A dramatist of immense importance during early modern times in the Iberian Peninsula, Gil Vicente has been called the "inventor of modern Iberian theater": he was the first to write dramas in the main Iberian languages of the postmedieval period. Although there were other dramatic poets before Vicente, their work was part of an oral tradition and disappeared with the advent and popularity of the printing press in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Nonetheless, Vicente thought of his plays as works to be performed. Composed for a purpose, they generally were not staged more than once. Most premiered as part of official celebrations or holidays before royalty or members of the Portuguese political elite; the plays were performed at court or in the palatial residences of upper-class citizens.

Only in his final years, during the mid 1530s, did Vicente make the transition from traditional drama (writing for performance...