Camões’s poetical works may conveniently be discussed under three headings: lyric, epic, and dramatic.

The first edition of Camões’s Rimas was published in 1595, 15 years after his death. The editor, Fernão Rodrigues Lobo Soropita, had exercised scrupulous care in collecting the poems from manuscript songbooks, but even so he could not avoid the inclusion of some apocryphal poems. The increasing fame of Camões’s epic during the early 17th century also swept the lyrics into fame, and in the 17th century many efforts, not all of them praiseworthy, were made to unearth more poems. Prominent in this enterprise, but in a manner condemned by modern criticism, was Manuel de Faria e Sousa. Even in the 19th century, the Visconde de Juromenha added to the already excessive collection of lyrics, introducing into his edition of 1860–69 many poems from the songbooks, which were still comparatively unstudied. As a result, the sonnets increased from 65 in the first edition to 352 in the Juromenha edition; the total number of poems, including sonnets, sextets, odes, octets, eclogues, elegies, and the Portuguese forms known as canções, redondilhas, motos, esparsas, and glosas, had risen from 170 in the first edition to 593 by 1860.

With the work of Wilhelm Storck and Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcelos in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there began a critical reaction which led to the elimination of many apocryphal poems. Although a complete restoration of Camões’s lyrics appears impossible, scholars continue the work of purifying the texts. Fortunately, there are sufficient authentic poems to confirm Camões’s position as Portugal’s finest lyric poet. If he had remained at the Portuguese court, he would not have reached this high pinnacle despite his consummate artistry. But he exchanged the vanity and superficiality of court life for the hardships of a soldier’s life in Africa and India, and the exchange immeasurably enriched his poetry, for he no longer needed to conform to the standards of brevity required in court circles, and, more important still, so profound was the anguish he experienced because of his exile from home and the trials he underwent in the East that his anguish became an integral part of his being, enabling him to give to “yearning fraught with loneliness” (saudade-soledade) a new and convincing undertone unique in Portuguese literature. His best poems vibrate with the unmistakable note of genuine suffering and deep sincerity of feeling. It is this note that places him far above the other poets of his era.

Although the canções and elegies show the poet’s full powers, the redondilhas must not be underestimated. In the production of these elegant trifles Camões was inimitable. He rejuvenated the ancient art of glossing by the apparent spontaneity and simplicity, the delicate irony, and the piquant phraseology of his verses and so raised courtly grace in poetry to its highest level. These poems also show a Camões who could be happy and carefree.

In their efforts to discover who inspired most of Camões’s lyric poems, critics have made, on very slender grounds, many contradictory suggestions of various women who may have figured in the poet’s life. But the real muse, if the poet had one, remains an enigma. Nor should it be forgotten in trying to resolve these questions that Camões himself said in one of his sonnets, “em várias flamas variamente ardia” (“I burnt myself at many flames”).

The title of Camões’s epic poem, Os Lusíadas, is taken from the word Lusiads, which means “Portuguese” and is in turn derived from the ancient Roman name for Portugal, Lusitania. The work extols the glorious deeds of the Portuguese and their victories over the enemies of Christianity: victories not only over their fellowman but also over the forces of nature as motivated by the inimical gods of classical mythology. The courage and enterprise of Portuguese explorers had inspired the idea of a national epic during the 15th century, but it was left to Camões in the 16th century to put it into execution. It is impossible to say for certain when he decided to do so or when he actually began to write his epic. Os Lusíadas describes the discovery of the sea route to India by Vasco da Gama. The 10 cantos of the poem are in ottava rima and amount to 1,102 stanzas in all. After an introduction, an invocation, and a dedication to King Sebastian, the action, on both the historical and the mythological levels, begins. Da Gama’s ships are already underway in the Indian Ocean, sailing up the coast of East Africa, and the Olympian gods gather to discuss the fate of the expedition (which is favoured by Venus and attacked by Bacchus).

The voyagers spend several days in Melinde on the east coast of Africa, and at the king’s request Vasco da Gama relates the entire history of Portugal from its origins to the inception of their great voyage (Cantos III, IV, and V). These cantos contain some of the most beautiful passages in the poem: the murder of Inês de Castro, who becomes a symbol of death for the sake of love; the battle of Aljubarrota; the vision of King Manuel I; the description of St. Elmo’s fire and the waterspout; and the story of Adamastor, the giant of classical parentage who, as the Cape of Good Hope, tells da Gama he will lie in wait to destroy the fleets coming back from India.

When they re-embark the poet takes advantage of leisure hours on board to narrate the story of the Doze de Inglaterra (Canto VI, 43–69). In the meantime, Bacchus, ever ready to impede the progress of the Portuguese in the East, convokes a council of the sea gods and incites them to arrange the shipwreck of the Portuguese fleet. This is prevented by Venus (Canto VI, 85–91), and Vasco da Gama is able to reach Calicut (Kozhikode, now in Kerala state, southwestern India), the end of his voyage. There his brother, Paulo da Gama, receives the king’s representative on board and explains the significance of the characters depicted on the banners that adorn the captain’s ship (Cantos VII and VIII). On their homeward voyage the mariners chance upon the island that Venus has created for them, and the nymphs reward them for their labours. One of the nymphs sings of the future deeds of the Portuguese (Cantos IX and X), and the entertainment ends with a description of the universe given by Thetis and Vasco da Gama, after which the sailors embark once more and the nymphs accompany them on their homeward journey.

In Os Lusíadas Camões achieved an exquisite harmony between classical learning and practical experience, delicate perception and superb artistic skill, expressing through them the gravity of thought and the finest human emotions. The epic was his eulogy of the “dangerous life” (vida perigosa) and was a stern warning to the Christian monarchs, who, idling their time away in petty struggles, were failing to unite against the encroaching conquests of Islam in southeastern Europe. Realistic descriptions in the poem of sensual encounters, battles, and storms and other natural phenomena transcend the thrust of classical allusions that permeate the work and make for the high-flown yet fluent style of the poem. Os Lusíadas reveals an astonishing command of language and variety of styles and provides a fascinating portrait of an extraordinary man and poet.

In his dramatic works Camões tried to combine national and classical tendencies. In his comedy Anfitriões (Enfatriões; “The Two Amphitryons”), an adaptation of Plautus’s Amphitryon, he accentuated the comic aspect of the myth of Amphitryon; in the comedy El-rei Seleuco (“King Seleucas”), he reduced the situation found in Plutarch (in which Seleucas’s son wins his stepmother from his father) to pure farce; and in Filodemo he developed the auto, a kind of morality play, which Gil Vicente had earlier made popular. But Camões seems to have regarded comedy as unimportant, as a mere curiosity and a recreation to which he could give only transitory attention. Nevertheless, by imposing classical restraint on the Vicentian auto, by increasing the importance of the plot, by transferring the comic element from the characters to the action, and by refining the farce, Camões indicated a possible means of rejuvenating 16th-century comedy in Portugal. Later dramatists, unfortunately, were incapable of following the lead he had given. Drama, however, is the least important aspect of Camões’s poetry. It was his epic and his lyrics, among which are some of the loveliest ever written, that made him one of the greatest poets of 16th-century Europe and have given him a lasting claim to fame.