Out of the Wings

Don Duardos (1522), Gil Vicente

Titles

English title: Don Duardos
Notable variations on Spanish title: Tragicomedia de Don Duardos, Dom Duardos, Tragicomedia de Dom Duardos
Date written: 1522
First publication date: 1562
First production date: c. 1522
Keywords: morality > honour, morality > vice-virtue, identity > class/social standing, family, love > desire, honour > chivalry
Genre and type: tragicomedy

Title information

Duardos is Portuguese for Edward

Pitch

This lyrical story of a knight and his beloved lady takes the form of a courtly love story, based on a chivalric novel. It rivals the best tales of knights and ladies torn between passion and duty.

Synopsis

The play opens in the court of the Emperor Palmerin. Don Duardos comes to challenge the Emperor’s son, Primaleon, to avenge the death of a man Primaleon has killed. The Emperor’s daughter Flerida breaks up the fight, and Duardos falls instantly in love with her. In a side-plot, Camilote, devoted to his not-so-beautiful lady Maimonda, challenges anyone who slights her ‘beauty’. Meanwhile, Duardos visits the pagan princess Olimba, who advises him to dress as a common gardener and gives him an enchanted cup, which will make Flerida fall in love with him if she drinks from it. Duardos makes friends with a family of real gardeners, who accept him and let him dig in the garden for the ‘treasure’ he claims to be seeking. Flerida thinks Duardos is handsome, but does not know who he is, though from his manner she thinks him to be a nobleman. Duardos works all night in the garden, refusing food and drink, proving his dedication and tirelessness to find his ‘treasure’. The gardener’s wife, Costanza, brings Flerida the enchanted cup and she drinks; she immediately admires Duardos’s ‘figure’ and leaves him only reluctantly. The real gardener suggests that Duardos alleviate his suffering by marrying a local girl, but Duardos is true to his love. Though Flerida remains convinced Duardos is noble, she implores him to reveal his identity, but he wants her to believe in him ‘by faith’. She doesn’t, is tormented and wants to know who he is! Meanwhile, Camilote has killed Don Robusto, who insulted Maimonda’s ‘beauty’, and Duardos kills Camilote to avenge the death of Robusto. No one knows it was Duardos who has done this, as he keeps his identity a secret. Flerida, however, begins to work out from a description of him that it is her ‘gardener’, and she begins to love him all the more. Duardos now must sail for England, and asks Flerida to accompany him. Flerida turns to her women for advice, but they counsel that there is no defence against love. A romance marks the departure of Duardos and Flerida together — she will sail to foreign shores with him, and if her father should seek her, they should say Love took her. As the couple depart, it is a bittersweet ending for it will damage Flerida’s family honour for her to run away, but she does get her prince and her love in the end. The play ends in the victory of love over all other concerns.

Sources

Don Duardos the play is an adaptation of the second novel of the Palmerines cycle. For a study of how Vicente used his source material, see 1996: 48-54.

2004. Libro segundo de Palmerín (Sevilla, 1524), ed. Lilia E.F. de Orduna. Teatro del Siglo de Oro. Ediciones críticas 138-39. Kassel, Reichenberger (in Spanish)
Vicente, Gil. 1996. Tragicomedia de Don Duardos, ed. Armando López Castro. Biblioteca hispánica 32. Salamanca, Colegio de España (in Spanish)

Critical response

Don Duardos and La sibila Casandra have attracted more attention from critics than any of his other plays. This play has been seen as a re-working of Vicente’s earlier play about a prince in disguise, his Comedia del viudo. Hart provides two chapters from the play’s source, the chivalric novel Primaleón, at the back of his guide to the play (1981) for readers’ comparison. This provides many clues into the construction of the play, for as Hart writes, ‘Many of those who read Don Duardos when it was new must also have known Primaleón. They may have regarded Vicente’s play somewhat as a reader today regards a film based on a best-selling novel’ (1981: 13). Asensio saw the play as belonging to the tradition of the momos, pageants or masques held in court (1974: 36). Révah demands that the play be seen through the lens of Torres Naharro’s Comedia Alquilana, which critics have argued may be another source for Don Duardos (Révah 1951: 31). However the characterisation is stronger in Don Duardos, and the addition of music rounds the piece into a satisfying piece of entertainment. As there are no surviving actors’ papers or documents which would help us to imagine its staging, Hart usefully guides the reader through the text in an attempt to surmise how it may have been staged (1981: 19-24) before analysing the play’s language, style, imagery and adaptation from the chivalric novel.

Asensio, Eugenio. 1974. 'De los momos cortesanos a los autos caballerescos de Gil Vicente’. In Estudios portugueses. Paris, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (in Spanish)
Hart, Thomas R. 1981. Gil Vicente: Casandra and Don Duardos. Critical Guides to Spanish Texts 29. London, Grant and Cutler with Tamesis
Révah, I. S. 1951. ‘La Comedia dans l’oeuvre de Gil Vicente’. Bulletin d’Histoire du Théâtre Portugais, 2, 31 (in French)

Editions

Vicente, Gil. 1975. Obras dramáticas castellanas, 3rd edition, ed. Thomas R. Hart. Madrid, Espasa-Calpe
Vicente, Gil. 1983. Tragédia de Dom Duardos. In Copilaçam de todalas obras de Gil Vicente, ed. Maria Leonor Carvalhão Buescu, vol. II, pp. 13-75. Lisbon, Impresa Nacional, Casa de Moeda
Vicente, Gil. 1992. Tragicomedia de Don Duardos. In Antología de teatro del siglo XVI, ed. Federico Carlos Sáinz de Robles, pp. 73-134. Grandes maestros de la literatura española. Madrid, Club Internacional del Libro
Vicente, Gil. 1996. Tragicomedia de Don Duardos, ed. Armando López Castro. Biblioteca hispánica 32. Salamanca, Colegio de España
Vicente, Gil. 1996. Tragicomedia de Don Duardos, ed. Armando López Castro. Biblioteca hispánica 32. Salamanca, Colegio de España

Information about the editions

Don Duardos was probably written and first performed in 1522. According to Buescu’s edition (1983) and López Castro’s edition (1996): ‘It was performed for the most serene Prince and powerful King Don Juan, the third known by this name in Portugal’ (see Vicente 1983:9 and 1996:124).

Don Juan III reigned from 1502-1557 (1996: 14).

Vicente, Gil. 1983. Tragédia de Dom Duardos. In Copilaçam de todalas obras de Gil Vicente, ed. Maria Leonor Carvalhão Buescu, vol. II, pp. 13-75. Lisbon, Impresa Nacional, Casa de Moeda (in Spanish)
Vicente, Gil. 1996. Tragicomedia de Don Duardos, ed. Armando López Castro. Biblioteca hispánica 32. Salamanca, Colegio de España (in Spanish)

Useful readings and websites

2004. Libro segundo de Palmerín (Sevilla, 1524), ed. Lilia E.F. de Orduna. Teatro del Siglo de Oro. Ediciones críticas 138-39. Kassel, Reichenberger (in Spanish)
Asensio, Eugenio. 1974. 'De los momos cortesanos a los autos caballerescos de Gil Vicente’. In Estudios portugueses. Paris, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (in Spanish)
Eisenberg, D. 1979. Castilian Romances of Chivlary in the Sixteenth Century. London, Grant and Cutler
Eisenberg, D. 1982. Romances of Chivalry in the Spanish Golden Age. Newark and Delaware, Juan de la Cuesta
Garay, René Pedro. 1988. Gil Vicente and the Development of the Comedia. North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures 232. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina
Hamilton-Faria, Hope. 1976. The Farces of Gil Vicente: A Study in the Stylistics of Satire. Madrid, Playor
Introductory material on biography and also on the language of Gil Vicente; chapters on ‘Rustic Dialects’, ‘Language of the Middle Class’,and ‘Portuguese versus Spanish’.
Hart, Thomas R. 1961. ‘Courtly Love in Gil Vicente’s Don Duardos’. Romance Notes, 2, 104-5
Hart, Thomas R. 1981. Gil Vicente: Casandra and Don Duardos. Critical Guides to Spanish Texts 29. London, Grant and Cutler with Tamesis
Hart, Thomas R.1972. Gil Vicente: Farces and Festival Plays. Eugene, Oregon University Press
Keats, Laurence. 1962. The Court Theatre of Gil Vicente. Lisbon, Livraria Escolar
McKendrick, Melveena. 1989. ‘Gil Vicente (1465?-1536?)’. In Theatre in Spain 1490-1700, pp. 19-26. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
For La fuerza de la costumbre and Dido y Eneas see pp. 127-129.
Révah, I. S. 1951. ‘La Comedia dans l’oeuvre de Gil Vicente’. Bulletin d’Histoire du Théâtre Portugais, 2, 31 (in French)
Rivers, Elias L. 1961. ‘The Unity of Don Duardos’. Modern Language Notes, 76, 8, 759-66
Suárez, José I. 1993. The Carnival Stage: Vicentine Comedy within the Serio-Comic Mode. London and Toronto, Associated University Presses
Thacker, Jonathan. 2007. ‘The Emergence of the Comedia nueva’. In A Companion to Golden Age Theatre, pp. 1-22. Woodbridge, Tamesis
For Juan del Encina see p. 3-8, for Gil Vicente see p. 9-11. For La Numancia see pp. 20-1
Wardropper, Bruce W. 1964. ‘Approaching the Metaphysical Sense of Gil Vicente’s Chivalric Tragicomedies’. Bulletin of the Comediantes, 16, 1-9
Zimic, Stanislav. 1981. ‘Estudios sobre el teatro de Gil Vicente (obras de tema amoroso)’. Boletín de la Biblioteca de Menéndez Pelayo, 57, 45-103 (in Spanish)

Entry written by Kathleen Jeffs. Last updated on 4 October 2010.

Authors, Plays & Translators

Out of the Wings

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Don Duardos (1522), Gil Vicente

Authors, Plays & Translators