Vulgar words in Four Plays of Gil Vicente (Page 1)
This book at a glance
|
~ ~ ~ Sentence 266 ~ ~ ~
Vicente vindicated his originality by taking as his theme the proverb 'Better an ass that carries me than a horse that throws me,' and developing it into this elaborate comedy.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 369 ~ ~ ~
King Manuel, says Damião de Goes, always kept at his Court Spanish buffoons as a corrective of the manners and habits of the courtiers[95].
~ ~ ~ Sentence 471 ~ ~ ~
Or, again, we have the ceremonious Lisbon lover Lemos, the high-flown Castilian of fearful presence and a lion's heart, however threadbare his _capa_[128], the starving gentleman who makes a _tostão_ (= _5d._) last a month and dines off a turnip and a crust of bread, another--a sixteenth century Porthos--who imagines himself a _grand seigneur_ and has not a sixpence to his name but hires a showy suit of clothes to go to the palace, another who is an intimate at Court (_o mesmo paço_) but who to satisfy a passing passion has to sell boots and viola and pawn his saddle, the poor gentleman's servant (_moço_) who sleeps on a chest, or is rudely awakened at midnight to light the lamp and hold the inkpot while his master writes down his latest inspiration in his song-book, the incompetent Lisbon doctors with their stereotyped formulas, the frivolous persons who are bored by three prayers at church but spend nights and days listening to _novellas_, the _parvo_, predecessor of the Spanish _gracioso_, the Lisbon courtier descended from Aeneas, the astronomer, unpractical in daily life as he gazes on the stars, the old man amorous, rose in buttonhole, playing on a viola, the Jewish marriage-brokers, the country bumpkin, the lazy peasant lying by the fire, the poor but happy gardener and his wife, the quarrelsome blacksmith with his wife the bakeress, the carriers jingling along the road and amply acquainted with the wayside inns, the aspiring _vilão_, the peasant who complains bitterly of the ways of God, the _lavrador_ with his plough who did not forget his prayers and was charitable to tramps but skimped his tithes, the illiterate but not unmalicious _beirão_ shepherd who had led a hard life and whose chief offence was to have stolen grapes from time to time, the devout bootmaker who had industriously robbed the people during thirty years, the card-player blasphemous as the _taful_ of King Alfonso's _Cantigas de Santa Maria_, the delinquent from Lisbon's prison (the _Limoeiro_) whom his confessor had deceived before his hanging with promises of Paradise, the peasant _O Moreno_ who knows the dances of Beira, the negro chattering in his pigeon-Portuguese 'like a red mullet in a fig-tree,' the deceitful negro expressing the strangest philosophy in Portuguese equally strange, the rustic clown Gonçalo with his baskets of fruit and capons, who when his hare is stolen turns it like a canny peasant to a kind of posthumous account: _leve-a por amor de Deos pola alma de meus finados_, the Jew Alonso Lopez who had formerly been prosperous in Spain but is now a poor new Christian cobbler at Lisbon, the Jewish tailor who in the streets gives himself _fidalgo_ airs and is overjoyed at the regard shown him by officials and who at home sings songs of battle as he sits at his work[129].
~ ~ ~ Sentence 472 ~ ~ ~
In the actions and conversation of this motley crowd of persons high and low we are given many a glimpse of the times: the beflagged ship from India lying in the Tagus, the modest dinner (_a panela cosida_) of the rich _lavrador_, the supper of bread and wine, shellfish and cherries bought in Lisbon's celebrated Ribeira market, the Lisbon Jew's dinner of kid and cucumber, the distaff bought by the shepherd at Santarem as a present for his love, the rustic gifts of acorns, bread and bacon, the shepherdess' simple dowry or the more considerable dowry of a girl somewhat higher in society (consisting of a loom, a donkey, an orchard, a mill and a mule), the migratory shepherds' ass, laden with the milk-jugs and bells, and with a leathern wallet, yokes and shackles, the sheepskin coats of the shepherds, bristling masks for their dogs (as a defence against wolves), loaves of bread, onions and garlic.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,798 ~ ~ ~
Sorcerers of past time ne'er 20 Knew the enchantments that I know, Ways of making love to grow And of freeing from love's care.