Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/298

Rh indignation by the long trains which all ranks of women began to wear, in imitation probably of Mary of Guise.

On the feast of the Epiphany, 6 Jan. 1540, Lyndsay produced, according to Mr. David Laing, the principal of his poems, ‘Ane Satyre of the Three Estaits.’ It was divided into interludes, an early form of the drama in Scotland, as in England, and was intended for dramatic representation. At least three performances of it are recorded, at Cupar, Linlithgow, and Greenside, then a suburb of Old, now part of New Edinburgh, on the low ground below the west slope of the Calton Hill, where the spectators probably sat. Mr. Chalmers thought the first representation was at Cupar in 1535, but reference is made in it to the battle of Pinky Cleuch, which was fought on 10 Sept. 1547, and Whit-Tuesday is mentioned as falling on 7 June, from which it follows that the Easter when it was played was on 17 April. The true date of the Cupar representation thus seems to belong to 1552. The first representation was probably at Linlithgow on the feast of the Epiphany, 6th Jan. 1540. Sir William Eure, on 26 Jan. of that year, sent to Cromwell notes of the interlude or play which he had received from a spectator, ‘a Scotsman of our sort,’ i.e. of the English party. The third known representation, that at Greenside, took place in 1554, before the queen regent, when Henry Charteris, the bookseller, who was present, states that it lasted from ‘nyne houris afore none till six houris at evin.’ In this piece Lyndsay denounced abuses in church and state with great frankness. Sir William Eure in his letter states that after the representation at Linlithgow ‘the king did call upon the Bishop of Glasgow, the Chancellor Dunbar, and the other bishops, exhorting them to reform their fashions and manner of living, saying that unless they did so he would send six of the proudest of them to his uncle of England, and as those were ordered, so he would order all the rest that would not amend. The chancellor answered that one word of his Grace's mouth would suffice them to be at his commandment, and the king hastily and angrily answered that he would gladly bestow any words of his mouth that could amend them.’ James V, before his French marriage and before Archbishop Beaton had acquired commanding influence over him, was undoubtedly favourable to reform in the church, and he probably encouraged Lyndsay in his attack on the bishops. But it is startling to find that Lyndsay was allowed to exhibit his piece so late as 1540, only two years before the death of the king, and still more to repeat it during the regency of Mary of Guise. Were not Eure's letters conclusive evidence of the date of the representation at Linlithgow, we should be tempted with Chalmers to ascribe the ‘Satire’ to an earlier date, and to conjecture that it may have been modified in subsequent representations. The complete work, according to the Bannatyne MS., the only extant manuscript version, consisted of eight interludes. The first, ‘The Auld Man and his Wyfe,’ from its local references, must have been specially written for the representation at Cupar as an advertisement to the play. The second, ‘The Temptation of King Humanity by Dame Sensuality,’ probably opened the representations at Linlithgow and Greensyde. Two interludes, which do not concern the main plot and may have been sometimes omitted, followed: (3) ‘The Puir Man and the Pardoner,’ in which the crying evil of the sale of indulgences which had penetrated to Scotland is exposed; (4) ‘The Sermon of Folly,’ in which there are again allusions to Fife as I hard never, in all my lyfe, Ane Bischop cam to preich in Fyfe, proving that it must have been written for a Fife audience. The plot is then resumed in (5) ‘The three Vices, i.e. Flattery’ (‘now come out of France’), ‘Deceit, and Falsehood,’ which mislead the king; (6) ‘Truth and Chastity,’ in which those virtues are overcome by the Vices; (7) ‘The Parliament of Correction,’ from which the ‘Satire’ took its name of ‘The Three Estates,’ and where the poet offers his proposals for reform; and finally (8) where ‘The Three Vices’ are given over to punishment. The first editor was Robert Charteris in 1594; and all recent editors, Chalmers, Pinkerton, Sibbald, and Laing, have allowed themselves great latitude in the arrangement of the poem, as probably Lyndsay himself did in its representations. The number of separate characters represented and the variety of topics treated make the general effect a medley, in which there is much that is commonplace, little that we should now deem poetry, but many pieces of powerful invective, exhorting the king to virtuous government and the people to reformation of the evils in the administration of church and state. A sub-plot is carried through the poem by Common Theft, a borderer, who comes to Fife and steals the Earl of Rothes' hackney and Lord Lyndsay's ‘brown jonet,’ for which he is executed.

The next composition by Lyndsay was in a different field. ‘The Register of Arms of the Scottish Nobility and Gentry’ was completed, under his direction as Lyon king, in 1542, but remained unpublished until 1821,