Four Plays of Gil Vicente
Public-domain ebook
Four Plays of Gil Vicente
by Gil Vicente
Language: en4,996 downloads on Project Gutenberg
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Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #28399.
About this book
Four Plays of Gil Vicente gathers a representative cross‑section of the Portuguese dramatist’s output, presenting the religious Auto da Alma, the patriotic Exortação da Guerra, the satirical Farsa dos Almocrevês, and the pastoral tragicomedy Serra da Estrela. The volume reproduces the exceedingly rare first edition of 1562, preserving the original spelling, accents and punctuation, with footnotes that mark any variant readings from later editions. The introductory material explains how these four works illustrate the range of Vicente’s genius, his lyrical songs, his moralizing sermons, his comic caricatures of everyday life, and his engagement with the expanding Portuguese empire, while also situating the texts within a scholarly tradition that has yet to produce a definitive critical edition.
The language is a blend of early‑modern Portuguese and occasional Spanish, reflecting the multilingual environment of the Iberian Renaissance. Vicente’s style moves from rustic dialogue and vivid folk imagery to elaborate allegory and satirical wit, offering a window into the cultural and political currents of late‑15th‑ and early‑16th‑century Portugal. Readers with an interest in Renaissance drama, comparative literature, or the history of Portuguese theater will find the collection rewarding, as it showcases the playwright’s ability to merge popular humor with theological and national themes.
The opening · free to read
Gil Vicente, that sovereign genius[1], is too popular and indigenous for translation and this may account for the fact that he has not been presented to English readers. It is hoped, however, that a fairly accurate version, with the text in view[2], may give some idea of his genius. The religious, the patriotic-imperial, the satirical and the pastoral sides of his drama are represented respectively by the Auto da Alma, the Exhortação, the Almocreves and the Serra da Estrella, while his lyrical vein is seen in the Auto da Alma and in two delightful songs: the serranilha of the Almocreves and the cossante of the Serra da Estrella. Many of his plays, including some of the most charming of his lyrics, were written in Spanish and this limited the choice from the point of view of Portuguese literature, but there are others of the Portuguese plays fully as well worth reading as the four here given.
The text is that of the exceedingly rare first edition (1562). Apart from accents and punctuation, it is reproduced without alteration, unless a passage is marked by an asterisk, when the text of the editio princeps will be found in the foot-notes, in which variants of other editions are also given.
In these notes A represents the editio princeps (1562): Copilaçam de todalas obras de Gil Vicente, a qual se reparte em cinco livros. O primeyro he de todas suas cousas de deuaçam. O segundo as comedias. O terceyro as tragicomedias. No quarto as farsas. No quinto as obras meudas. Empremiose em a muy nobre & sempre leal cidade de Lixboa em casa de Ioam Aluarez impressor del Rey nosso senhor. Anno de MDLXII. The second (1586) edition (B) is the Copilaçam de todalas obras de Gil Vicente... Lixboa, por Andres Lobato, Anno de MDLXXXVJ. A third edition in three volumes appeared in 1834 (C): Obras de Gil Vicente, correctas e emendadas pelo cuidado e diligencia de J. V. Barreto Feio e J. G. Monteiro. Hamburgo, 1834. This was based, although not always with scrupulous accuracy, on the editio princeps, and subsequent editions have faithfully adhered to that of 1834: Obras, 3 vol. Lisboa, 1852 (D), and Obras, ed. Mendes dos Remedios, 3 vol. Coimbra, 1907, 12, 14 [_Subsidios_, vol. 11, 15, 17][3] (E). Although there has been a tendency of late to multiply editions of Gil Vicente, no attempt has been made to produce a critical edition. It is generally felt that that must be left to the master hand of Dona Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos[4]. Since the plays of Vicente number over forty the present volume is only a tentative step in this direction, but it may serve to show the need of referring to, and occasionally emending, the editio princeps in any future edition of the most national poet of Portugal[5].
AUBREY F. G. BELL.
8 April 1920.
[2] Although the text has been given without alteration it has not been thought necessary to provide a precise rendering of the coarser passages.
[3] The Paris 1843 edition is the Hamburg 1834 edition with a different title-page. The Auto da Alma was published separately at Lisbon in 1902 and again (in part) in Autos de Gil Vicente. Compilação e prefacio de Affonso Lopes Vieira, Porto, 1916; while extracts appeared in Portugal. An Anthology, edited with English versions, by George Young. Oxford, 1916. The present text and translation are reprinted, by permission of the Editor, from The Modern Language Review.
[4] I understand that the eminent philologist Dr José Leite de Vasconcellos is also preparing an edition.
[5] Facsimiles of the title-pages of the two early editions of Vicente's works are reproduced here through the courtesy of Senhor Anselmo Braamcamp Freire.
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