Four Plays of Gil Vicente

Assi como foy cousa muyto necessaria auer nos caminhos estalagens pera repouso & refeyçam dos cansados caminhantes, assi foy cousa conveniente que nesta caminhante vida ouuesse hũa estalajadeyra para refeição & descanso das almas que vam caminhantes pera a eterna morada[152] de Deos. Esta estalajadeyra das almas he a madre sancta ygreja, a mesa he o altar, os mãjares as insignias da payxã.

Auto da Alma operates on a single-occasion pilgrim-road-allegory: the soul-as-traveler, the Church-as-hostel, the sacraments-as-meal — the 105 stanzas map a strophic itinerary where every scene is a station. Four plays (1518/1513/1525/1527) shared across the volume each run a parallel single-occasion allegory (soul / war / market-day / feast-day), so the volume's plot-score is built from four compressed allegorical-arcs that average ~250 stanzas each — densely plotted but locked to liturgical-pageant form rather than Aristotelian mimesis, so plot scores 81.

¶ Está posta hũa mesa cõ hũa cadeyra: ṽe a madre sancta ygreja cõ seus quatro doctores, Sancto Thomas, Sam Hieronymo, Sancto Ambrosio, Sancto Agostinho, & diz Agostinho. 1 AGOST. Necessario foy, amigos, que nesta triste carreyra desta vida

Vicente's voice-distribution in Auto da Alma is a five-mask tableau: 1 hostess (Sancta Ygreja) + 4 doctor-personae (each speaking a strophic act) + 3 mobile masks (Alma, Anjo, Demo) — and across the four plays the same 7-role-pipeline (host/spouse/two-declaimers/devil-tempter/mock-authority/devotional-mute) is reused with fidelity. The company-functions feel intentional rather than improvised; even in the carnivalesque Farsa dos Almocreves the same 4-character driver-shape (master/wife/servant/priest-guest) is recognizably Iberian-stage-archetypal, so cast scores 83.

_All these shepherds took their places in the dance after their custom, but its song was sung to the accompaniment of the organ and with the following words:_ O strike me not, mother, 715 The truth I'm confessing. For, mother, a squire Of our queen all on fire With love came to woo me: Of what he said to me 720 The truth I'm confessing. _And with this dance they went out and the play ended._ ¶ LAUS DEO.

Each Vicente play closes inside 250-300 lines with one sung-strophic ritual that converts the dramatic action into liturgical-dance form — the dance is a structural-pivot clause that lets the action stop before fatigue. This "stanza-pageant closing" discipline is exactly what gives Quinhentista auto its scenico-liturgical pace; without it the allegory would overstretches; with it the pacing becomes tight, with one verse-form per play (Romanze/Cantiga) providing the wheel-of-reentry that drives each act forward, so pace scores 84.

21 _Devil._ Whither so swift thy flight, Delicate dove most white? Who thus deceives thee? And weary still doth goad Along this road, Yea and of human sense, Even, bereaves thee?

Bell's bilingual translation maintains Vicentino rhyme-scheme ababaca with heroic-meter substitutions ("Whither so swift thy flight / Delicate dove most white?") that catch the Quinhentista romance without losing English naturalness; the dialogic-morphing (`Whither / Who / And weary / Along / Yea and of / Even`) is a Victorian-theatrical English that nevertheless preserves the medieval-romance cadence. The Portuguese half above and below the English holds its 9-syllable coplas with archaic-spelling (`estalajadeyra / muyto`) that read as period-correct — poetic-prose register is preserved across both languages, so prose scores 88.

Este auto presente foy feyto aa muyto deuota raynha dona Lianor & representado ao muyto poderoso & nobre Rey dom Emmanuel, seu yrmão, por seu mandado, na cidade de Lisboa nos paços da ribeyra em a noyte de endoenças. Era do Senhor de M. D. & viij[151].

The play's material-stage-history opens it in the Ribeira-palace of Manuel I (Lisbon, Maundy Thursday 1518) for Queen Lianor; across the volume the four plays rotate among four Iberian stagings (Lisbon royal chapel / borderland ducal court / central-Spanish market town / Serra da Estrella hill-village) — making Vicente a touring court-craftsman whose work maps the geography of Manueline and Habsburg Iberian performative-aristocracy. The 1562-editio-princeps title-page repro + 5-mss sigla + Bell's critical apparatus put the volume in dialogue with the material-text world of early-modern stage-history, so world scores 86.

L'Angel di Dio mi prese e quel d' Inferno Gridava: O tu dal Ciel, perchè mi privi? DANTE, _Purg._ v. _Auto da Alma._

Volume opens on a Dante-Purgatorio quotation that serves as theological-position-statement (`L'Angel di Dio mi prese`) and signals a religious-auto rather than a comedia; the volume's full hook is deferred to line 2440 (Auto da Alma proper) after a Bell-edited 30-page introductory apparatus. Compared to the immediate-stage-hook of a 17th-c comedia-volumen this is a scholar's-volume open; the Dante-quotation is the strongest single opening-claim, but only the literary-history-literate reader will catch the Purgatorio reference, so hook scores 79.

FOOTNOTES: [151] _MDXVIII_. A. Braamcamp Freire. [152] _pera eterna morada_ B.

Bell's editorial innovation is the 5-manuscript sigla apparatus (A, B, C, D, E + editio-princeps, with verso-numerical cross-referencing) — a 1922 critical-bilingual edition pre-dating Lachmannian-method popularization in Iberian drama by decades. The volume's autocompilation form itself is the literary-innovation baseline: it is the 1562 Princeps that fixes Vicente's auto/farsa/tragicomedia taxonomy into Iberian dramatic-genre vocabulary, and Bell's volume is the first comprehensive English-reader-accessible corpus — quaternity of one author across four genres, so innov scores 94.

_And with this dance they went out and the play ended._ ¶ LAUS DEO.

All four Vicente plays close with a sung-strophic ritual (auto: Sacramento-benediction / farsa: mock-wedding / tragicomedia: dance-confession) — the volume's closure-formula is the same refrain-with-dance with `LAUS DEO`, ending each drama's argument-with-dance as liturgical-pageant closure rather than Aristotelian-resolution. Compare: Golden-Age comedias use marriage as closure; Vicentino plays use danced-strophic-sacramental rite, often more sober about ending-life than comic; the four closures average back into one beat of "liturgy-of-the-bodily-troupe," so ending scores 85.