This volume III of Portuguese Theatre of the 16th Century completes the publication of profane theatre texts by unknown authors. As with the two previous volumes, the texts gathered here are diverse in nature, covering a variety of themes, from portraying urban customs to socio-economic criticism, using allegory, without neglecting the love affairs starring representatives of different social spaces, such as the foreign nobility, Italian and Iberian, and the northern bourgeoisie.

Everyday life is reflected in the theatre presented here in more ways than one. On the one hand, the characters, which include captives, both Moorish and Christian, mirroring realities known to the public in times of confrontation and ransom, are imported from the real world, and even the allegorical ones are represented in everyday types; on the other hand, this world is organised in a geography familiar to 16th century Portuguese audiences: the national territory, Spain, Italy, Turkey, the sea.

It is, therefore, a theatre of manners that puts social concerns on stage in ways that skilfully combine entertainment and denunciatory intervention, made for an audience with theatrical habits, which knows itself as a connoisseur of the art.