Gil Vicente was destined by nature to be a comic poet. His _farças_ (farces) are by far his best productions; and to them he was indebted for the chief portion of his fame, as well as for the honourable but ill-chosen surname which some critics have applied to him. If the literary relationship between two dramatic writers were to be decided by the comic strength of their works, then indeed Gil Vicente might be truly termed a second Plautus. But neither in respect to their form nor their spirit can Vicente’s farces be ranked in the same class with the regular comedies of Plautus. Nevertheless the name of _farces_, was not given to those comic dramas, on account of their irregularity or their burlesque style. At the rise of the modern theatre in Spain and Portugal all dramas were denominated farces,[98] and that the name has been continued to be applied to Vicente’s comedies, is an accident arising merely from the want of a better term of classification. It is in like manner the result of accident, that in France, England and Germany, the same term is still employed to distinguish precisely that species of drama to which Gil Vicente’s farces belong. These pieces are equally burlesque in their design and execution. They may, in a certain sense, be styled dramas of character; for Vicente attached great importance to the burlesque representation of some characters which he sketched from life. But he never thought of founding his comic interest on plot and intrigue; and in the degree of cultivation to which he had attained, and above which he never rose, he was incapable of designing and executing, on a comprehensive scale, a dramatic picture of character with true delicacy of outline, and still less with interesting truth of colouring. His farces, like his other dramas, have no regular plot for their ground-work. They are dramatic conceptions of scenes of real life, rapidly sketched by a glowing fancy, with genuine comic feeling, with a certain poetic keeping, even when derived from the commonest nature, and worked up by more or less of plastic talent, into some form, but without any regard to correctness, and altogether executed as a mere sportive task. In these farces the language and metrical form are the same as in Gil Vicente’s other dramas. The alternation of the Portuguese and Castilian idioms is seldom governed by any other rule than the caprice of the poet. Upon the whole Gil Vicente’s farces bear much resemblance to the _Entremeses_ which subsequently became favourite entertainments on the Spanish stage; like them they are not divided either into acts or scenes.