AT THE START OF A PLAY written in 1527 and performed before King John VIII of Portugal and Queen Catherine in Almeira, and entitled (without undue modesty) Breve sumário da história de Deus, a brief summary of the divine plan, the Spanish/Portuguese dramatist Gil Vicente announced his theme:

More extensive medieval literary representations of Genesis in prose or verse usually indicate the promise of a Redemption, and medieval Gospel-poems often begin with a reference, sometimes quite a detailed one, to the Fall. Such references to the Redemption at the time of the Fall are sometimes made intrinsically, that is, not as an authorial aside, but within the time-frame of the action – by God himself to Adam, for example. The possibility of authorial comment is always there, however, sometimes as a comforting reminder of Old Testament typology.

The simultaneity of the divine economy in a sub gratia world and the causal and allegorical parallelism of the Fall and the Redemption are more difficult to demonstrate and comment upon in visual forms like iconography or the drama.