Gil Vicente , called the Trobadour, was a Portuguese playwright and poet who acted in and directed his own plays. Considered the chief dramatist of Portugal he is sometimes called the "Portuguese Plautus," often referred to as the "Father of Portuguese drama" and as one of Western literature's greatest playwrights. Also noted as a lyric poet, Vicente worked in Spanish as much as he worked in Portuguese and is thus, with Juan del Encina, considered joint-father of Spanish drama.
Vicente was attached to the courts of the Portuguese kings Manuel I and John III. He rose to prominence as a playwright largely on account of the influence of Queen Dowager Leonor, who noticed him as he participated in court dramas and subsequently commissioned him to write his first theatrical work.
He may also have been identical to an accomplished goldsmith of the same name at the court of Évora; the goldsmith is mentioned in royal documents from 1509 to 1517 and worked for the widow of King John II, Dona Leonor. He was the creator of the famous monstrance of Belém, and master of rhetoric of King Manuel I.
His plays and poetry, written in both Portuguese and Spanish, were a reflection of the changing times during the transition from Middle Ages to Renaissance and created a balance between the former time of rigid mores and hierarchical social structure and the new society in which this order was undermined.
While many of Vicente's works were composed to celebrate religious and national festivals or to commemorate events in the life of the royal family, others draw upon popular culture to entertain, and often to critique, Portuguese society of his day.
Though some of his works were later suppressed by the Portuguese Inquisition, causing his fame to wane, he is now recognised as one of the principal figures of the Portuguese Renaissance.
Wikipedia
“Who himself cannot control
Why should he o'er others rule?”
Quem não é senhor de si
Porque o será de ninguém?
Farsa dos Físicos (1512?), tr. Aubrey F. G. Bell
Viera estar rosal florido,
cogí rosas con sospiro:
vengo del rosale.<p>Del rosal vengo, mi madre,
vengo del rosale.
Del rosal vengo, mi madre — "I Come from the Rose-grove, Mother", as translated by J. Bowring in Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain (1824), p. 317
“The pursuit of love
is like falconry.”
La caza de amor
es de altanería.
Epigraph attributed to Gil Vicente by Gabriel García Márquez in Crónica de una muerte anunciada ["Chronicle of a Death Foretold"] (1981), first page.
En la huerta nasce la rosa:
quiérome ir allá
por mirar al ruiseñor cómo cantavá.
En la huerta nace la rosa — "The Nightingale", as translated by John Bowring in Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain (1824), p. 316
