Writers on literature have not recorded the date of the birth of Gil Vicente, who is styled the Portuguese Plautus.[81] There is reason to suppose that at the latest he was born within twenty years of the close of the fifteenth century. It is known that he belonged to a family of rank, and that he studied the law in compliance with the wish of his family. But it appears that he speedily relinquished his juridical studies and devoted himself wholly to the dramatic art. It is not recorded whether or not he was regularly pensioned as a writer to the court; but he was most indefatigable in furnishing the royal family and the public with dramatic entertainments suited to the taste of the age. He constantly resided at court, where his poetic talents were held in permanent requisition for the celebration of spiritual as well as temporal festivals; and no dramatic writer in Europe was more admired and esteemed than Gil Vicente. His first productions were performed with approbation at court in the reign of Emanuel the Great; but his reputation acquired additional brilliancy in the reign of John III. a monarch who, as has already been mentioned, did not scruple in his younger years to perform characters in the dramas of this favourite author. Vicente seems also to have possessed all the requisite qualifications for a theatrical manager. We are not informed whether he was himself an actor; but he was the tutor of the most distinguished actress of his age, namely, his daughter _Paula_, maid of honour to the Infanta Maria, a poetess, an amateur performer on several instruments, and, as it appears, celebrated for every thing except beauty. Erasmus is said to have learned Portuguese for the express purpose of reading the comedies of Vicente in the original. There are no notices extant by which farther insight into the personal character of this poet could be obtained. He died in the year 1557 at Evora, and, as there is reason to believe, at an advanced age. Five years after his death, his son Luis Vicente edited a complete collection of his works, or at least of all that had been preserved in manuscript.[82]