Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Auto da Natural Invencao

1918; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 13; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/3714253

2222-4319

Aubrey F. G. Bell, Antonio Ribeiro Chiado, Conde de Sabugosa,

Literature, Culture, and Criticism

The Conde de Sabugosa has laid all lovers of literature under another heavy debt.The edition of this new play from his library follows the plan of his celebrated edition of Gil Vicente's Auto da Festa (1906); that is, it is accompanied by a facsimile of the original sixteen-page edition and preceded by an elaborate and most interesting introduction.This hitherto unknown play was acted before King Joao III about the year 1550.Its author, the witty and acute Chiado (c.1520 ?-1591), whose name is still remembered in that of Lisbon's Piccadilly, and whom the editor here compares and contrasts with John Skelton, was a Franciscan monk, but, finding convent ways hard and dull, he escaped to the greater freedom of a vagabond poet's life.A hundred anecdotes gathered about his name.Two of these will show the cast of his humour.A bowl of lentil soup was set before this unwilling monk.Seeing a single lentil lying in much water he began to undress rapidly, saying that he would dive for it.On another occasion, when burglars had entered his house and taken most of the furniture, he seized what he could carry of the remainder and hurried after them with the inquiry 'Where are we moving tq?' Of the Auto da Natural Invenxam the author himself, towards the end, says that it is tedious in parts, but 'discreet and natural.'Its discretion is shown in sparing us the classical allusions of which Antonio Prestes was so fond; the conversation of the ratinho from the country and of the escadeiro, those two pieces de resistance of Portuguese comic authors in the sixteenth century, is natural enough, and Chiado plumes himself on having no forced rhymes.But if the lisboetas of that day could crowd to hear so undramatic a display of disconnected scenes they must have been easily amused.For us time has given to the play an extraordinary interest.It is as if Manuel Tamayo y Baus' Un Drama Nuevo-like this auto, a play within a play-which shows us Shakespeare in person on the stage, had been written not in the nineteenth century but in the time of Shakespeare.A large company is gathered in the house of Senhor Gomez da Rocha one evening in Lisbon.The players are due to arrive at ten or at latest at eleven, but they have to play first at two other private houses.The house is crowded, in one part thirty persons are seated on chairs, others are on the floor, or overflow into the study (estudo) or gather about the door, which is much battered owing to the attempts of the uninvited to press in.Outside, the street is so thickly crowded that the unpunctual actors can with difficulty force a way through.At last they appear, author and players and musicians, and, after quarrels among the actors and many a hubbub, the play, for which Rocha had paid ten crusados, begins, not with6ut interruptions from the audience.It was shorter than the play which one of the characters says he had seen in Italy, and which lasted six hours, nor was it the approach of dawn which caused the rejection of Rocha's proffered torches as the guests departed, after one of them had invited