ABSTRACT
Though there were endeavours in drama in Portugal previous to Gil Vicente's production, particularly those of Anrique da Mota and Garcia de Resende, it is Vicente who has above all been hailed as the pioneer of the Portuguese theatrical tradition. Not much is known about his biography. He was born probably between 1460 and 14 70, and worked under the patronage of King Joao II and Queen Leonor. His dramatic career started in 1502 with the performance of Mon6logo do Vaqueiro (The Herdsman's Monologue) for Queen Maria, to celebrate Prince Joao's birth. Between this date and 1536 Vicente wrote forty-four plays as a court official, under the tutelage of Queen Leonor and Kings D. Manuel I and D. Joao III. His dramatic career is thus inseparable from the constrictions of royal patronage, as has been stressed by Laurence Keates/ for Vicente's theatre is essentially aulic as far as its context and dramatic function are concerned. He combines the traditional dramatic heritage represented by late medieval liturgical plays, mysteries and moralities with a new humanistic approach, and at the same time reflects the social and ideological agenda created by Portuguese overseas expansion. He wrote in a complex period of social history. The maritime expansion, and especially the discovery of the sea route to India, generated not only wealth but also an inevitable exodus from the countryside, and a growing mercantile bourgeoisie. The now obsolete lesser nobility, composed of escudeiros (squires), sought refuge in the court in order to carry on an idle and parasitic lifestyle. Vicente's playlt:;ts give voice to a multiplicity of characters who epitomize the multiple social and professional strata of the period: the gentry, the clergy, the professionals, the common people. The complex and often hybrid typology of his plays incessantly mirrors the ambivalence between the ahistorical dogmas of Christian faith (as in the moralidades and autos de devogiio) and the transience of contextual imperatives, as is made clear by the registers of satire and humour (farsas). According to Celso Lafer,
Vicente gives proof of a dualism reflected in the literary genres he adopted: on the one hand, man's realm, transitory and imperfect; on the other, the sacred universe defined by perfection and eternity. This Weltanschauung generated both farsas and obras de devofam.2
