Personal information

Surname: Vicente
First name: Gil
Commonly known as: Gil Vicente
Born: 1465, Lisbon, Barcelos or Guimarães, Portugal
Died: 1536

Biography

The precise date of Gil Vicente’s birth is in doubt, but it was probably in 1465, and he probably died between 1536 and 1540. It is also unknown precisely where he was born, although he can be traced perhaps to Lisbon, Barcelos or Guimarães. There is some confusion in attributing the works of the playwright Gil Vicente to a goldsmith of the same name, as scholars are not certain whether there were two separate men of this name. Yet the playwright Gil Vicente is known as such from when he was employed by the Queen, Leonor, before the death of the King, Juan II, in 1495. Scholars do agree that Gil Vicente became the official court poet in 1502 when his Auto de la Visitación (the Play of the Visitation) was staged for the royal family (the day after Prince John was born) and he later produced the Auto pastoril castellano (Castilian pastoral play) which secured him the position. He went on under the patronage of the royal court to write many other works, including the Auto de los Reyes Magos (the Play of the Three Kings) in celebration of Epiphany. He wrote in both Castilian Spanish and Portuguese, as the court was bilingual. From the 1520s the influence of Erasmian thought is evident in his works, and provides him with greater scope for integrating satirical jibes at the clergy, the legal system and the monarchy in his plays, along with Humanistic themes of nature, and the power of human love and relationships.

Sources: Tobar 2003, McKendrick 1989

• McKendrick, Melveena. 1989. ‘Gil Vicente (1465?-1536?)’. In Theatre in Spain 1490-1700, pp. 19-26. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

• Tobar, María Luisa. 2003. ‘Gil Vicente’. In Historia del teatro español, ed. Javier Huerta Calvo, pp. 317-48. Madrid, Gredos (in Spanish)

Themes

Religious themes dominate Vicente’s early work in the autos, or religious plays designed for celebrations of religious holidays at court, but the power of human love begins to move to the fore in his later, more mature drama. Song and dance remain important as was customary, as are the recurring themes of marriage, dowries, exchange of property and genealogies. In addition to his pastoral and religious plays he also included satire, parody and farce in his repertoire, along with plays of lovers and the obstacles to their happiness. His later work reveals Erasmian influence and is more sharply satirical, some of it earning the censorship of the Inquisition.

Style

Gil Vicente wrote 11 plays in Spanish, 18 in a bilingual mix of Spanish and Portuguese, and 44 plays altogether. He is known for a finer delicacy in his poetry than that of his contemporaries. He began writing Nativity plays for the royal court in Lisbon, which featured, as was the fashion, shepherds and Biblical figures, but as his career progressed he began to write longer plays with more complex themes and ideas, notably experimenting with the world of chivalric romance in his tragicomedies Don Duardos and Amadís of Gaul.

Plays in the database

• La sibila Casandra (1513) / The Sibyl Cassandra
• Don Duardos (1522) / Don Duardos

Useful reading and websites

• Garay, René Pedro. 1988. Gil Vicente and the Development of the Comedia. North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures 232. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina

• Hamilton-Faria, Hope. 1976. The Farces of Gil Vicente: A Study in the Stylistics of Satire. Madrid, Playor

  Introductory material on biography and also on the language of Gil Vicente; chapters on ‘Rustic Dialects’, ‘Language of the Middle Class’,and ‘Portuguese versus Spanish’.

• Hart, Thomas R. 1981. Gil Vicente: Casandra and Don Duardos. Critical Guides to Spanish Texts 29. London, Grant and Cutler with Tamesis

• Keats, Laurence. 1962. The Court Theatre of Gil Vicente. Lisbon, Livraria Escolar

• McKendrick, Melveena. 1974. Woman and Society in the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age: A Study of the mujer varonil. London, Cambridge University Press

  For La sibila Casandra, see pp. 45-51.

  For La fuerza de la costumbre, see pp. 98-102.

• McKendrick, Melveena. 1989. ‘Gil Vicente (1465?-1536?)’. In Theatre in Spain 1490-1700, pp. 19-26. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

  For La fuerza de la costumbre and Dido y Eneas see pp. 127-129.

• Tobar, María Luisa. 2003. ‘Gil Vicente’. In Historia del teatro español, ed. Javier Huerta Calvo, pp. 317-48. Madrid, Gredos (in Spanish)

Entry written by Kathleen Jeffs. Last updated on 12 September 2011.

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