Gil Vicente: Four Plays

 I am reminded of a terrible movie: Art School Confidential, wherein one of the characters' paintings is lauded because "it's as if he's never seen a painting before."  This is exactly the impression I get from reading these accidental attempts as drama by a man for whom play-writing was certainly not a primary vocation.  Vicente was, as far as we know, a goldsmith who offhandedly prepared a little staged production for the Queen, and turned out to be rather good at it.  Because he was nothing resembling a literato, his plays are startlingly unplaylike, something of a bridge between medieval passion plays and commedia dell'arte.  No plot, nor characterization, nothing that we would think of as suitable for the stage, rather more like arranged speeches.  Convoluted and inelegant.  Charming, and occasionally insightful, there was nothing here that I am likely to read again.

And yet.

What a bizarre overlap there is with Benvenuto Cellini.  Both European men operating around the year 1500.  Rather a tenuous connection.  Both goldsmiths first and writers offhandedly.  Very well.  Both inadvertently engraved in posterity for something they no doubt thought of as a trifle at the time.  More promising.  Compare, however, these words of Vicente's:

If hard work and merit spelt success I would have enough to live on and give and leave in my will (To the Conde de Vimioso, III. 382-3).

with these of Cellini:

It is not enough to be a man of virtue and talent (Autobiography, can't be arsed to look up the page number).

This takes the parallel from convenient to spooky.  One is tempted to look for evidence of Cellini's frustration in Vicente's plays, and vice versa. for now, I will instead observe the frustrating truth that talent, hard work, and merit (I make no claim to virtue) have absolutely fuck all to do with what this existence recognizes as success, and that I can sympathize with both men.