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Representations of Lyndsay's Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Anna J. Mill*
Affiliation:
Vassar College

Extract

The Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis has come down to us in complete form only in the quarto edition printed by Robert Charteris at Edinburgh in 1602. There is no manuscript of the complete play. Several of the “interludes” were copied by George Bannatyne and are to be found in the Bannatyne Manuscript (1568), preceded by a proclamation of the play which does not appear in the early printed edition.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , September 1932 , pp. 636 - 651
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1932

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References

1 Sir David Lyndsay's Works, Part iv, E.E.T.S., 1869, 1884.

2 The Bannatyne Manuscript, Vol. iii, Scottish Text Society, 1928.

3 Ellis, Original Letters, Third Series, Vol. iii, 279; Pinkerton, History of Scotland, ii, 494; Gairdner, Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII, xv, 36; State Papers, Vol. v.

4 Ellis, op. cit., pp. 283 ff; Pinkerton, loc. cit., Laing, Works of Lyndsay (1879) ii, 5 ff.

5 Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, vii, 276, 277.

6 Row's Historie of the Kirk of Scotland, Wodrow Society, 7 n.

7 Sir David Lyndsay's Works, Part iv, E.E.T.S.

8 Manuscript Council and Court Book in the burgh archives at Cupar, Fife. Other references to the Jameson family at Cupar may be found in the Register of the Great Seal (R.M.S.) Vol. iii, nos. 2667, 1748; and Vol. iv, nos. 1563, 1347, 1248; also in the Register of the Privy Seal (R.P.S.) ii, no. 4312.

9 There is also a Thome Williamson who is mentioned as burgess of Cupar in R.M.S., Vol. iii, nos. 1190, 2667, dated 1532 and 1542 respectively.

10 R.M.S., Vol. iv, nos. 490, 660, 1912.

11 R.P.S., ii, no. 1899.

12 R.P.S., ii, no. 2263.

13 See too R.M.S., iii, no. 2748, where James Anderson appears as notary public and David Anderson, burgess of Cupar is a witness.

14 See too R.M.S., iv, no. 961, where John Paterson. burgess of Cupar, appears as witness to a charter dated 1552. Cf. also nos. 1371, 1372, etc.

15 R.M.S., iv, no. 1912; R.P.S., ii, no. 4576.

16 See too R.M.S., iii, nos. 43, 746, 1190.

17 R.M.S., iv, no. 1006.

18 It is interesting to note, however, that in a charter of 1595 the old familiar family names reappear: Paterson, Anderson, Jameson, Flesher, Williamson, Weland, and Lucklaw. Charters and Other Muniments belonging to the Royal Burgh of Cupar (1882).

19 In the Exchequer Rolls, xvii, an account of Master Alexander Brand for 1537–38 records a payment of 16s. “pro expensis cujusdam bardi vocati Cacopety.” The only reference which I can find to Gillymowband, who is mentioned in the same passage, is that already excerpted by Laing from the Lord High Treasurer's Accounts for 1527. (Works of Lyndsay, ii, 322.)

20 In the absence of burgh records for the earlier period too much must not be made of the dates attached to local burgesses and members of council, supra pp, 5, 6. Suffice it to note that round about the year 1552 several of these persons were very much in evidence.

21 Works of Lyndsay, i, 61.

22 Ibid., i, 63.

23 Works of Lyndsay, i, 60. Acts of Parliament of Scotland, ii, 87, 348.

24 Works of Lyndsay, i, 61; Acts of Parliament, ii, 339 ff.

25 Acts of Parliament, ii, 483.

26 Works of Lyndsay. One must, however, keep in mind the fact that the “Scottsman of our soorte” who furnished the substance for the “Nootes” was interested primarily in the political aspects of this drama and would have little or no concern in his report with the lighter elements. These he dismisses with: In the first entres come in Solaice (whose parte was but to make mery, sing balletts with his ffellowes, and drinke at the interluyd (interluyds—Pinkerton, op. cit. (of the play). Ellis, op. cit., 283.

27 Ellis, loc. cit.

28 Mediaeval Plays in Scotland, St. Andrews University Publications (1927), 181–182.

29 Historie of the Kirk of Scotland, Wodrow Society (1843), 7.

30 There are many traces of royal visits to Perth in the years 153 ½ to 1535 (Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer, vi), and the fact that no later visit is recorded in the Treasurer's Accounts need not be taken as conclusive, considering the obscurity regarding the royal itineraries in the later years of James V's reign.

31 Reproduced in J. W. Taylor's Historical Antiquities of Fife (1868).

32 Ellis op. cit., 283.

33 City of Edinburgh Accounts, i, 110.

34 “Early French Players in England,” Anglia, xxxii; The Elizabethan Playhouse, First Series, p. 127.

35 Conjectural plans are given by Albright, Shakesperean Stage and J. Quincy Adams, Chief Pre-Shakespearean Dramas.

36 In Jean Fouquet's miniature of the martyrdom of Sainte Apolline, reproduced in Cohen, Histoire de la mise en scène, facing p. 80, the imperial scaffold has a narrow ladder leading up to it.

37 This was a regular feature of the mediæval stage. Cf. Cohen, op. cit., p. 103. In Pride of Life the curtain is drawn over the king's retreat by a cord (11. 303–304), “et tunc clausa tentorio dictat Regina secrete nuncio.”

38 Rait, The Parliaments of Scotland, p. 399.

39 Rait, op. cit., pp. 453, 454. Also Hamilton-Grierson, “The Fencing of the Court,” Scottish Historical Review, (October 1923), esp. p. 58, where the erection of a material barrier at open-air courts is discussed.

40 Rait, op. cit., pp. 7, 399. But cf. the Thre Prestis of Peblis, Scottish Text Society 6, where the king summons the Three Estates of the realm each to a separate hall.

41 O.E.D., s.v. stank.

42 Cohen, op. cit., facing p. 70.

43 Supra, 23 n.

44 Cf. Shakespeare's Theater, 7.

45 Cf. the rather elaborate scaffold in the platea of the Jean Fouquet miniature.

46 Cohen, op. cit., p. 146, comments on the use of a bird in Het Spel van Sint Trudo to symbolize the escape of the soul by mouth after death.

47 Rait, The Scottish Parliament, 529.