Dictionary.net

A Portuguese dramatist and actor, father of the drama of his country; born in Lisbon (?), about 1475; died there (?), about 1536 or 1538. He studied law, and was a goldsmith in early manhood. His first play was a pastoral in Spanish, written in 1502 in honor of the birth of the Portuguese prince royal (afterward John III.). This made an immense hit at court, and thereafter he wrote every new play that was acted at the royal festivals. Farces, comedies, dramas, and tragedies, of keen wit, originality, and great poetic talent, appear among his works, which rank him beside the very great authors not of Portugal only, but of the whole Iberian peninsula. He originated many of the methods and canons of taste that are now the accepted tenets of the European theatre. In construction and dialogue, his "Dom Duardos" and "Amadis de Gaula" are masterpieces. "Inez Pereira" is the best of his farces.

See Gil Vicente.