In 1601, Pedro Crasbeeck’s Lisbon press published the Portuguese Comedies, the work of the ‘excellent poet Simão Machado’, representing two thematic genres: historical drama, in the Comedy of Diu, and pastoral drama, in the Comedy of the Shepherdess Alfea, the most ambitious bucolic in peninsular theatre.

The two parts of the Comedia de Dio stage the precarious situation of the Portuguese garrison in Diu in 1538. The historical material was used by Simão Machado to explore the themes of love and intrigue, for which he invented complicated love plots, variations on the topics of amor omnia vincit and militia amoris, and conflicts between honour and friendship, fidelity and betrayal, introducing fictional characters into historical reality.

The structure of the Comedy of the Shepherdess Alfea is based, firstly, on the distinction of two social and dramatic planes, that of the noble shepherds and that of the rustic servants, clearly differentiated groups that alternately occupy the stage, with the interpretation of traditional bucolic motifs revolving around a central melody, supported by the shepherdess Alfea with the instruments of magic and deception: the melody of the action, in the form of an intrigue, open to adventure of a chivalrous tone and accompanied by numerous and admirable spectacular effects.