António José da Silva Coutinho (8 May 1705 – 18 October 1739) was a Brazilian-Portuguese dramatist born in colonial Brazil, known as "the Jew" (O Judeu).

[2] Her husband, having then acquired a fixed domicile in Lisbon, settled down to advocacy with success, and he was able to send António to the University of Coimbra, where he matriculated in the faculty of law.

He found what he believed to be an ignorant and corrupt society ruled by an immoral yet fanatical monarch, who wasted millions on unprofitable buildings though the country was almost without roads and the people had become the most backward in Europe.

[2] He produced his first play or opera in 1733, and the next year he married his cousin, D. Leonor Maria de Carvalho, whose parents had been burnt by the Inquisition, while she herself had gone through an auto-da-fé in Spain and been exiled on account of her religion.

Moreover, Silva possessed a knowledge of stagecraft, and, if he had lived, he might have emancipated the drama in Portugal from its dependence on foreign writers; but the triple licence of the Palace, the Ordinary and the Inquisition, which a play required, crippled spontaneity and freedom.

365–496, Paris, 1823), prints liberal extracts, with a French translation, from the Vida de Dom Quixote, and F. Wolf likewise gives selections from Silva's various compositions.