This volume includes the first publication of a comprehensive study of Gil Vicente’s verse in the context of the Iberian lyrical and theatrical universe. It is followed by an essay on the variety of voices within his theatre, the ways they challenge the audience, and the specificity of their discourse within each genre. Next, a brief essay addresses how characters (personae) are built by the players’ bodies and the setting, and examines how different plays could have been performed by the same cast in the early 16th century.

Music, an essential element in Gil Vicente’s theatre, is studied from the point of view of the role it plays in the most emblematic of his tragi-comedies – although the definition of this genre is still a matter of debate. Genres are also the subject of a study that puts forward a new perspective on why and how the plays were grouped together in the first compilation of Vicente’s works.

Vicente’s compiled works, together with earlier chapbooks, have ensured the transmission of the written texts, and made new readings and intertextual dialogues possible. This is examined in the two final essays, one inquiring whether the greatest Portuguese authors from the second half of the 16th century have read Gil Vicente, the other showing the ways in which 20th-century composers use Gil Vicente’s work as a vehicle for specific messages in their operas