrepresentatives\r\nof Lisbon guilds in that year). In 1512 a 'son of Gil Vicente'\r\nis in India. His son Belchior is a small boy in 1518. In 1515 he\r\nreceived\r\na sum of money to enable his sister Felipa Borges to marry. In 1531 he\r\ndeclares himself to be 'near death'[19],\r\nalthough evidently not ill\r\nat the time.\r\nHe died very probably at the end of 1536 or beginning of 1537[20].\r\nAccepting\r\nthe fact that the Auto da Festa was written before\r\nthe Templo de\r\nApolo (1526) I would place it as late as possible, i.e. in\r\nthe year 1525, and\r\nsubtracting 60 believe that the date c. 1465 for\r\nGil Vicente's [Pg xiv]birth will\r\nbe found to agree best with the various facts given above.\n\u003cb\u003e ......Buy Now (To Read More)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eProduct details\u003ch3\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eEbook Number\u003c\/b\u003e: 28399 \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor\u003c\/b\u003e: Vicente, Gil \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eRelease Date\u003c\/b\u003e: Mar 24, 2009 \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat\u003c\/b\u003e: eBook \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage\u003c\/b\u003e: Portuguese \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eContributors\u003ch3\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eEditor\u003c\/b\u003e: Bell, Aubrey F. G. (Aubrey Fitz Gerald), 1882-1950 \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"booksdeli.com","offers":[{"title":"Vicente, Gil,1470?-1536? \/ eBook \/ Portuguese","offer_id":43219044958365,"sku":"gb-28399-ebook","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0619\/5648\/9373\/products\/28399.jpg?v=1671512983","url":"https:\/\/booksdeli.com\/products\/four-plays-of-gil-vicente-gb-28399","provider":"booksdeli.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}