[38] marcante. In the Auto da Feira the Devil is similarly a bufarinheiro (pedlar) and mercante.
[43] a for da corte. For = foro (v. Gonçalvez Viana, A postilas, vol. I, p. 353).
[58] Cf. Plato, Respublica, 365: α̃̓δικητέον καὶ θυτέον ἀπὸ τω̑ν αδικημάτων, κ.τ.λ. Vicente in his plays often inculcates the need of something more than a formal religion.
xiquer. Cf. Auto da Barca do Inferno: Isto hi xiquer irá.
[59]-60 These two verses are in the true spirit of Goethe's Mephistopheles.
[62] esta peçonha. Would Vicente have written thus (cf. 66 and Obras, III, 344, sermon addressed to Queen Lianor; and also Garcia de Resende, Miscellanea, 1917 ed. p. 50) of the soul had there been the slightest gossip or suspicion that his patroness, Queen Lianor, had poisoned her husband? (See the most interesting studies in Critica e Historia, por Anselmo Braamcamp Freire, vol. I. Lisbon, 1910.)
[71] Cf. The Dream of Gerontius,. l. 210-1:
Nor do I know my attitude,
Nor if I stand or lie or sit or kneel.
[73] day passada = perdoai, dai licença. Cf. Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos, Eufrosina, II, 5. 1616 ed. f. 79 v.
[77] In Basque pastorales one of the main attributes of the devils and the wicked is that they are never quiet on the stage. In the Auto da Cananea (1534), a play in many ways resembling the Auto da Alma, the line Como andas desosegado recurs, addressed by Belzebu to Satanas. It is the 'incessant pacing to and fro' of The Dream of Gerontius (l. 446). In its beauty and intensity as a whole and in many details Cardinal Newman's The Dream of Gerontius is strikingly similar to the Auto da Alma. But in it the strife is o'er, the battle won, and the sanctified soul, rising refreshed from sleep with a feeling of 'an inexpressive lightness and sense of freedom,' passes serenely, accompanied by its guardian angel, above the 'sullen howl' of the demons in the middle region. Cf. Calte por amor de Deus, leixai-me, não me persigais with 'But hark! upon my sense Comes a fierce hubbub which would make me fear Could I be frighted' (l. 395-7).