Chapter C: R. = Cancioneiro de Resende. Lisboa, 1516 (= Cancioneiro Geral) (5)

The comedies and tragicomedies vary greatly. The _Comedia de Rubena_ (1521) is, like _A Winter’s Tale_, quite without unity of time or place (for this primitive humanist, although he might mention Plato, did not ‘reverence the Stagirite’), but is divided into three acts (called scenes) as in a modern play. Cismena, like Perdita born in the first scene, is conveyed by fairies to Crete, where she is wooed and won by the Prince of Syria. The _Comedia do Viuvo_ (1514) is much more compact and has a delicate charm. Don Rosvel, a prince in disguise, serves in the house of a widower at Burgos for love of his daughters. (He is in love with both, but his brother in search of him arrives and marries the second.) On the other hand, the _Comedia sobre a divisa da cidade de Coimbra_, acted before King João III in his ever-loyal city of Coimbra in 1527, is a lengthy, far-fetched explanation of the city’s arms, and the _Floresta de Enganos_ (played before the king at Evora in 1536) is a succession of scenes of pure farce--the deceit practised upon a merchant, the ludicrous predicament to which love reduced the grave old judge who had taken his degree in Paris--with a more serious theme, a Portuguese version of the story of Psyche and Eros. Of the ‘tragicomedies’ two, _Dom Duardos_ (1525?) and _Amadis de Gaula_ (1533), dramatize romances of chivalry: _Primaleon_, that ‘_dulce & aplacible historia_ translated from the Greek’,[267] and _Amadis_.[268] The work is done with skill, for Vicente succeeds here as always in being natural, and in this twilight atmosphere of garden flowers and romance keeps his realism.[269] Both plays contain passages of great lyrical beauty, and _Dom Duardos_ ends with the _romance_ beginning _Pelo mes era de Abril_. Thus in his latter age he successfully adapted himself to pastures new. In his letter dedicating _Dom Duardos_ to King João III he wrote: ‘Since, excellent Prince and most powerful King, the comedies, farces and moralities which I wrote for (_en servicio de_) the Queen your Aunt were low figures[270] in which there was no fitting rhetoric to satisfy the delicate spirit of your Highness, I realized that I must crowd more sail on to my poor bark.’ For us the words have a tinge of irony, and however much some readers may admire the hushed rapture of these idyllic scenes we miss the merry author of the _farsas_, and gladly turn to the _Romagem de Aggravados_ (1533) in which Vicente proves that his hand had lost none of its cunning. ‘This tragicomedy is a satire’ says the rubric, and it introduces us to the inimitable Frei Paço, the mincing courtier-priest with gloves, gilt sword, and velvet cap (one of Sá de Miranda’s _clerigos perfumados_), to the discontented peasant who brings his son to be made a priest, the talkative fish-wives, the hypocrite Frei Narciso scheming to be made a bishop, and awkward Giralda, the peasant Aparicianes’ daughter, whom Frei Paço instructs so competently in Court manners. This long play was written for a special occasion, the birth of the Infante Felipe. Gil Vicente for many years, as poet laureate, had celebrated great events at Court. When the Duke of Braganza was about to leave with the expedition against Azamor in 1513 he wrote the eloquent _Exhortaçam da Guerra_, which is introduced by a necromancer priest and ends with a rousing call to war (_soiça_):

Avante avante, senhores,
Pois que com grandes favores
Todo o ceo vos favorece;
El Rey de Fez esmorece
E Marrocos dá clamores.

When King Manuel’s daughter, the princess Beatrice, married the Duke of Savoy in 1521 Vicente wrote the _Cortes de Jupiter_, in which the Providence of God bids Jupiter, King of the Elements, speed her on her voyage, and the courtiers and inhabitants of Lisbon accompany her ship, swimming, to the mouth of the Tagus. The _Fragoa de Amor_ (1525) was written on the occasion of the betrothal of King João and Queen Catherina (who replaced Queen Lianor as Vicente’s protector and patron). Into the forge, to the sound of singing, goes a negro, and then Justice in the form of a bent old woman who is forced to disgorge all her bribes and reappears upright and fair. A similar play, _Nao de Amor_ (1527), in which courtiers caulk a miniature ship on the stage, was played before their Majesties in Lisbon two years later. The _Templo de Apolo_ (1526) was acted when another daughter of King Manuel left Lisbon to become the wife of the Emperor Charles V. The author introduces the play and excuses its deficiencies on the plea that he has been seriously ill with fever. He then relates the dream of fair women--_las hermosas que son muertas_--that he had seen in his sickness. Apollo then enters, and after declaring that he would have made the world otherwise mounts the pulpit and preaches a mock sermon. The world, Fame, Victory, come to his temple and bear witness to the greatness of the Emperor Charles V. A Portuguese peasant also comes and has more difficulty in obtaining admittance. The author called the play an _obra doliente_, and it was propped up by a passage from the earlier _Auto da Festa_ (1525?), edited by the Conde de Sabugosa from the unique copy in his possession. Its figures are Truth, two gipsies, a fool, and seven peasants. Their speech is markedly _beirão_ and the old woman closely resembles the _velha_ of the tragicomedy _Triunfo do Inverno_, written to celebrate the birth of Princess Isabel in 1529, as the _Auto da Lusitania_ celebrated that of Prince Manuel in 1532 and the _Tragicomedia Pastoril da Serra da Estrella_ that of Princess Maria in 1527. The latter is a whole-hearted play of the Serra with a _cossante_, a _baile de terreiro_ and _chacota_, and continual fragments of song: one of the most Portuguese of Vicente’s plays. The _Triunfo do Inverno_ contains some most effective scenes and a bewildering wealth of lyrics: before one is finished another has begun, and the whole long play goes forward at a gallop. The first triumph of Winter is on the hills, the Serra da Estrella (_serra nevada_); the second, on the sea, affords a telling satire against the pilots on India-bound ships. The pilot here begins by stating that the storm will be nothing, then he says that he is not to blame for Winter’s conduct, finally he falls to imploring the Virgin and St. George and St. Nicholas; and but for his incompetence the ship might have been lying safe at Cochin. The second part of the tragicomedy is the Triumph of Spring in the Serra de Sintra. Spring enters in a lyrical profusion singing

Del rosal vengo, mi madre,
Vengo del rosale,

breaks off into _Afuera, afuera nublados_, and resumes his song:

A riberas de aquel rio
Viera estar rosal florido,
Vengo del rosale.

Enough has perhaps been said to suggest the variety of these plays, the glow of colour that pervades them, and to show how far their author, although his genius was never fully realized in his _autos_, had travelled from the first glimmerings of the drama in Portugal and from his first model, Enzina. Rudiments of dramatic art existed in the Middle Ages in the ceremonies provided by an essentially dramatic Church and in the mummeries and mimicking _jograes_ that delighted the people. Bonamis and his companion furnished some kind of extremely primitive play (_arremedillum_) for King Sancho I, and they were probably only the most successful of hundreds of wandering mimics and players. Mimicry and scenic display[271] were the principal ingredients of the _momos_ in which Rui de Sousa excelled[272] and the _entremeses_ for which Portugal was famous: they scarcely belonged to literature, although they might include a song and prose _breve_ such as the Conde do Vimioso’s, printed in the _Cancioneiro Geral_. Religious processions and Christmas, Epiphany, Passion, or Easter scenes[273] gave further scope for dramatic display, as also popular ceremonies such as that in which ‘Emperors’ and ‘Kings’--figures similar, no doubt, to those still to be seen in Spanish processions (e. g. at Valencia)--were carried in triumph to the churches, accompanied by _jograes_ who invaded the pulpit and preached profane sermons containing ‘many iniquities and abominations’, even while mass was in progress. The popular tendencies darkly suggested in the _Constituições_ are manifest in Vicente’s plays--the Christmas _representações_, the preaching of burlesque sermons, parodies of the mass, profane litanies, parodies and paraphrases of the Lord’s Prayer. Like the _Clercs de la Bazoche_ in France, he represents the drama breaking its ecclesiastical fetters. It was, however, from Spain that the idea of his _autos_ first came to him, as the direct imitations of Juan del Enzina (1469?-1529?) in Vicente’s early pieces and the explicit statement of Garcia de Resende in his _Miscellania_ prove: he speaks of the _representações_ of very eloquent style and new devices invented in Portugal by Gil Vicente, and adds the qualifying clause that credit for the invention of the _pastoril_ belongs to Enzina. But the wine of Vicente’s genius soon burst the old bottles, and when his plays ceased to be confined to the _pastoril_ he naturally turned elsewhere for suggestion. He himself towards the end of his life called his religious plays _moralidades_, and the real name of the play popularly known as the _Farsa da Mofina Mendes_ was _Os Mysterios da Virgem_.[274] The introduction of Lucifer as _Maioral do Inferno_ and Belial as his _meirinho_[275] may have been derived from French _mystères_; the conception of his _Barcas_ certainly owed more to the _Danse macabre_ (probably through the Spanish fifteenth-century _Danza de la Muerte_) than to Dante. The burlesque _testamento_ of Maria Parda[276] is one of a long list of such wills (of which an example is the mule’s testament in the _Cancioneiro Geral_),[277] but in some of its expressions appears to be copied from the _Testament de Pathelin_. His knowledge of French was perhaps more fluent than accurate, like his Latin which, albeit copious, did not claim to be ‘pure Tully’. But there are many references to France in his plays, as there are in the _Cancioneiro Geral_, and, although the _enselada_ from France with which the _Auto da Fé_ ends (i. 75) and the French song (i. 92) _Ay de la noble ville de Paris_[278] were no doubt some fashionable courtier’s latest acquisition, Vicente in literary matters probably shared the curiosity of the Court as to what was going on beyond the frontiers of Portugal. The great majority of his songs are, however, plainly indigenous. His knowledge of Italian certainly enabled him to read Italian plays and poems. We know that he was a great reader--he mentions ‘the written works that I have seen, in verse and prose, rich in style and matter’. In Spanish he did not confine himself to Enzina. He read romances of chivalry, imitated the _romances_ with supreme success, mentions Diego de San Pedro’s _La Carcel de Amor_, had read the _autos_ of Lucas Fernandez, the _comedias_ of Bartolomé de Torres Naharro probably, and without doubt the Archpriest of Hita’s _Libro de Buen Amor_, possessed by King Duarte, and the _Celestina_. Indeed, for some time past barriers between the two literatures had scarcely existed and Vicente enriched both. Celestina would have spoken many proverbs had she foreseen that he would allow two men (_judeos casamenteiros_) to take the bread out of her mouth, but he copies her in his Brigida Vaz, Branca Gil, the formidable Anna Diaz, and the _beata alcoviteira_ of the _Comedia de Rubena_, although he may also have had in mind the _moller mui vil_ of King Alfonso X’s _Cantigas de Santa Maria_ (No. 64), with the spirit of which--their fondness for popular types and satire--Vicente had more in common than with the _Cancioneiro Geral_, compiled by his friend Resende. With this collection he was naturally familiar, and must have heard many of its songs before it was published in 1516. A line here and there in Vicente seems to be an echo of the _Cancioneiro_,[279] although the fact that it mentions some of his types (as in the _Arrenegos_[280] of Gregorio Afonso) merely means that he drew from the life around him. His satire of doctors and priests, although essentially popular and mediaeval--both are present in the _Cantigas de Santa Maria_--was also due to his personal observation: that is to say, he gave realistic expression to a satire of which the motive was literary (since satire directed against priests had long been one of the chief resources of comic writers in France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal).[281] The type of the poor _fidalgo_ or famishing _escudeiro_ on which Vicente dwells so fondly--we have the latter as Aires Rosado in _Quem tem farelos?_ and anonymous in the _Farsa de Inés Pereira_ and _O Juiz da Beira_[282]--is another instance of literary tradition combined with observation at first hand. Of the priest-satire Vicente was the last free exponent in Portugal. That of the poor gentleman was even older and survived him. It dates from Roman times. The _amethystinatus_ of Spanish Martial[283] reappears in the _Cancioneiro da Vaticana_, in the Archpriest of Hita’s Don Furon, in the _lindos fidalgos que viven lazerados_ of Alfonso Alvarez de Villasandino, in the _Cancioneiro Geral_, and just before Vicente’s death is wittily described, as the _raphanophagus purpuratus_, by Clenardus,[284] and less urbanely in _Lazarillo de Tormes_. With no Inquisition to crush him he continued to starve in literature--for instance, in the anonymous later sixteenth-century play _Auto do Escudeiro Surdo_ he and his _moço_ come on the scene in thoroughly Vicentian guise: _a vossa fome de pam ... meio tostão gasto quinze dias ha_[285]--as he starves in the real life of the Peninsula to-day.[286] In a sense Gil Vicente no doubt borrowed widely; he was no sorcerer to make bricks without straw, and straw, like poets, is not manufactured: it has to be gathered in. But the _homens de bom saber_ who, as we know from the rubric to the _Farsa de Inés Pereira_, doubted his originality must have been very superficial as well as envious critics, for the bricks were essentially his own. Indeed, every page of his _autos_ is hall-marked as his, _ca non alheo_, and he could say with King Alfonso X:

Mais se o m’eu melhoro faço ben
E non sõo per aquesto ladron.

Besides the _Auto da Festa_ we have 42 plays[287]: 12 _farsas_, 16 _obras de devaçam_, 4 _comedias_, 10 _tragicomedias_. Some of them were staged with much pomp and _grande aparato de musica_ in the spacious times of King Manuel, but they lose little in being merely read. They contain a few scenes of dramatic insight and power, a few touches of real comedy, but above all we value them for their types and characters, the insight they afford us into man and that particular period of man’s history, and for the lyrics and lyrical passages, fragments of heaven-born poetry thrown out tantalizingly at random as the dramatist passes rapidly, carelessly on. We do not possess all Vicente’s plays. A farce which in a poem to the Conde de Vimioso (?1525) he says that he had in hand, _A Caça dos Segredos_, was perhaps never finished, or perhaps it was produced seven years later as the _Auto da Lusitania_ (1532). Others were probably lost as _folhas volantes_ before the edition of 1562 could collect them. Three at least, the _Auto da Aderencia do Paço_, _Auto da Vida do Paço_, and _Jubileu de Amor_ or _Amores_, were suppressed.[288] The latter, in Spanish and Portuguese, was probably the cause of the loss of the two other plays, for, having ventured far away from the natural piety of Portugal, it was acted in Brussels on December 21, 1531, in the house of the Portuguese Ambassador, D. Pedro de Mascarenhas, and in the mind of the Nuncio, Cardinal Aleandro, who was among those invited, this ‘manifest satire against Rome’ caused such commotion that, as he wrote, he ‘seemed to be in mid-Saxony listening to Luther[289] or in the horrors of the sack of Rome’.[290] Yet in 1533 impenitent, the incorrigible Vicente is pillorying the Court priest, Frei Paço. The fact is that in Portugal no one could suspect the sheep-dog, who had for so long and so mordantly kept watch over the Court flock, of turning wolf and encouraging the _seitas_ and _cismas_ against which Alvaro de Brito had already inveighed. He was himself deeply, mystically religious and perhaps cared the less for creeds and dogmas. His mystic philosophy appears as early as 1502. Yet they do him a poor service who represent him as a profound theologian, a great philosopher, an authoritative philologist. His plays show us a man lovable and human, tolerant of opinions, intolerant of abuses,[291] a man of many gifts, with a passionate devotion to his country. We have only to turn to the ringing _Exhortaçam da Guerra_ or the _Auto da Fama_. The whole of the latter is written in a glow of pride and patriotism at Portugal’s vast, increasing empire and the victories of Albuquerque:

Ormuz, Quiloa, Mombaça,
Sofala, Cochim, Melinde.

Clearly the words to him are a sweet music.[292] From one point of view Gil Vicente’s position exactly tallied with Herculano’s description of the _bobo_. He was a Court jester, expected to render the idle courtiers _muy ledos_. To this purpose he was compelled to saddle his plays with passages which for us have lost their savour and significance but almost every line of which must have elicited a smile or a shout of laughter at the _serões_. We may instance _O Clerigo da Beira_, which ends with the signs and planets under which various courtiers were born, the _Tragicomedia da divisa da cidade de Coimbra_, with the origins of various noble families, the malicious _catalogue raisonné_ of courtiers in the _Cortes de Jupiter_, Branca Gil’s comical litany in _O Velho da Horta_, the sixty-four puzzle verses of the _Auto das Fadas_. But Vicente frequently had a deeper purpose than to enliven a fashionable gathering. The abuse of indulgences, the corruption of the clergy,[293] the subjection of married women, the danger of appointing ignorant men to the responsible position of pilot, the mingling of the classes--it was not so, he remarks, in Germany or Flanders, France or Venice--the increasing tendency to shun honest labour in order to occupy a position however humble at Court,[294] the ignorance and presumption of the peasants, the false display and false ambitions, the thousand new lies and deceits, the decay of piety, the growth of luxury and corresponding diminution in gaiety--these were matters which he sought not only to portray but to correct, with much earnestness in his _iocis levibus_. But to the end of his life he was never able to learn that religion and virtue must be melancholy. In the introduction to the _Triunfo do Inverno_ (1529) he complains of the loss of the joyous dances and songs of Portugal and the disappearance in the last twenty years of the _gaiteiro_ and his cheerful piping. He himself drew his inspiration from the people, from Nature, and from the Scriptures, with which he had no superficial acquaintance. In his love of Nature and his wide curiosity he studied children and birds, plants and flowers, astronomy and witchcraft--those myriad forms of sorcery in Portugal, some of which have fortunately survived in the prohibitory decrees of the Church. He included in his plays or alluded to many of the traditions, the songs and dances of old Portugal--the ancient _cossantes_, the _bailes de terreiro_, _bailos vilãos_,[295] _bailes da Beira_, _chacotas_, _folias_, _alvoradas_, _janeiras, lampas de S. João_.[296] For he stood at the parting of the ways. Desirous and capable of playing many parts, tinged unawares by the new spirit of the Renaissance, but at the same time keenly national, he linked the Middle Ages with the new learning and the old traditions of Portugal with her ever-widening dominions, for which he showed the wise enthusiasm of a true imperialist. But behind the new glitter and luxury of Lisbon he constantly saw the growing misery of the people of Portugal for which all the splendour of King Manuel’s reign had been but a terrible storm[297]; and his latter sadness was perhaps less personal than patriotic. He had done what he could, far more than had been required of him. He had been expected to delight a Court audience, and had mingled warning and instruction with amusement; and when, having lived and laughed and loved, he went his way, he was not only spared by a crowning grace from the wrath that was to come but left to his countrymen an heirloom more enduring than brass, more precious than all the gold of India, with a breath of that true Portugal in its simplicity, its mirth and jollity, the disappearance of which he had deplored. Portuguese literature was never so national again. A period of splendid achievement followed, but alike in subject and language it was too often a honeyed sweetness containing in itself the seeds of decay, and if for the time it swept away all memory of Gil Vicente, for us it only emphasizes his qualities by the contrast. In his directness, his close contact with the people,[298] his humanity, his quick observation, keen satire, love of laughter and malicious humour, in his unsurpassed lyrical gift and his natural delight in words, to be used not at haphazard but weighed and set cunningly as precious stones in the hands of an _ourives_, this great lyrical poet and charmingly incorrect playwright clearly foreshadowed dramatists so different as Calderón, Lope de Vega, Shakespeare, and Molière. Yet we look in vain for a Vicentian school of great dramatists in Portugal. His fame had reached Brussels and thence Rome, and Erasmus is credited with having wished to learn Portuguese in order to read Vicente’s plays. Shakespeare, who was twenty-two when the second edition of Vicente’s plays appeared and who almost certainly read Spanish, may also have been tempted. It would have been strange if Erasmus had not heard of Vicente through his friend André de Resende, who in his Latin poem _Genethliacon_ declared that had not the comic poet Gil Vicente, actor and author, written in the vulgar tongue he would have rivalled Menander and excelled Plautus and Terence. In Portugal the number of plays written in the sixteenth century was large,[299] but none can be placed on a level with those of Vicente. One cannot say that he influenced Camões or Ferreira de Vasconcellos deeply, although they had evidently read him. In Spain Cervantes, who read everything, _aunque sean los papeles rotos de las calles_, had read his plays (the _Farsa dos Fisicos_, _O Juiz da Beira_, the _Comedia de Rubena_ among others), Lope de Vega likewise, Calderón possibly. Lope de Rueda probably derived the idea of his _paso Las Aceitunas_ from the _Auto da Mofina Mendes_. Yet it is almost with amazement, if we forget the crowded history of Portugal and Portuguese literature in the sixteenth century, the introduction of the Inquisition, and the great changes in the language, that we find a Portuguese, Sousa de Macedo, a century after Vicente’s death, speaking of him as one ‘whose style was celebrated of old’,[300] and a Spaniard, Nicolás Antonio, declaring that his works were written in prose and knowing nothing of a collected edition.[301] It was with reasonable misgivings that Vicente just before his death wrote: _Livro meu, que esperas tu?_; ‘my book, what is in store for you?’ We know that it remained in manuscript for a quarter of a century, that a second edition in 1586 was so handled by the Censorship that it contains but thirty-five mutilated plays, and that for two and a half centuries no new edition was printed.

FOOTNOTES:

[219] _Essais_, 1. XXV.

[220] _Nicolai Clenardi Episiolarum libri duo._ Antuerpiae, 1561.

[221] Several fine sonnets have been ascribed to him (cf. _Fenix Renascida_, iii. 252, _Horas breves_, and, with more reason, iii. 253. _Á redea solta corre o pensamento_), as was also Gil Vicente’s _Dom Duardos_ and a manuscript _Tratado dos modos, proporções e medidas_.

[222] Duarte Nunez de Leam, _Descripção_, 2ᵃ ed. (1785), cap. 80: _Da habilidade das molheres portuguesas para as letras e artes liberaes._ Severim de Faria speaks of her _sancto desejo de saber_. The author of _Dos priuilegios & praerogatiuas q̃ ho genero femenino tem_ (1557) says (p. 9): _se pode estranhar esta hidade na qual as molheres não se aplicam aas letras e sciencias coma faziam as antigas Romanas e Gregas_.

[223] Gil Vicente, _Obras_ (1834), ii. 414.

[224] Ibid. iii. 350.

[225] Cf. João Rodriguez de Sá e Meneses in the _Cancioneiro Geral_: _De Çeita atee os Chijs_.

[226] M. Menéndez y Pelayo, _Antología_, vol. vii, p. clxiii.

[227] A. Herculano, _Historia da Inquisição_, 3ᵃ ed. (1879), i. 238. Cf. Camillo Castello Branco, _A Viuva do Enforcado_, _ad init._ No one of course thinks of comparing Gil Vicente with Shakespeare, but one may perhaps say that he resembles what Shakespeare might have been had he been born in the fifteenth century. The shipwreck in the _Triunfo do Inverno_ recalls the opening scene of _The Tempest_, as the mad friar recalls poor Tom, and the magnificent fidalgo Falstaff. In the _Farsa de Inés_ Pereira Inés, without being a shrew, is tamed by her husband, who says:

Se eu digo: Esto é novello
Vos aveis de confirmalo.

[228] In 1513 Afonso de Albuquerque writes of ‘the son of Gil Vicente’ in India.

[229] It is customary in Portugal to fix the date of his birth in 1470 owing to the statement of the judge in the _Floresta de Enganos_ (1536) that he--the judge--was already sixty-six. It is a method which might lead to comical results if further pressed in the case of Vicente or other dramatists. Was Mello seventy-three when he wrote the _Fidalgo Aprendiz_?

[230] ‘A gentleman of good family’ (Ticknor); _hijo de ilustres padres_ (Barrera y Leirado); _na qualidade nobilissimo_ (Pedro de Poyares).

[231] iii. 275. Pederneira is mentioned again in ii. 390 and iii. 205.

[232] The authority is Cristovam Alão de Moraes in his manuscript _Pedatura Lusitana_ (1667) (No. 441 in the Public Library of Oporto). This genealogist, says Castello Branco, _era ás vezes ignorante e outras vezes mal intencionado_. He does not say that Martim Vicente exercised his alleged profession of silversmith at Guimarães, or that Gil was born there. What more probable than for Guimarães, proud of its poetical traditions, to invent a silversmith father for the famous poet-goldsmith? Pedro de Poyares, _Tractado em louvor da villa de Barcellos_ (1672), says that Gil Vicente, _em tempo de D. João o terceiro poeta celebre, foi natural de Barcellos e andam algumas cousas suas impressas_.

[233] _Grammatica_, ed. 1871, p. 118.

[234] Ibid., p. 81. See J. Leite de Vasconcellos, _Gil Vicente e a Linguagem Popular_, 1902. Feo, _Trattados Quadragesimais_ (1619), f. 10, mentions the _somsonete de pronunciação_ of the _ratinhos_.

[235] _Soncas_ occurs no less than seven times in the brief _Auto Pastoril Castelhano_. It occurs twice in the first twenty-eight lines of one of Enzina’s eclogues (_Cancionero de todas las obras_ (Çaragoça, 1516), f. lxxviii, and again f. lxxviii verso and lxxx).

[236] A. dos Reis, _Enthusiasmus Poeticus_ (_Corpus Ill. Poet. Lus._, tom. viii, pp. 18-19): _Quem iuvisse ferunt velut olim Polla maritum_. Manuel Tavares, _Portugal illustrado pelo sexo feminino_ (1734), calls her a _discretissima mulher_.

[237] _Com muita pena de minha velhice._ Ruy de Pina calls a man _mui velho_ whose father (King João I) would have been but ninety-one in that year (_Cr. de Afonso V_, cap. 105). Cf. Jorge Ferreira, _Ulysippo_, iii. 3: _velho se pode chamar pois vai aos cincoenta anos_.

[238] See Barros, _Asia_, 1. vi. 7. Beckford has glowing praise for ‘this gold custodium of exquisite workmanship’: ‘Nothing could be more beautiful as a specimen of elaborate Gothic sculpture than this complicated enamelled mass of flying buttresses and fretted pinnacles’ (_Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal_, Paris, 1834).

[239] Reference to gold, jewels, sapphires, pearls, rubies is frequent in his plays. The goldsmith in the _Farsa das Almocreves_ uses the technical word _bastiães_ which occurs in the _Livro Vermelho_ of Afonso V: _E porque alguns Ouriueses tem ora feita algũa prata dourada e de bastiães_. It occurs, however, in the _Cancioneiro Geral_ (_galantes bastiães_), in Resende’s _Miscellania_ (_bestiães_), and other writers.

[240] Cf. i. 127, 130; ii. 391, 488; iii. 151, 379.

[241] An unfortunate interpolation by the 1834 editors in the rubric of the _Auto da Sibila Cassandra_ was largely responsible for the belief that his patroness was not Queen Lianor but King Manuel’s mother D. Beatriz.

Yet the rubric of the _Auto dos Quatro Tempos_ says clearly that _a sobredita senhora_ is King Manuel’s sister.

[242] _Mas ja não auto bofé Como os autos que fazia Quando elle tinha com que_ (_Auto Pastoril Portugues_, i. 129).

[243] _Antología_, vii, p. clxvi. It should be said that Dr. Theophilo Braga, the late General Brito Rebello, and the late Dr. F. A. Coelho agree with Menéndez y Pelayo. Dr. Theophilo Braga even declares that he can prove an alibi. D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos opposed identity in 1894, and has not definitely expressed herself in its favour since. On the other hand, Snr. Braamcamp Freire is a convinced supporter of identifying poet and goldsmith.

[244] _Antología_, vii, p. clxxvi.

[245] And later Jeronimo Corrêa (†1660) at Lisbon, author of _Daphne e Apollo_ (Lisboa, 1624) and other prosaic verses, Xavier de Novaes (1820-69) at Oporto, and others. Perhaps the gold-beater of Seville, Lope de Rueda (1510?-65), whose _pasos_ are akin to Vicente’s _farsas_, was fired by his example and success.

[246] _Dialogo em lovvor de nossa linguagem_, 1785 ed., p. 222.

[247] Registers of the Chancellery of King Manuel (vol. xlii, f. 20 v.) in the Torre do Tombo, Lisbon.

[248] Cf. _Cancionero_, f. lxxxvi v.

[249] An effective instance of a line shortened by emotion. The long pause on _tardas_ in _Oo morte que tardas, quien te detien?_ is equally impressive, but the 1562 ed. has _de quien_ and Vicente may have written _Oo morte que tardas, di ¿quien te detien?_

[250] _Auto de Inés Pereira_ in the 1562 ed. So _Auto dos Almocreves_. It will, however, be convenient to call them _farsas_, since _auto_ is a more general term applicable to all the plays.

[251] _Quem tem farelos?_

[252] _O Juiz da Beira_, a continuation suggested by the success of the _Farsa de Inés Pereira_ and acted at Almeirim in 1525.

[253] _Farsa dos Almocreves_ (or _do Fidalgo Pobre_) acted at Coimbra (1525). It is curious to compare the sterner type of chaplain denounced in _Don Quixote_.

[254] _Auto das Fadas_ (1511).

[255] _Auto da Lusitania_ (1532) acted in honour of the birth of Prince Manuel (1531).

[256] _Farsa dos Fisicos_ (1512).

[257] _O Clerigo da Beira_ (1529?).

[258] _Auto da India_ (1509).

[259] _Farsa das Ciganas_ (or, in the 1562 edition. _Auto de hũas ciganas_), a very slight sketch acted in a _seram_ before the king at Evora (1521).

[260] _O Velho da Horta_ (1513).

[261] _Auto da Fama_ (Lisbon). Its date has been given as 1510, but internal evidence shows that it is later, probably 1515 or 1516 (although perhaps prior to the knowledge of Albuquerque’s death in India (December 16, 1515) since so splendid a paean in honour of the Portuguese victories would be out of place afterwards).

[262] = labourer from Beira. He figures in comedy as the slow-witted (or malicious) clod-hopper, to the delight of an urban audience.

[263] In the palace (at Lisbon, Almeirim, Evora) or in convents (Enxobregas, Thomar, Odivellas), once (as part of a procession) in a church (_Auto de S. Martinho_).

[264]

Os momos, os serões de Portugal
Tam fallados no mundo, onde são idos,
E as graças temperadas do seu sal?

[265] This play is written in lines of 10, 11, or 12 syllables with a break of a line of 5 or 6 syllables after every four lines. Most of Gil Vicente’s plays are in octosyllabic _redondilhas_ with or without breaks of a line of four syllables, as in the poems of Duarte de Brito and others in the _Cancioneiro Geral_. Lightness, grace, and ease mark this metre in Vicente’s hands.

[266] This splendour-loving king bears an unmistakable resemblance to King Manuel, before whom the play was acted, but in no other instance does Vicente allow his satire to touch the king or royal family: _cumpre attentar como poemos as mãos_ (_Cortes de Jupiter_).

[267] 1598 ed. (colophon). The date of the first edition is 1512.

[268] Montalvo’s _Amadis_ clearly. Vicente, who invariably suits his language to his subject, would have written in Portuguese had the text before him been Portuguese. If Montalvo’s _Amadis_ became fashionable in Portugal this was characteristic of the Portuguese, who would welcome foreign books while they despised and neglected their own.

[269] When Flerida meets D. Duardos disguised as a gardener she supposes that his ordinary fare is garlic.

[270] For the words _quanto en caso de amores_ the Censorship is evidently responsible.

[271] Cf. Zurara, _Cronica de D. João I_, 1899 ed., i. 116: _Alli houve momos de tão desvairadas maneiras que a vista delles fazia mui grande prazer_.

[272] _Cancioneiro Geral_, 1910 ed., i. 326.

[273] The Portuguese in the East in the sixteenth century maintained these customs. We read of Christmas _autos_ in India and a _representaçam dos Reis_ in Ethiopia. Cf. the Good Friday _centurios_ in Barros, II. i. 5.

[274] i. 103. The word was of course not new in the Peninsula. Cf. the thirteenth(?)-century _El Misterio de los Reyes Magos_.

[275] _Breve Summario da Historia de Deos_ (i. 309).

[276] In the _Pranto de Maria Parda_ ‘because she saw so few branches on the taverns in the streets of Lisbon and wine so dear and she could not live without it’.

[277] _Do macho rruço de Luys Freyre estando pera morrer._ See also Dr. H. R. Lang, C. G. C., pp. 174-8, note on the will of the Archdeacon of Toro; and the extract from a manuscript _testamento burlesco_ in J. Leite de Vasconcellos, _De Campolide a Melrose_ (1915).

[278] As neither of them is printed in his plays we cannot say whether they were two or one and the same, or whether the French of his song was more intelligible than the version preserved in Barbieri’s _Cancionero Musical_ (No. 429).

[279] For instance, the following lines and phrases of the _Cancioneiro Geral_: _Hirmee a tierras estrañas_, _Oo morte porque tardais_, _Vos soes o mesmo paço_, _E outras cousas que calo_, _O eco pelos vales_. The Portuguese fifteenth-century poet by whom he was most influenced was probably Duarte de Brito.

[280] They were published separately in the following century: Lisboa, 1649.

[281] Many writers note the large number of priests. The north of Portugal is _chea de muitos sacerdotes_ says Dr. João de Barros in his _Libro de Antiguidades_, &c., a book full of curious information collected by the author when he was a magistrate (_ouvidor_) at Braga, and written in 1549. [A different work, _Compendio e Summario de Antiguidades_, &c., variously attributed to Ruy de Pina and to Mestre Antonio, surgeon to King João II, appeared in 1606.] Gil Vicente was never in India, otherwise he would certainly have borne witness to the devotion and courage of monks and priests in the East and on the dangerous voyages to and from India.

[282] The anonymity may have been intentional, to emphasize the fact that there was no personal allusion to any of the poor _escudeiros_ who thronged the capital and Court.

[283] _Ep._ ii. 57.

[284] Letter from Evora, March 26, 1535.

[285] In the same play reappears Vicente’s Spaniard: _Castelhano muy fanfarrão_.

[286] According to the _Arte de Furtar_, _decimas_ and sonnets were written on the subject of a poor _fidalgo_ who was in the habit of sending his _moço_ to two shoemakers for a shoe on trial from each, since they would not trust him with a pair.

[287] If the _Dialogo da Resurreiçam_ be counted separately we have forty-four in all.

[288] Index of 1551. See C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, _Notas Vicentinas_, i (1912), p. 31. But here again the _Auto da Vida do Paço_ might be the _Romagem de Aggravados_.

[289] Cf. Barros, prefatory letter to _Ropica Pnefma_ (May 25, 1531): _falam tam solto como se estivessem em Alemanha nas rixas de Luthero_.

[290] _Notas Vicentinas_, p. 21, where the letter is given in the original Italian and in Portuguese. The Legate had lent a cardinal’s hat for the occasion, little realizing that it was to be worn by one of the actors in such a play (a witness to the realism with which Vicente’s plays were staged).

[291] His tolerant spirit, expressed in his letter to the King in 1531, was remarkable in an age not very remote from the day when Duarte de Brito wrote to Anton de Montoro (_c._ 1405-80) that he would have been burnt had he written in Portugal the blasphemous lines addressed to Queen Isabella of Spain:

Si no pariera Sanctana
hasta ser nacida vos,
de vos el hijo de Dios,
rescibiera carne humana.

[292] As indeed they were to Milton: ‘Mombasa and Quiloa and Melind’. On the other hand, Garcia de Resende in one of the _decimas_ of his _Miscellania_ has twenty-six names: _Tem Ceita_, _Tanger_, _Arzilla_, &c., ordered rather for the rhyme than for harmony.

[293] He does not attack them without exception. There is much good sense in the _clerigo_ of Beira, and true charity in the _frade_ of the _Comedia do Viuvo_.

[294]

os lavradores
Fazem os filhos paçãos,
Cedo não ha de haver villãos:
Todos d’ El Rei, todos d’ El Rei (_Farsa dos Almocreves_).

[295] Cf. the _balho vylam ou mourisco_ which cost Abul his gold chain in the _Cancioneiro Geral_, and Lopo de Almeida’s third letter, from Naples: _Mandaram bailar meu sobrinho com Beatriz Lopez o baylo mourisco e despois o vilão_. A century after Vicente the shepherds’ dances are but a memory: _as danças e bailios antigamente tão usados entre os pastores_ (Faria e Sousa, _Europa Portuguesa_, vol. iii, pt. 4).

[296] Cf. _Ulysippo_, iii. 6: _aquellas mayas que punhão, aquellas lampas, aquellas alvoradas_, and D. Francisco de Portugal, _Prisoens e Solturas de hũa Alma_: _Ines_ [of Almada] _moça de cantaro, a gabadinha dos ganhõis do lugar, requestada da velanao dos barbeiros, a cuja porta nunca faltou Mayo florido em dia de Santiago nem ramos verdes com perinhas no de S. João a que os praticos daquella noute chamão lampas._

[297] _Á morte d’ El Rei D. Manoel._

[298] His occasional coarseness is popular, rustic, and as a rule contrasts favourably with that of the _Cancioneiro Geral_.

[299] For a list containing about a hundred see T. Braga, _Eschola de Gil Vicente_, p. 545, or the _Diccionario Universal_, vol. i (1882), p. 1884, s.v. _Auto_.

[300] _Flores de España_, cap. 5.

[301] _Bib. Nova_, ii. 158. Elsewhere he speaks of him as _poetae comoediarum suo tempore celebratissimi_, and in the Appendix says: _cuius comoedias Lusitani admodum celebrant_. But after the sixteenth century Vicente was little more than a name. Faria e Sousa could say that his plays had been esteemed [_con_] _poquísima causa_ (the accidental omission of the _con_ led to the invention _poquísima cosa_); and a learned Coimbra professor, Frei Luis de Sotomaior, caught reading _as semsaborias de Gil Vicente, que em seus tempos foi mui celebrado_, felt bound to be apologetic: _Aurum colligo ex stercore_ (Francisco Soares Toscano, _Parallelos de Principes_ (Evora, 1623), f. 159).

§ 2

_Lyric and Bucolic Poetry_

The romantic story of Macias had not been given literary form, but it exercised a wide influence over the Portuguese poets of the sixteenth century. Together perhaps with Diego de San Pedro’s _Carcel de Amor_, the Spanish version of Boccaccio’s _Fiammetta_, and especially Rodriguez de la Cámara’s _El siervo libre de Amor_ (containing the _Estoria de los dos amadores Ardanlier e Liesa_), it must have been in the mind of BERNARDIM RIBEIRO (1482-1552) when he wrote that ‘gentle tale of love and languishment’ the book of _Saudades_, which is always known (like the first farce of Gil Vicente) from its first three words as _Menina e moça_. Yet it is not really an imitative work, being, indeed, remarkable for its unaffected sincerity, as the expression of a personal experience. Its passionate truth continues to delight many readers.[302] Almost all our information about Ribeiro’s life is derived from his writings, which are in part evidently autobiographical, and it shrinks or expands according to the degree of the critic’s wariness or ingenuity. His birthplace is declared to have been the quaint Alentejan village of Torrão. A passage in the eclogue _Jano e Franco_ says that Jano fled thence at the time of the great famine. The unhappy frequency of famines makes the date doubtful, but if the year of Ribeiro’s birth be correctly stated in an official document of May 6, 1642, as 1482, we may suppose--since Jano was twenty-one--that he left his native Alentejo for Lisbon in 1503. It is possible that he studied law and took his degree at the University (at Lisbon) a few years later (1507-11?),[303] and became secretary to King João III in 1524. As a _cavalleiro fidalgo_ he had his place at Court, as poet he contributed to the _Cancioneiro Geral_ (1516). A hopeless passion drove him from the Court, drove him perhaps to Italy, and finally deprived him of his reason, so that his last years were spent in the Lisbon Hospital de Todos os Santos.[304] Successive generations have busied themselves over the object of his passion. The romantic tradition that it was the Princess Beatriz, twenty-two years his junior, the daughter of King Manuel for whose marriage to the Duke of Savoy in 1521 Gil Vicente wrote the _Cortes de Jupiter_, is now definitely discarded. That it was Queen Juana la Loca of Castille no one except Varnhagen has ever imagined. But literary critics continue to be tempted by the transparent anagrams of Ribeiro’s novel (adopted evidently in order to make the story unintelligible to all except the inner circle of the Court). Dr. Theophilo Braga has an ingeniously fabricated theory that Aonia was Ribeiro’s cousin, Joana Tavares Zagalo. Lamentor at least can scarcely have been King Manuel, since he sends his daughter to the king’s Court. The scenery appears to be a combination of that of the Serra de Sintra near Lisbon with that of Alentejo. The story opens with an introductory chapter in which a young girl (_menina e moça_), who has taken refuge in the _serra_ far from all human society, announces her intention of writing down what she had seen and heard in a small book (_livrinho_), not for the happy to read but for the sad, or rather for none at all, seeing that of him for whom alone it is intended she has had no news since his and her misfortune bore him away to far-distant lands. Thus we have the thirteenth-century _amiga_ mourning for her lover. _Ai Deus! e u é?_ Presently, as she shelters from the noonday _calma_ beneath trees that overhang a gently flowing stream, a nightingale pours forth its song, and then dying with its song falls with a shower of leaves and is borne away songless by the silent stream.[305] She is still bewailing its fate when another, older but equally sad, lady (_dona_) appears, and the _menina_ becomes an almost silent listener to the end of the book while the _dona_ unfolds the tale which is its true subject, the history of two friends Narbindel and Bastião. But it begins with the love adventure of Lamentor and Belisa. It is only in the ninth chapter that the knight Narbindel arrives and falls in love with Belisa’s sister Aonia, adopting a shepherd’s life in order to be near her palace. It is in fact a romance of chivalry in pastoral garb. But Ribeiro might have introduced the pastoral romance without changing the fantastic features. It is in his singular combination of passion and realism that his true originality consists. His power of giving vivid expression to tranquil scenes--the whole of the first part has something of the quiet intensity of a background by Correggio, as well as his ‘softer outline’, and although there is no explicit indication of colour it is clearly felt by the reader--and his gentle love of Nature, or rather his love of Nature in its gentler aspects, cast over the book a strange charm. The softly flowing streams, the trees and birds and delicious shade, beautiful dawns, the birds seeking their nests at evening, the flowers _que a seu prazer se estendem_, the _mateiros_ going out to cut brushwood, the shepherds asleep round their fire at night, are described with great naturalness and truth, often with familiar words and colloquial phrases. The reason of the extreme intricacy of the plot was not the wish to conceal the author’s love story in a labyrinthine maze[306] in order to exercise the ingenuity of nineteenth-century professors, but to be true to life. In life events are not rounded and distinct but merge into and react on one another in an endless ravelled skein: _Das tristezas não se pode contar nada ordenadamente porque desordenadamente acontecem ellas_ (cap. 1). Ribeiro thus anticipates by four centuries the theory enunciated in Spain by Azorín that a novel, like life, should have no plot,[307] and his book has a certain modernity. We may refuse him the name of novelist, but many a novelist might envy his lifelike portrayal of scenes and sentiments. It has been doubted whether he wrote the second part of the story. It consists of fifty-eight short chapters, and opens with a new episode, the love of Avalor for Arima, daughter of Lamentor (cap. 1-24), and it is even more bewildering in its confusion than is Part I. The scenes are less idyllic, the tone more that of a conventional romance of chivalry, yet the realism is maintained. It is on no hippogriff that Avalor goes to the rescue of the distressed maiden: in fact, he had set out on his adventure in a rowing-boat and his hands blistered. If later there are mortal combats with wicked knights, with a bear, with giants, there are also scenes, as in chapters 9, 12, 23--of an impassioned _saudade_,[308] of dove and nightingale--which could only have been written by the author of Part I.[309] His own story, still related by the _dona_, is only resumed in chapter 26, or rather 32, since the intervening chapters deal with events prior to those with which Part I begins. Bimnarder, now again Narbindel--the name Bernardim was also spelt Bernaldim--after Aonia’s marriage lives with an old hermit and his nephew, Godivo, and passes his time in tears and contemplation, as in Part I. But he is discovered by his faithful squire, and meets Aonia, and the lovers are killed by the jealous husband (cap. 48). The last chapters are concerned with the happier love story of Romabisa and Tasbião.

Narbindel, the second of the two knights, the two friends _de que é a nossa historia_,[310] dies: therefore Bernardim Ribeiro cannot have written the second part. But it is rather a nice point; one may imagine that Ribeiro’s delight in so tragic an episode would compensate him amply for the obvious anachronism, and after all it is the _dona_ who tells the story.[311] The inconsistencies of detail need not concern us overmuch. That Belisa has a mother in Part I and is ‘brought up without a mother’ in Part II, that the Castle of Lamentor exists in Part II at a time when, according to Part I, it was not yet begun, that the name of Aonia’s husband is in Part I Fileno, and in Part II Orphileno, are just such contradictions as an alien continuer would most studiously have avoided, and we all know what happened to Sancho’s ass in a far less intricate story. Or they may be explained by the fact that Ribeiro had not revised his tale before it was printed, or by corrections made in copies of the original manuscript.[312] Perhaps on the whole we may conclude that Ribeiro, like Cervantes, by an exception wrote a valuable second part, but, unlike Cervantes, was unable to maintain it altogether on a level with the first. The mingling of rapt passion and colloquialisms is with Ribeiro not the inability of a poet to express himself but a deliberate mannerism, and is present in the five eclogues with which he introduced pastoral poetry. By his quiet resolution to be natural he thus became doubly an innovator, in poetry and prose. That he was a true poet is proved by the _romances_ in his novel: _Pensando vos estou, filha_ (Pt. I, cap. 21) and _Pola ribeira de um rio_ (Pt. II, cap. 11).[313] The eclogues may not excel those poems, but in their directness, primitive freshness, and grace they form a group apart, entirely distinct from their numerous eclogue progeny. One eclogue only, the celebrated _Trovas de Crisfal_, resembles them. The resemblance is remarkable and cannot fail to strike the most careless reader. Before Snr. Delfim Guimarães began his spirited campaign in favour of identification, the similarity had been recorded by D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos in the _Grundriss_[314]: the extraordinary similarity of these _Trovas_ to the poetry of Ribeiro and to nothing else in Portuguese literature. In this poem of some 900 lines written in octosyllabic _decimas_, like Ribeiro’s eclogues, we have that romantic, passionate _saudade_ and sentimental grief, the mystic visions, the simplicity, the ingenuous conceits, wistfully humorous, the sententious reflections, the elliptical concision, the real shepherds, the familiar language, the love of Nature which are peculiarly Ribeiro’s. Tradition assigns the _Trovas_ to CRISTOVAM FALCÃO (_c._ 1512-53?),[315] who was born at Portalegre, in Alentejo, was made a _moço fidalgo_ in 1527, and is supposed to have fallen in love with and secretly married D. Maria Brandão (i.e. the Maria of the _Trovas_), whom her parents confined as a punishment in the convent of Lorvão. At the risk of being dubbed incorrigibly _simplicista_ one must confess that the simultaneous appearance of these two poets from Alentejo, not _fertil en poetas_, taxes one’s belief to the utmost. May not the secret marriage deduced from the _Trovas_ have been described by Ribeiro in his keen sympathy for his friend’s position, so like his own? The contention is not that Cristovam Falcão did not exist--there were several--or did not fall in love with Maria Brandão--_a do Crisfal_--or did not marry her, but that he did not write verses in the style familiar to us as that of Ribeiro.[316] It is remarkable that the very critics who represent Ribeiro in his _novela_ as hiding like a cuttle-fish in his own ink change their method when they come to the eclogues and accept every name and allusion with the greatest literalness, as though it were a poet’s duty to wear his heart in his verses. It is idle to adduce the fact that Cristovam Falcão wrote ungrammatical letters (so did Keats), or to devise far-fetched interpretations (such as _Crisma falso_) for the word Crisfal. What more probable than that Ribeiro and Falcão, born in the same province, became friends at Court, and that Ribeiro introduced his friend in one of his poems as he is supposed to have introduced Sá de Miranda in another, and as Miranda introduces Ribeiro (_Canta Ribero los males de amor_)? If in his favourite manner he added a little mystification in the word Crisfal, what more characteristic? The very form of the poem, in which first the _Autor_ and then Crisfal speaks (_Falla Crisfal_) suggests this, as does the title: _Trovas de um pastor per nome Crisfal_, compared with the definite _Trovas de dous pastores_ ... _Feitas por Bernaldim Ribeiro_.[317] It is not difficult to explain the printing of the _Trovas_ together with the works of Ribeiro and the hesitancy of the early editions in ascribing them, on hearsay, to Cristovam Falcão; but the word Crisfal caught the fancy, and those who learnt that it stood for Cristovam Falcão would inevitably confuse the explanation of the anagram with the authorship of the poem. One of those who did so was Gaspar Fructuoso (or Antonio Cordeiro), and the tradition which had begun so shakily with a _dizem ser_ gained strength with the years. Presumably the editor of the 1559 edition knew what was to be known on the subject, yet he speaks with a quavering uncertainty: it is only much later that the ascription to Cristovam Falcão becomes a fixed belief.[318] The eighth _Decada_ of Diogo do Couto was not published till 1673, i. e. over half a century after the death of its author. The explanatory sentence _aquelle que fez aquellas antigas e nomeadas_ (or _namoradas_) _trovas de Crisfal_[319] may well be, and probably is, a later interpolation. But although a few scholars definitely hold that Ribeiro wrote this poem, _grammatici certant_ and, should tradition prove too strong, we have to accept a second writer who claims an undying place in Portuguese literature owing to the marvellous success with which, divesting his muse of any qualities of its own, he identified himself with a poet who is the most characteristically Portuguese, but also the most individual of impassioned singers: Bernardim Ribeiro.