ABSTRACT
Camoes' plays are texts altered by transmission, which, in some aspects, can be quite far from what their author originally wrote. Camoes's plays have the same structure: Enfatrioes is written entirely in verse, but Filodemo and Seleuco both combine the traditional peninsular metres and forms with prose. The works attributed to Camoes there are three plays — Enfatrioes, Filodemo and Seleuco — probably written between 1540 and 1560. Camoes's plays are very close to the auto, an Iberian dramatic form of late medieval origin, used in liturgical plays associated with church celebrations like Christmas or Easter. The auto was a relatively short text intended to be performed without interruption, and composed in the traditional short metres of the verse-forms known as redondilhas organized into five- or ten-verse stanzas. Camoes found in this corpus is the first Canto of the Lusiadas, near the end of the volume, in the eighth gathering.
