If we only knew the quondam Franciscan monk ANTONIO RIBEIRO CHIADO (_c._ 1520?-91) and his contemporary and rival, the mulatto servant of the Bishop of Evora, by their mutual abuse, we could form no very high opinion of their character or their wit. In bitter _quintilhas_ Chiado reviles the latter for his dark complexion; AFONSO ALVAREZ answers by upbraiding _nonno Chiado_ as the son of a cobbler and a market-woman and for the habits which had made the cloister seem so dismal a place to Frei Antonio do Espirito Santo. Fortunately some of the plays of both of them survive, and we are better able to judge of their merits. The mulatto, who was a valued member of his master’s household and prides himself that Chiado has nothing worse to throw in his face than the colour of his skin, was certainly Chiado’s inferior in wit and talent. Both imitate Gil Vicente without having a vestige of his lyrical genius or greater skill in devising a plot. Alvarez preferred religious subjects. In his _Auto de Santo Antonio_ St. Anthony restores to life the drowned son of two peasants, who are imitated from Vicente’s _Auto da Feira_.[355] The only other of his plays that we have is the _Auto de Santa Barbara_, but we know that he also wrote an _Auto de S. Vicente Martyr_ and an _Auto de Santiago Apostolo_. Chiado’s plays and witty sayings, _avisos para guardar_ and _parvoices_, appear to have made him extremely popular in Lisbon, Camões recognized his talent, and Lisbon’s most famous street still bears his name in common speech. His boisterous life at Lisbon after leaving his convent may have given him his name Chiado (cf. the _chiar_ of ox-carts), but it existed as a surname earlier. His _Pratica de Oito Figuras_ (1543?), _Auto das Regateiras_ (1568 or 1569), and _Pratica dos Compadres_ (1572), are the work of an accomplished wit who was intimately acquainted with the farces of Gil Vicente and, in the last two, with the prose plays of Jorge Ferreira. Many of Vicente’s types are present, but all in a town atmosphere, in which cards take the place of the rustic dances and lyric yields to epigram, the natural genius of Vicente to a laboured smartness. We have the _clerigo de vintem_, the _ratinho_ from Beira, the vain _pação_, the poor _fidalgo_ or _escudeiro_, the negro with his pidgin Portuguese, the witch, the ill-tempered _velha_, the _trovador_ chaplain, the ambitious priest, the corrupt judge. The scenes are even more disconnected and less dramatic, and the ingenious _redondilhas_ necessarily seem artificial because their author so often challenges comparison with the more genuine skill of his master, Gil Vicente. Chiado’s _Auto de Gonçalo Chambão_ was reprinted several times in the seventeenth century, but is now unknown. Of his _Auto da Natural Invençam_ (_c._ 1550) a single copy survives, in the library of the Conde de Sabugosa, whose edition (1917) is of exceptional interest. The play, as reminiscent of Vicente