This second volume of 16th Century Portuguese Theatre (Profane Theatre) brings together five texts by unknown author(s). The collection is very eclectic and includes texts of varying lengths, the criterion for this gathering having been to publicise texts that have been less published over the centuries.

As with the Autos published in the first volume of this series of 6th Century Portuguese Theatre, the setting in which the actions take place is urban and the theme is the adventures and misadventures of a married couple, with very different outcomes, from social ascension through marriage to an almost bucolic tragedy, presented in a language that, as in most 16th century theatre, resorts to the constant use of paremiological forms, many of them not yet attested in refranchises or books of proverbs, and a lexicon that is still excluded from dictionaries.

Beyond the greater or lesser intrinsic quality of each of the texts presented, they all contribute productively to a rereading of the few histories of theatre in Portugal that since Teófilo Braga have been content with adopting the terminology ‘Vincentian School’.