La Comedia at the Border: Francisco Manuel de Melo's O Fidalgo Aprendiz

The development of the comedia in Spain bears surprisingly little fruit in Portugal, despite (or perhaps because of) the annexation of Portugal from 1580 to 1640. O Fidalgo Aprendiz (1646) by Francisco Manuel de Melo is generally considered to be the outstanding seventeenth-century achievement in Portuguese drama. The play is engaging not merely for its historical solitude but for its reflection of tensions at the personal and professional levels, together with a double- or triple-edged satire. With Gil Vicente on one side and the Spanish comedia on the other, O Fidalgo Aprendiz bespeaks a unique variation on the theme of "the anxiety of influence."