Gil Vicente

Gil Vicente (c. 1465 – c. 1536), 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. Vicente worked in Portuguese as much as he worked in Spanish and is thus, with Juan del Encina, considered joint-father of Spanish drama.

The pursuit of love is like falconry.

Quotes

• En la huerta nasce la rosa:
  quiérome ir allá
  por mirar al ruiseñor cómo cantavá.
  • The rose looks out in the valley,
    And thither will I go,
    To the rosy vale, where the nightingale
    Sings his song of woe.
  • En la huerta nace la rosa — "The Nightingale", as translated by John Bowring in Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain (1824), p. 316

• Viera estar rosal florido,
  cogí rosas con sospiro:
  vengo del rosale.

  Del rosal vengo, mi madre,
  vengo del rosale.

  • I saw the rose-grove blushing in pride,
    I gather'd the blushing rose—and sigh'd—
    I come from the rose-grove, mother,
    I come from the grove of roses.
  • 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

• La caza de amor
  es de altanería.
  • The pursuit of love
    is like falconry.
  • Epigraph attributed to Gil Vicente by Gabriel García Márquez in Crónica de una muerte anunciada ["Chronicle of a Death Foretold"] (1981), first page.

• Quem não é senhor de si
  Porque o será de ninguém?
  • Who himself cannot control
    Why should he o'er others rule?
  • Farsa dos Físicos (1512?), tr. Aubrey F. G. Bell

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Gil Vicente on Wikipedia
• Media related to Gil Vicente on Wikimedia Commons