Time in Gil Vicente's theater

Abstract

Gil Vicente's plays record the crisis of the feudal world. Facing new times, Gil Vicente makes harsh criticisms to the sixteenth century portuguese values and behaviors. He believes that the portuguese society neglects the religious issue by basing itself on a ritualistic experience of faith. In the economic aspect, he attests the rise of a market economy which gives the portuguese man the possibility of social mobility, rather than spiritual growth. Gil Vicente preaches a reform quite different from Luther's Reformation. The Vincentian theater foresees a primitive Christian experience in a country that is, in many ways, very different from those countries that embraced protestantism. In the end, Gil Vicente's plays deal with a complex experience of time: an experience of eternity and spiritual asceticism contrary to the experience of a mercantile time.