The text is that of the exceedingly rare first edition (1562). Apart from accents and punctuation, it is reproduced without alteration, unless a passage is marked by an asterisk, when the text of the _editio princeps_ will be found in the foot-notes, in which variants of other editions are also given.
In these notes A represents the _editio princeps_ (1562): _Copilaçam de todalas obras de Gil Vicente, a qual se reparte em cinco livros. O primeyro he de todas suas cousas de deuaçam. O segundo as comedias. O terceyro as tragicomedias. No quarto as farsas. No quinto as obras meudas. Empremiose em a muy nobre & sempre leal cidade de Lixboa em casa de Ioam Aluarez impressor del Rey nosso senhor. Anno de MDLXII_. The second (1586) edition (B) is the _Copilaçam de todalas obras de Gil Vicente... Lixboa, por Andres Lobato, Anno de MDLXXXVJ_. A third edition in three volumes appeared in 1834 (C): _Obras de Gil Vicente, correctas e emendadas pelo cuidado e diligencia de J. V. Barreto Feio e J. G. Monteiro_. Hamburgo, 1834. This was based, although not always with scrupulous accuracy, on the _editio princeps_, and subsequent editions have faithfully adhered to that of 1834: _Obras_, 3 vol. Lisboa, 1852 (D), and _Obras_, ed. Mendes dos Remedios, 3 vol. Coimbra, 1907, 12, 14 [_Subsidios_, vol. 11, 15, 17][3] (E). Although there has been a tendency of late to multiply editions of Gil Vicente, no attempt has been made to produce a critical edition. It is generally felt that that must be left to the master hand of Dona Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos[4]. Since the plays of Vicente number over forty the present volume is only a tentative step in this direction, but it may serve to show the need of referring to, and occasionally emending, the _editio princeps_ in any future edition of the most national poet of Portugal[5].
[1] _Este soberano ingenio._ Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, _Antologia_, tom. 7, p. clxiii.
[2] Although the text has been given without alteration it has not been thought necessary to provide a precise rendering of the coarser passages.
[3] The Paris 1843 edition is the Hamburg 1834 edition with a different title-page. The _Auto da Alma_ was published separately at Lisbon in 1902 and again (in part) in _Autos de Gil Vicente. Compilação e prefacio de Affonso Lopes Vieira_, Porto, 1916; while extracts appeared in _Portugal. An Anthology, edited with English versions, by George Young_. Oxford, 1916. The present text and translation are reprinted, by permission of the Editor, from _The Modern Language Review_.