Note 265 — III The Sixteenth Century [1502-80]

This play is written in lines of 10, 11, or 12 syllables with a break of a line of 5 or 6 syllables after every four lines. Most of Gil Vicente’s plays are in octosyllabic redondilhas with or without breaks of a line of four syllables, as in the poems of Duarte de Brito and others in the Cancioneiro Geral. Lightness, grace, and ease mark this metre in Vicente’s hands.