[Page 60].—l. 5. Que aquel; equivalent to Que á aquel.
[ANÓNIMO]. A wide-spread conceit, given Spanish form in this poem. Cf. C. M. de Vasconcellos, Antología Española (Leipzig, 1875), I, 53.
POESÍAS DE LOS SIGLOS XVI-XVII
[JUAN DEL ENCINA]. A member of the household of the Duke of Alba, whence he passed over into Italy. There he became master of the papal choir; he then took orders and went to Jerusalem. He is supposed to have died at Salamanca. Of his lyrics, which belong to his earlier period, the more important have been published by Menéndez y Pelayo, Antología, IV, 135 ff. His eclogues were, perhaps, the first Spanish dramas actually staged. Cf. F. Wolf, Studien, etc., pp. 270 ff.
[Page 64].—l. 14. mancilla: here used in the older sense of pity, compassion.
[PEDRO MANUEL DE URREA]. This noble published his lyrics in 1513 in a volume dedicated to his mother. They are partly secular and partly religious in nature, and show some Italian influence. Urrea also cultivates popular Spanish forms. His Cancionero has been reprinted in the Biblioteca de escritores aragoneses. Secc. lit. II (1876). Cf. the verse translation of this romance in Ticknor, I, 371.
[GIL VICENTE]. A Portuguese disciple of Encina’s, who wrote dramas in both Portuguese and Spanish. The present song occurs in his play, El auto de la Sibila Casandra. See the edition of his works, Hamburg, 1834, and cf. Ticknor, I, 259, where there is a metrical translation of the song.
[JUAN BOSCÁN ALMOGAVER]. A Catalonian who wrote in Castilian with great success. He served in the Spanish army in Italy, and was later a tutor to the Duke of Alba. His earlier verses are in the national manner. Prompted, it is said, by the Venetian ambassador Navagiero, he became an Italianate, and, following the 357 lead of Imperial and Santillana, was much more influential than they in establishing Italian verse methods in Castilian. He has made a large use of the hendecasyllable, the verso suelto or blank verse (imitated from the Italian versi sciolti), the ottava rima and the sonnet, and has frequently imitated Dante, Petrarch, and the cinque cento poets of Italy. Among his more important poetical works are the Hero y Leandro and the Octava rima, this latter being an allegorical poem from which the verses on [p. 68 ff.] are an excerpt. The influence of the Italian poet Bembo is clear in the Octava rima. In his translation of Castiglione’s Cortegiano, Boscán showed a mastery of Castilian prose. Cf. W. T. Knapp, Las obras de Juan Boscán, Madrid, 1875, and G. Baist, Spanische Literatur (Gröber’s Grundriss, II, 2, 449 ff.).
[Page 68].—ll. 6-8. A reminiscence of Dante, Inferno, Canto V, the words of Francesca: “Nessun maggior dolore, | Che ricordarsi del tempo felice | Nella miseria.”
l. 11. Por do: wherefore.