Four Plays of Gil Vicente Part 42

132 The necromancer evokes spirits which he is unable to control. He calls them brothers but they answer in effect: 'Du gleich'st dem Geist den du begreif'st, nicht mir.'

151 The _almude_ = 12 gallons.

156 Cabrela e Landeira is a village near Montemor-o-Novo. Cf. _Sum. da Hist. de Deos_:

_Satanas_: Sabes Rio-frio e toda aquela terra, aldea Gallega, a Landeira e Ranginha e de Lavra a Coruche? Tudo e terra minha.

157 Cartaxo, a small town in the district of Santarem.

158 The village of Lumiar is now connected with Lisbon by a tramway.

159 Mealhada, a parish in the district of Aveiro.

162 Cf. _uva terrantes_ (indigenous).

164 Ribatejo = the country along the river Tejo (Tagus). Cf. _Auto da Feira_: _Vai-te ao sino do Cranguejo, Signum Cancer, Ribatejo._

168 Arruda dos Vinhos and Caparica are villages in a vine-growing district on the left bank of the Tagus opposite Lisbon, near Almada.

173 _estrema_ = _marco_ (Sp. _mojon_). Cf. _Auto da Festa_, ed. Conde de Sabugosa (1906), p. 110: _Este he da pedra do estremo_.

174 _diadema_ is usually masculine, but Antonio Vieira has it both ways.

176 Seixal (2500-3000 inh.) in the district of Almada.

177 Almada, formerly Almada (Arab = the mine, but as Englishmen settled there in the 12th century it was later given the fanciful derivation All made or All made it), a town of 10,000 inh., opposite Lisbon on the left bank of the Tagus.

179 Tojal (= whin-moor, gorse-common), a small village near Olivaes (= olive groves), in the Lisbon district.

195 The impression produced by the arrival in Rome of King Manuel's elephant, panther and other magnificent gifts was vividly described by several writers. Cf. Damio de Goes, _Chron. de D. Manuel_, Pt 3, cap.

55, 56, 57 (1619 ed. f. 223 v.-227). According to Ulrich von Hutten the elephant 'fuit mirabile animal, habens longum rostrum in magna quant.i.tate; et quando vidit Papam tunc geniculavit ei et dixit c.u.m terribili voce _bar, bar, bar_' (apud Theophilo Braga, _Gil Vicente e as Origens do Theatro Nacional_ (1898), p. 191). Cf. also Manuel Bernardez, _Nova Floresta_, V, 93-4. The head of this celebrated elephant forms the background to a portrait of Tristo da Cunha (head of the emba.s.sy to the Pope) reproduced in Senhor Joaquim de Vasconcellos' edition of Francisco de Hollanda's _Da Pintura Antigva_ (Porto, 1918).

229 In 1517 among other exotic presents a rhinoceros was sent to the Pope. It was however shipwrecked and drowned on the way. It had the honour of being drawn by Albrecht Durer.

238 Vicente seems to have coined this intensive of _bellisima_.

243-4 Cesar = King Manuel. Hecuba=his second wife, Queen Maria, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain.

249 Prince Joo, born in 1502, afterwards King Joo III (1521-57).

259 The Infanta Isabel (1503-39) married her first cousin the Emperor Charles V, and in her honour on that occasion Vicente composed his _Templo de Apolo_ (1526). Her marriage may have already been planned in 1513, but more probably Vicente altered the pa.s.sage when he was preparing the 1st edition of his works during the last months of his life. Gil Vicente more than once refers to her great beauty. Her portrait by t.i.tian in the Madrid Prado fully bears out his praises and the expression on her face places this among the most fascinating portraits of women. The Empress is sitting by a window looking on to a beautiful country of woods and blue mountains, in her hand is a book; but one feels that she is thinking of neither book nor scenery but that her thoughts go back in _saudade_ to the soft air and merry days of Lisbon. It might indeed be a picture of _Saudade_. There is a slight flush on her pale oval face. Her almond-shaped eyes are grey-green, her nose delicately aquiline. In the eyes and in the general expression there is a look of undeniable sadness. Her dress of plum, cherry-pink, gold and brown gives a gorgeously mellow effect and the curtain at the back is plum-brown. If the colouring seems at first too rich this is due to the criminal gold frame which clashes with the dress and the chestnut-golden hair. In a dark frame the picture would be twice as beautiful. The Empress' dress gleams with pearls and she has a jewel with pearls--set perhaps by Gil Vicente--in her hair, large pearl earrings and a necklace of large pearls. She died at Toledo at the age of 36 and lies in the grim Pantheon of the Kings in the Escorial crypt.

266 Of Prince Fernando, born in 1507, Damio de Goes, who knew him personally, says: 'a.s.si na mocidade como depois de ser homem foi de bom parecer e bem disposto, muito inclinado a letras e dado ao estudo das historias verdadeiras e imigo das fabulosas... Era colerico e apressado em seus negocios e muito animoso, com mostra e desejo de se achar em algun grande feito de guerra, mas nem o tempo nem o estudo do Regno deram pera isso lugar' (_Chron. de D. Manuel_, II, xix). Cf. Osorio, _De Rebvs Emmanvelis_ (1571), p. 189: 'Fuit in antiquitate pervestiganda valde curiosus: maximarum rerum studio flagrabat multisque virtutibus illo loco dignis praeditus erat.'

275 Princess Beatrice as a matter of fact married Charles, Duke of Savoy, and on the occasion of her departure from Lisbon by sea with a magnificent suite Vicente wrote the _Cortes de Jupiter_ (1521) with the _romance_:

Nina era la Ifanta, Dona Beatriz se dezia, Nieta del buen Rei Hernando, el mejor rei de Castilla, Hija del Rei Don Manuel y Reina Dona Maria, etc.

284 Cf. the _Auto das Fadas_ (with which this play has many points of resemblance): _Feiticeira_ (ao principle e infantes): _o que joias esmaltadas, o que boninas dos ceos, o que rosas perfumadas!_

331-2 Cf. _Divisa da Cidade de Coimbra_: _Vai delas a eles to grande avantagem... como havera...do vivo a hua imagem_.

341 _G.o.dos_, Goths, i.e. of ancient race, 'Norman blood.'

346 For _dioso_ = _idoso_ v. _C. Geral_, vol. II (1910), p. 153. Fernam Lopez, _Chron. J. I._ Pt. 2, cap. 10, has _deoso_.

384 _pequenas quadrilhas_. When Afonso de Albuquerque began his glorious career (1509-15) there were in India but a few hundred Portuguese fighting men, and most of these badly armed. The whole population of Portugal during this time of fighting and discovery in N.-West, West and East Africa and India is by some calculated at a million and a half, by others at between two and three millions.

416 Prov. _mais so as vozes que as nozes_.

418 For this line cf. Pedro Ferrus: _Que por todo el mundo suena_ (ap.

Menendez y Pelayo, _Antologia_, t. I, p. 159 and Enzina, _Egloga_, V (_ib._ t. VII, p. 57)).

420 _pois que...pessoa_, a homely version of Goethe's _Was du ererbt von deinen Vatern hast Erwirb' es um es zu besitzen_.

470-4 These lines are translated from the Spanish poet Gomez Manrique (1415?-1490?). See Menendez y Pelayo, _Antologia_, t. VII, p. ccx.

Cf. Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos, _Ulysippo_, V, 7: _Vos quando vos tirarem de Ansias e pa.s.siones mias e guando Roma conquistava_.

487 _dom zote_. Cf. supra _zopete_ and Sp. _zote_, _zopo_, _zopenco_, _zoquete_ (a dolt); low Latin _sottus_; Dutch _zot_; Fr. _sot_; Eng.

_sot_ (_bebe sem desfolegar_). _Zote_ occurs twice in the _Auto Pastoril Portugues_: _muito gamenho_ (cf. Fr. _gamin_) _zote_ and _Auto da Fe_, l. 5.

534 _trepas_ is the Span. form (Port, _tripas_?).

538 _soycos_ the old, _soldados_ the new, word for 'soldiers.' Cf. Lucas Fernandez, _Farsas_ (1867), p. 89: _Entra el soldado, o soizo, o infante_.

559 This rousing chorus fitly ends a play from every page of which breathes the most ardent patriotism. Small wonder that King Sebastio (1557-78), with his visions of conquest and glory, read Vicente with pleasure as a boy.

561 Cf. Gaspar Correa, _Lendas da India_, IV, 561-2: _o Governador logo sobio e o frade diante dele bradando a grandes brados, dizendo: 'O fieis Christos, olhai para Christo, vosso capito, que vai diante'_ (1546).

FARSA DOS ALMOCREVES

PAGE 37

This is one of the most famous of those lively farces with which Gil Vicente for a quarter of a century delighted the Portuguese Court and which still hold the reader by their vividness and charm. Its fame rests on the portraiture of the poverty-stricken but magnificent n.o.bleman who has been a favourite object of satire with writers in the Peninsula since the time of Martial, and who in a poem of the _Cancioneiro Geral_ is described in almost the identical words of Vicente's prefatory note:

o gram estado e a renda casi nada (_Arrenegos que que fez Gregoryo Affonsso_).

An alternative t.i.tle of the play is _Auto do Fidalgo Pobre_, but the extremely natural presentment of the two carriers in the second part justifies the more popular name. The Court, fleeing from plague at Lisbon, was in the celebrated little university town of Coimbra on the Mondego and here Gil Vicente in the following year staged his _Divisa da Cidade de Coimbra_, the _Farsa dos Almocreves_, and (in October) the _Tragicomedia da Serra da Estrella_ and Sa de Miranda, in open rivalry, produced his _Fabula do Mondego_. But Gil Vicente was not to be silenced by the introduction of the new poetry from Italy and to these two years, 1526 and 1527, belong no less than seven (or perhaps eight) of his plays. Yet what a difference in his own position and in the state of the nation since his first farce--_Quem tem farelos?_ twenty years before!

The magnificent King Manuel was dead, and his son, the more care-ridden Joo III, was on the throne:

to ocupado co'este Turco, co'este Papa co'esta Franca.

There was plague and famine in the land. The discovery of a direct route to the East and its apparently inexhaustible wealth had not brought prosperity to the Portuguese provinces. There the chief effect had been to make men discontented with their lot and to lure away even the humblest workers to seek their fortune and often to find death or a far less independent poverty:

ate os pastores ho de ser d'el-Rei samica.