The Auto da Fama is Vicente's second great hymn to the glory of Portugal. Portuguese Fame, in the person of a humble girl of Beira, is envied and wooed in vain by Castille, France and Italy—England and Holland were then scarcely in the running—and narrates in ringing verses the deeds of the Portuguese in the East, without, however, mentioning the great name of Albuquerque, a name which inspired many of the courtiers with more fear than affection. The Auto dos Quatro Tempos is a pastoral-religious play, the main theme being, as its title indicates, a contrast between the four seasons. David appears as a shepherd and Jupiter also takes a considerable part in the conversation. Action there is none.
Vicente's satirical vein found excellent occasion in the ancient theme of scrutinizing the past lives of men as Death reaps them, high and low, but his profoundly religious temperament raises the Barcas into an atmosphere of sublime if gloomy splendour, which is surpassed in the Auto da Alma, the most perfect and consistent of his religious plays—even the symbolical character of the latter part can hardly be called a defect. In the Comedia de Rubena the development of Vicente's art is perhaps more superficial than real. It is divided into three long scenes or acts and is thus more like a regular comedy than his other plays. The acts, however, are isolated, the action occupies fifteen years and occurs in Castille, Lisbon and Crete. English readers of the play must be struck by its resemblance to Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Written fifty-five years before Lawrence Twine's The Patterne of Painful Adventures (1576) and eighty-seven before George Wilkins and William Shakespeare produced their play (1608), the Comedia de Rubena is in fact a link in a long chain beginning in a lost fifth century Greek romance concerning Apollonius of Tyre and continued after Gil Vicente's death in Timoneda's Tarsiana and in Pericles. Vicente, however, in all probability did not derive his Cismena, cold and chaste predecessor of Marina, from the Gesta Romanorum or the Libro de Apolonio but from the version in John Gower's Confessio Amantis, of which a translation, as we know, was early available in Portugal. After an exclusively Court piece, the Cortes de Jupiter, Vicente wrote the Farsa de Ines Pereira, in which there is more action and development of character than in his preceding, or indeed his subsequent, plays. He represents the aspirations and repentance of Ines, the 'very flighty daughter of a woman of low estate.' Despite the warnings of her sensible mother she rejects the suit of simple and uncouth Pero Marques for that of a gentleman (escudeiro) whose pretensions are far greater than his possessions. The mother gives them a house and retires to a small cottage. But the escudeiro married confirms the wisdom of the Sibyl Cassandra (i. 40). He keeps his wife shut up 'like a nun of Oudivellas.' The windows are nailed up, she is not allowed to leave the house even to go to church. Thus the hopes and ambitions of Ines Pereira de Grãa are tamed, although she was never a shrew[144]. Presently, however, the escudeiro resolves to cross over to Africa to win his knighthood:
ás partes dalem
Vou me fazer cavaleiro,
and he leaves his wife imprisoned in their house, the key being entrusted to the servant (moço). Ines, singing at her work, is declaring that if ever she have to choose another husband on ne m'y prendra plus when a letter arrives from her brother announcing that her husband, as he fled from battle towards Arzila, had been killed by a Moorish shepherd. The faithful Pero Marques again presses his suit. He is accepted and is made to suffer the whims and infidelity of the emancipated Ines. The question of women's rights was a burning one in the sixteenth century.
Vicente's versatility enabled him to laugh at his critics to the end of the chapter. In Dom Duardos he gave them an elaborate and very successful dramatization of a Spanish romance of chivalry. The treatment has both unity and lyrical charm. It was so successful that the experiment was repeated in 1533 with the earlier romance of Amadis de Gaula (1508), out of which Vicente wrought an equally skilful but less fascinating play[145]. But Vicente had not given up writing farces and the sojourn of Ines Pereira's husband in town enables the author to introduce various Lisbon types in O Juiz da Beira. It indeed completely resembles the early farces, while the Auto da Festa with its peasant scene and allegorical Verdade is of the Auto da Fé type but adds the theme of the old woman in search of a husband. The Templo de Apolo, composed for a special Court occasion, shows no development, but in the Sumario we have a fuller religious play than he had hitherto written. It proves, like Dom Duardos, his power of concentration and his skill in seizing on and emphasizing essential points in a long action (the period here covered is from Adam to Christ[146]). It is closely moulded on the Bible and contains, besides an exquisite vilancete (Adorae montanhas), passages of noble poetry and soaring fervour—Eve's invocation to Adam:
Ó como os ramos do nosso pomar
Ficam cubertos de celestes rosas (i. 314);
Job's lament 'Man that is born of woman' (i. 324); the paraphrase or rather translation of 'I know that my Redeemer liveth' (i. 322). Nothing here, surely, to warrant the complaints of Sá de Miranda as to the desecration of the Scriptures. This play was followed by the Dialogo sobre a Ressurreiçam by way of epilogue; it is a conversation between three Jews and is treated in the cynical manner that Browning brought to similar scenes. The Sumario or Auto da Historia de Deos was acted before the Court at Almeirim and must have won the sincere admiration of the devout João III. If the courtiers were less favourably impressed they were mollified by the splendid display of the Nao de Amores with its much music, its Prince of Normandy and its miniature ship fully rigged. Vicente was now fighting an uphill battle and in the Divisa da Cidade de Coimbra he attempted a task beyond the strength of a poet and more suitable for a sermon such as Frei Heitor Pinto preached on the same subject: the arms of the city of Coimbra. Even Vicente could not make this a living play; it is, rather, a museum of antiquities and ends with praises of Court families. It is pathetic to find the merry satirist reduced to admitting (in the argument of this play) that merely farcical farces are not very refined. Yet we would willingly give the whole play for another brief farce such as Quem tem farelos?:
Ya sabeis, senhores,
Que toda a comedia começa em dolores,
E inda que toque cousas lastimeiras
Sabei que as farças todas chocarreiras
Não sam muito finas sem outros primores (ii. 108).
Fortunately he returned to the plain farce in Os Almocreves, the Auto da Feira and O Clerigo da Beira (which, however, ends with a series of Court references) with all his old wealth of satire, touches of comedy and vivid portraiture. He also returned to the pastoral play in the Serra da Estrella, while his exquisite lyrism flowers afresh in the Triunfo do Inverno, a tragicomedy which is really a medley of farces. It is not a great drama but it is a typical Vicentian piece, combining vividly sketched types with a splendid lyrical vein. Winter, that banishes the swallows and swells the voice of ocean streams, first triumphs on hills and sea and then Spring comes in singing the lovely lyric Del rosal vengo in the Serra de Sintra. The play ends on a serious and mystic note, for Spring's flowers wither but those of the holy garden of God bloom without fading: