History of Spanish and Portuguese Literature (Vol 2 of 2)

by Friedrich Bouterwek

Saa de Miranda seems to have wished to display his native language to advantage in another department of composition, in which, however, he did not shine with equal lustre. A series of poetic epistles which in the collection of his works follow the pastoral poems, are all, except one, written in Portuguese. At the time of their appearance, no similar productions existed in Portuguese literature: but they were speedily surpassed by other writers. Nevertheless it is not merely for the circumstance of their being first attempts that they claim attention. They are distinguished from other poems of this class by the delicate and characteristic union of that peculiar style of pastoral poetry which Miranda formed for his eclogues, with a didactic diction which indicates the disciple of Horace. At the same time Horatian ideas are but thinly scattered through these epistles, and Miranda’s elegance of language is far from reaching the force and precision of the latin model. The poetry in which he endeavoured to approach the style of Horace, is of the romantic didactic class—full of sound morality, conveyed in ingenious reflections and pleasing representations—full of truth and warmth of feeling—but like all romantic poetry, it is somewhat too prolix, and its learning like the most of that which has passed through the scholastic conduits of the cloister, is not drawn from a very profound source. To interest by new views and ideas in didactic poetry, was not a task suited to a catholic poet of the sixteenth century, and least of all to one who so piously adhered to the principles of his faith as Saa de Miranda. The most interesting ideas of this poet, in so far as the value of such ideas is to be considered, must be estimated by their truth and not by their novelty; and their natural application to manners and characters within the scope of the poet’s own observation, constitutes the basis of their poetic merit. The verse chiefly employed consists of light redondilhas, running in stanzas of five lines; and thus, even in metrical form, these epistles depart considerably from the style of Horace. The two last, which, together with those written in the Spanish language, are versified in tercets, must in other respects be ranked in the same class with the rest. Miranda, according to the old custom, styles the whole series of these compositions Cartas (letters), and not Epistolas, the term which at a somewhat later period was properly, though not generally employed by Portuguese writers, to designate poems of a didactic or amusing description under the form of individual correspondence. The first is addressed to the king. After a long series of introductory compliments, full of the accustomed phrases of servile devotion to the throne, the author enters into popular reflections on the art of government, and particularly on the risk of deception, to which sovereigns of the best intentions are constantly exposed. Some of these reflections resolve very happily into practical traits of didactic description.[71] Miranda must be forgiven for his useless display of erudition which was quite in the spirit of his age. In recompense, the legitimate character of the poet predominates throughout the whole composition. The succeeding epistles possess more of the light ironical tone of Horace. They are addressed to friends and acquaintances. They relate to the advantages of rural life;—the equivocal nature of city manners and amusements;—the mischievous effects of luxury in Portugal since the introduction of the treasures of India;—the value of literary occupation;—and similar subjects, which an author, who had lived in the gay world, and afterwards retired to solitude, might be expected to discuss in pleasing verse. Thus from the nature of their subjects Miranda’s epistles may also be ranked among the literary pictures of manners in the sixteenth century. The philanthropic and patriotic poet particularly laments the insatiable spirit of trade which prevailed in his native country. He declares his opinion that danger was not to be apprehended from the extended love of the arts and sciences, but from the “perfumes of the Indian spices,” which had the melancholy effect of enervating the old national character.[72]

Saa de Miranda also contributed to improve the sacred poetry of his native country. His two hymns to the Holy Virgin were the first compositions in Portuguese literature which were executed entirely in the style of the Italian canzone. They cannot, however, be regarded as lyric master pieces any more than the spiritual canzoni of the Italians. Had a catholic poet been able to guard himself against romantic prolixity in such hymns, still must his fancy, on any attempt to elevate it to the poetic spirit of the ode, have again been subdued by the humiliating idea of the guilt and unworthiness of man; and the more truly Christian the song of praise might be, the more would it partake of the litany character. Saa de Miranda cannot be regarded as a model for the composition of hymns. But in his two spiritual Canções he extended the sphere of Portuguese lyric poetry by the noble diction which he introduced into them.[73] In the second Cançaõ he has, among other faults, indulged in a play on words, than which no verbal conceit could be more antipoetic; for he finds a wonderful analogy of contradiction between the fall of womankind and the merits of the Holy Virgin, in the name Eve and the word Ave with which the angelical salutation commences.[74] But these remains of monkish quibbling are to be expected in spiritual, and particularly in catholic spiritual poems of the sixteenth century.

In the series of Saa de Miranda’s lyric poems, there are several popular songs written in some of the more ancient forms of Portuguese poetry, which are, however, dignified by purity of language and accuracy of expression and versification. These songs are chiefly of the style called cantigas, or poetic mottos, with variation (voltas) which are shorter than the Spanish glossas. They repeat the idea of the motto differently turned or applied, but its text is not literally interwoven with the variations; and this is precisely the difference of form which distinguishes the older Portuguese cantigas from the Spanish villancicos. To these lyric compositions is added a beautiful elegy in tercets, in which Miranda with manly dignity bewails the death of his beloved son who accompanied King Sebastian to Africa, and who fell in the same battle in which that monarch lost his life.[75]

With Saa de Miranda the literary history of the Portuguese drama likewise commences. Any attempts at dramatic composition which may have been previously made in the Portuguese language, obtained no literary celebrity, and are now forgotten. That in the time of Saa de Miranda, theatres existed in Lisbon, in which dramas, similar to those in the Spanish language were performed, is a fact sufficiently evident from several allusions in Miranda’s two comedies, as well as from the works of Gil Vicente, which will soon claim particular notice. But no national taste for any particular species of drama was then formed in Portugal. The Castilian style could not give the tone to the Portuguese; for at the period in question, which was half a century previous to the birth of Lope de Vega, the Spanish drama was still in its infancy and wavering amidst heterogeneous forms. Thus the Portuguese writers who turned their attention to dramatic poetry, were not, in their choice of styles and forms, restrained by any capricious conditions demanded by the public. These circumstances afforded an opportunity for commencing, without any literary warfare, the improvement of the Portuguese drama by the works of two poets, who like Saa de Miranda and Gil Vicente trod in very different paths. Miranda wrote two comedies in prose. They are dramas of character in the style of Plautus and Terence:—one is entitled Os Estrangeiros (the Foreigners); the other is called Os Vilhalpandos, from two Spanish soldiers, who had both adopted the name Vilhalpando, which, at that period, was probably celebrated in the military world. It has already been mentioned that the Infante Cardinal Henry was particularly pleased with these two dramas, that he permitted them to be performed at his court, and that he gave orders for having them printed. How they happened to obtain these honours is explained partly by their own intrinsic merits and partly by contingent and temporary circumstances. At the papal court, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, a favourable reception had been given to the early Italian comedies in prose, and in particular to Bibiena’s Calandra.[76] Miranda’s taste had been formed in Italy, and what pleased a pope might well afford entertainment to a cardinal. Miranda, as a dramatic poet, retraced the footsteps of Bibiena and Ariosto; and Cardinal Henry of Portugal followed the example of Leo X. It is, however, more than probable that the Portuguese public was not induced by such high patronage to manifest particular regard for this class of dramatic entertainments, any more than the Italian public had been, by the marks of distinction bestowed on the plays of Bibiena and Ariosto.

The two comedies of Miranda are, nevertheless, even at the present day, worthy the attention of the critic. They are the first compositions of their kind in Portuguese literature; and in none of the essentials of the dramatic art are they surpassed by the subsequent productions for which they have served as models. Both dramas exhibit highly natural, though not ingenious delineations of character, unaffected diction, and a pleasing and rapid flow of dialogue; and though in their composition they really possess but little dramatic merit, still it is evident that a dramatic spirit has governed their execution.[77] These comedies are indeed imbued throughout with the delicate and refined spirit of a poet, whose aversion from pedantry was equal to his feeling of delicacy and love of nature. Miranda, as a dramatist, endeavoured to draw common characters from the life, after the manner of Plautus and Terence, of whom he avowed himself an imitator,[78] but he felt the necessity of elevating, by some degree of refinement, the vulgar phraseology which the characters he chose to pourtray actually employed in common life. For this purpose he availed himself of the interesting popular style in which he acquired such extraordinary facility as an idyllic poet. Had the poetic spirit of this popular style shone as conspicuously in his comedies as in his pastoral poems, the former, like the latter, would have been novel and single in their kind. But Saa de Miranda was born a pastoral poet, and only made himself a dramatist by imitation. If he had been penetrated with the spirit of the comic dramatists of Rome, as he was with that of the father of the Greek bucolic, he would have endeavoured to become a Portuguese Plautus or Terence in the same manner as he became a Portuguese Theocritus. He would not then have transplanted foreign manners to the comic stage of his native land. Still less would he have imitated his models in the manner of Bibiena; a manner which even in Italy had been relinquished by Ariosto, who, as a dramatist, struck into the same bypath, and missed the goal. Miranda then did not, strictly speaking, follow Plautus and Terence; but Bibiena and Ariosto, in their character of imitators of those ancient poets, were his guides in the region of dramatic poetry, where the spirit of modern times demanded more than he was capable of supplying. Besides, why did this poet, who was a master in the art of versification, write his dramas in prose? Wishing to adhere throughout to the nature of prose, he makes the principal persons of his dramas explain, chiefly in soliloquies, their own characters, with a garrulity, which though certainly natural, is nevertheless low and tedious; and the popular morality which floats in this prolix stream of vulgar phraseology affords no pleasurable compensation to the auditor or reader.[79] Faithful to his models, Miranda has not, in either of his two comedies, laid the scene of action in his native country, where he might have dramatized national customs; the events which he describes are supposed to take place in Italy, and the manners, and in general the characters which he paints, are Italian. In the selection of those characters, he however follows Plautus and Terence, without paying any apparent regard to the distinction between different ages, by which the choice of the dramatic poet ought to be directed. Of the principal characters there is only one perfectly modern in the Estrangeiros, and in like manner only one of the same description appears in the Vilhalpandos. The first is a pedantic doctor named Juris; the second is a lady named Fausta, a hypocrite, surrounded by a group of pretended devotees. The other characters in Miranda’s two dramas, besides valets and waiting maids, are some old men, ostentatious soldiers, and enamoured youths, a grumbling tutor, (ayo,) two or three merchants, a parasite, (truhaõ,) a match-maker, (casamenteiro), and others of a still baser description, which the author seems to have thought could not be dispensed with in any imitation of the ancient drama. In the Vilhalpandos the author has also incidentally introduced the modern characters of a hermit and a French page. No remarkable intricacy of events is produced by these characters being brought in contact with each other; for Saa de Miranda was not formed to be a writer of dramas of intrigue. His scenes are strung together, rather than drawn out of each other. It is not worth while more minutely to analyze the composition of these two dramas. No highly comic scenes occur in either of them. But their general tone is spirited; and, if well performed, they doubtless would, in the age in which they were produced, interest an audience disposed to be pleased with the comic delineation of character; for most of the scenes are of a kind which might enable a player to supply by good acting that comic force in which they are deficient. Thus it happened that though the Portuguese public took no particular interest in dramas of this class, no party was formed, as in Italy, avowedly hostile to them. The bitterest portion of the satire with which Miranda invigorates, not the comic spirit, but the morality of his dramas, is directed against the Italian and particularly the Romish priesthood, to whose scandalous mode of life, the basest characters are made, as the most proper witnesses in such a case, to bear ample testimony. It appears, therefore, that at this time satire might be openly and fearlessly directed against the clergy, and that its application in that way was not displeasing to the heads of the Portuguese church; for had it been otherwise, so pious a writer as Saa de Miranda would scarcely have ventured to indulge in such representations even if he could have made them in secret.

Having taken a general view of the services which this memorable writer rendered to Portuguese poetry, it can scarcely be necessary to state that he was the first classic poet of his nation; but if it be wished to make a more rigid application of this title and to confer it only on writers, whose poetic cultivation, according to the classic models of the ancients, leaves nothing farther to be desired, it were better to abstain altogether from employing it in the history of modern poetry. Miranda presented to his countrymen the first example of the manner in which poetic genius aspiring to the highest pinnacle of art, ought to study the classic poets of antiquity, in order to acquire clearness of poetic perception, solid judgment in invention and precision, elegance and ingenious simplicity in composition and diction, without renouncing his individual character and the genius of his age and nation.[80]

The account of the classic school which Saa de Miranda founded in Portuguese poetry, must be deferred until historical justice be rendered to the genius of a less cultivated poet, who flourished at the same period with Saa de Miranda, but who chose for himself a totally different path on the Portuguese Parnassus.

GIL VICENTE.

Writers on literature have not recorded the date of the birth of Gil Vicente, who is styled the Portuguese Plautus.[81] There is reason to suppose that at the latest he was born within twenty years of the close of the fifteenth century. It is known that he belonged to a family of rank, and that he studied the law in compliance with the wish of his family. But it appears that he speedily relinquished his juridical studies and devoted himself wholly to the dramatic art. It is not recorded whether or not he was regularly pensioned as a writer to the court; but he was most indefatigable in furnishing the royal family and the public with dramatic entertainments suited to the taste of the age. He constantly resided at court, where his poetic talents were held in permanent requisition for the celebration of spiritual as well as temporal festivals; and no dramatic writer in Europe was more admired and esteemed than Gil Vicente. His first productions were performed with approbation at court in the reign of Emanuel the Great; but his reputation acquired additional brilliancy in the reign of John III. a monarch who, as has already been mentioned, did not scruple in his younger years to perform characters in the dramas of this favourite author. Vicente seems also to have possessed all the requisite qualifications for a theatrical manager. We are not informed whether he was himself an actor; but he was the tutor of the most distinguished actress of his age, namely, his daughter Paula, maid of honour to the Infanta Maria, a poetess, an amateur performer on several instruments, and, as it appears, celebrated for every thing except beauty. Erasmus is said to have learned Portuguese for the express purpose of reading the comedies of Vicente in the original. There are no notices extant by which farther insight into the personal character of this poet could be obtained. He died in the year 1557 at Evora, and, as there is reason to believe, at an advanced age. Five years after his death, his son Luis Vicente edited a complete collection of his works, or at least of all that had been preserved in manuscript.[82]

Gil Vicente would have been the Portuguese Lope de Vega, if not something even superior, had he been born half a century later, and had he been as much indebted to his age as the Spanish dramatist was to that in which he flourished. But no one was less calculated than Gil Vicente to become an improver of taste; and indeed he was far from being ambitious of earning that honourable title. Had not the favour of the public been continued to him and his dramas even after the middle of the sixteenth century, when the school of Saa de Miranda had risen and acquired the ascendancy in the polite world, he might with propriety be ranked as the last in the series of the Portuguese poets of the fifteenth century. His diction, as well as his whole poetic style, belongs to that age, and to the latest period of his life he continued faithful to the old national manner. In the conflict with the new style introduced by Saa de Miranda’s school, Gil Vicente appeared as the representative of the yet enduring national taste, which even at court, where the adherents of the new party were most honourably distinguished, preserved a co-equal authority with that party. That each party should under such circumstances maintain its credit is not a little remarkable. Perhaps they became accommodated to each other merely because the Portuguese had no relish for literary feuds. It may be presumed that each party therefore felt itself secure, and, content with its own security, took no notice of the other.