Gil Vicente
Gil Vicente (1470-1540) was a Portuguese poet and playwright.
Biography
Gil Vicente was born in 1470 in the town of Guimarães.[1] He came to Lisbon[2] as a boy.[1] He studied law but did not take any scholarly degree.[1] In 1493 he was prince Manoel's teacher of rhetorics.[1] Some of his poems were included into Cancioneiro Geral[1] by Garcia de Resende.[2] He wrote plays.[1] He was an actor, too.[1] He was married to Branca Bezerra and had four children.[1] His daughter Paula was known a learned woman at the court.[1]
Works
Gil Vicente wrote poetry and plays.[2] He wrote both in Portuguese and in Spanish.[1] He is called the father of Portuguese drama.[1] His works were translated into English by Aubrey F. G. Bell. Among his poems there are vilancetes, pastoral poems. A famous example is Adorae montanhas.
Gil Vicente Media
Guimarães, one of the places where it is claimed the dramatist was born
O Monólogo do vaqueiro (Monologue of the Cowherd), as it would have been performed by Gil Vicente himself, according to the vision of the painter Alfredo Roque Gameiro.
Auto de Mofina Mendes.
Illustration of the original edition of Auto da Barca do Inferno (Act of the Ship of Hell)
Christmas-related themes, very present in Gil Vicente's works since the first order from Queen Leonor, have also a strongly symbolic and suggestive meaning. Here, a painting from the contemporaneous Vicente Gil (not to be confused with the playwright)
Works of Garcia de Resende. In the Miscelânia, he defends Vicente as the "Father of Portuguese theatre."
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Bibliography
- Aubrey F. G. Bell, Gil Vicente, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1921.
- Four plays of Gil Vicente. Edited from the editio princeps (1562), with Translation and Notes by Aubrey F. G. Bell, Cambridge 1920.
- Lyrics of Gil Vicente with Portuguese text. Translated by Aubrey F. G. Bell, B. H. Blackwell, Oxford 1914.