António Ribeiro Chiado

Poet and playwright, born in the outskirts of Évora in the first quarter of the sixteenth century to humble parents, he took holy orders there, which he abandoned «for vile causes» in Lisbon, where he gave himself over to a bohemian and dissolute life that even landed him in the Aljube prison. A versifier of fluent inspiration, his poetic gifts were praised by illustrious contemporaries such as Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcelos and Camões, manifesting themselves above all in the four theatrical plays of his that have survived, written between 1542 and 1572 (a fifth, Auto de Gonçalo Chambão, is believed to be lost), which are a vivid and precious document of daily life in sixteenth-century Lisbon, captured through socially well-delineated characters and colloquial language of great plasticity.