Gil Vicente was destined by nature to be a comic poet. His farcas (farces) are by far his best productions; and to them he was indebted for the chief portion of his fame, as well as for the honourable but illchosen surname which some critics have applied to him. If the literary relationship between two dramatic writers were to be decided by the comic strength of their works, then indeed Gil Vicente might be truly termed a second Plautus. But neither in respect to their form nor their spirit can Vicente's farces be ranked in the same class with the regular comedies of Plautus. Nevertheless the name of farces, was not given to those comic dramas, on account of their irregularity or their burlesque style. At the rise of the modern theatre in Spain and Portugal all dramas were denominated farces,* and that the name has been continued to be applied to Vicente's comedies, is an accident arising merely from the want of a better term of classification. It is in like manner the result of accident, that in France, England and Germany, the same term is still employed to distinguish precisely that species of drama to which Gil Vicente's farces belong. These pieces are equally burlesque in their design and execution. They may, in a certain sense, be styled dramas of character; for Vicente attached great importance to the burlesque representation of some characters which he sketched from life. But he never thought of founding his comic interest on plot and intrigue; and in the degree of cultivation to which he had attained, and above which he never rose, he was incapable of designing and executing, on a comprehensive scale, a dramatic picture of character with true delicacy of outline, and still less with interesting truth of colouring. His farces, like his other dramas, have no regular plot for their ground-work. They are dramatic conceptions of scenes of real life, rapidly sketched by a glowing fancy, with genuine comic feeling, with a certain poetic keeping, even when derived from the commonest nature, and Hence in both languages the word farsante or farçante is a general term, signifying, a comedian. worked up by more or less of plastic talent, into some form, but without any regard to correctness, and altogether executed as a mere sportive task. In these farces the language and metrical form are the same as in Gil Vicente's other dramas. The alternation of the Portuguese and Castilian idioms is seldom governed by any other rule than the caprice of the poet. Upon the whole Gil Vicente's farces bear much resemblance to the Entremeses which subsequently became favourite entertainments on the Spanish stage; like them they are not divided either into acts or scenes. Among the eleven dramas, which in the collected works of Gil Vicente are entitled farces, there are two festival pieces, in the popular style, which might with equal propriety have been ranged in one of the preceding classes. The first piece is truly a farce. Two miserable servants, the one a Portuguese, the other a Spaniard, who are almost starving in the service of two coxcombs, meet together in the street at midnight, and each in his respective language complains of his sad fate. The Portuguese describes his master as an enamoured enthusiast, who employs himself day and night in writing silly verses, and in singing them to his own wretched music, but who never appears to think of eating and drinking.* This romantic gentleman (escudeiro) * Apariço. He o demo que me tome, et de lazeyra todo anno. Ordonho. Con quien biue? Apa. que sey eu? como podengo escaldado. soon makes his appearance with one of his own song books in his hand. Before he begins to sing a song, he reads aloud its title, and names himself as the author. When he has finished it he commences a new song, first pronouncing very formally the words, " Another by the same," in the style of the old Cancioneiros. He proceeds to sing under the window of his mistress Isabella, a miller's coquetish daughter, where his music is accompanied by the barking of dogs and the mewing of cats. The blending of these songs, which though insipid, possess something of the tender and melancholy character of the old cantigas, with the conversation of the lover and his servant, with the whisperings of the serenaded Isabella from her lattice window,-and with the rage of the gallant at the dogs and cats, which mortify him by the interruption of his singing, was doubtless calculated to operate very powerfully on the risibility of the audience, though much of the ludicrous effect of the scene must now be supplied by the imagination of the reader.* Ordo. De que sirue? Apa. De sanden, Pentear et jejuar todo dia sem comer, cantar et sempre tanger Sempre anda falando soo, faz humas trouas tam frias tam sem graça, tam vazias que he cousa pera auer doo. &c. * In this extract the reader will perceive the manner in which the old Portuguese orthography represented first, the barking, and secondly, the howling of dogs. Each forms a rhyme in the place in which it occurs: |