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Versions of Lindsay's Satire of the Three Estates
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
It has been amply demonstrated by students of Sir David Lindsay's Satire of the Three Estates that there were performances of the play in 1540, 1552, and 1554, and that the Three Estates as now extant in the quarto of 1602 and George Bannatyne's manuscript of 1568 represents a revision made subsequently to the year 1550. The normal view would be that Bannatyne's version derives from the manuscript later used for the edition of 1602; but Mr. Douglas Hamer, Lindsay's most recent editor, argues that the Bannatyne copy was made from a version of the Three Estates earlier than that used for the quarto of 1602.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1940
References
1 The Works of Sir David Lindsay, Scottish Text Society (Edinburgh, 1931–34), 4 vols. Mr. Hamer gives parallel texts of the Bannatyne MS. and the quarto of 1602 (vol. ii).
2 Cf. Mr. Hamer's statement in his prefatory note that “The dates in the headlines of each version are those of the performances of the play represented by the text below” (Works, ii, vi).
3 “The Bibliography of Sir David Lindsay (1490–1555),” The Library, Fourth Series (June, 1929), x, 38. Cf. Works, ii, 8; iv, 148.
4 Works, iv, xxxiv; cf. ii, 9.
5 Miss Anna Jean Mill's suggestion that “slight emendations” may have been made for the 1554 performance of the Three Estates is based on an argument which Mr. Hamer has rejected (Works, iv, 148), and which, accordingly, I need not discuss in this article. Cf. Miss Mill's “Representations of Lyndsay's Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis,” PMLA (Sept., 1932), xlvii, 639.
6 Library, x, 38.
7 Works, iv, 148; iv, 227–228, notes on lines “3609–50.”
8 Library, x, 36–37.
9 Library, x, 35.
10 Library, x, 38.
11 Mr. Hamer may have overlooked the line, “Howbeit зe sould hang them зe do them na wrang” (Q 2470, B 2583), when he declared that “the quarto version nowhere mentions the hanging of the Friar” (Library, p. 38; Works, iv, 228, notes on lines “3609–50”).
12 Chronicle of Scottish Poetry (Edinburgh, 1802), vol. ii, Glossary. Mr. Hamer's line, “A vivid image of the slow moving to and fro of the body on the gallows swaying in the wind,” seems to have been included in his definition of pavin in order to support his interpretation of the use of pavin in the Three Estates (Works, iv, 228, note on line 3652).
13 Mr. Hamer has apparently placed this scene at the gallows in the Bannatyne version (Works, iv, 227, notes on lines “3609–50”). He errs also in asserting that the Friar's appeal is made in the quarto version “to the Spirituality” (Library, p. 38).
14 Library, p. 38; Works, iv, 228, notes on lines “3609–50.”
15 It does not seem to have been the custom to hang nuns for a breach of chastity; the most a historic prioress in the sixteenth century would have had to fear was a temporary subjection to discipline or, after the suppression of the monasteries, retirement on a pension. Cf. Geoffrey Baskerville, English Monks and the Suppression of the Monasteries (New Haven 1937), pp. 218–226.
16 Works, iv, 227, notes on lines “3609–50.” Cf. Library, p. 38.
17 Cf. Works, iv, 228, notes on lines “3609–50.”
18 According to studies which I have made of the doubling system in the Three Estates, the lines credited to “Abbasse” were probably originally assigned to the Abbot, and later transferred to the Prioress or “Abbasse” in order to permit the Abbot actor to double in the role of Commonweill.
19 The Bannatyne MS., ed. W. Tod Ritchie (Edinburgh, 1928), iii, 221.
20 Works, iv, 228, notes on lines “3609–50.” Bannatyne, of course, used a text of the Three Estates which contained the account, preserved only in the quarto, of the deprivation of the prelates.
21 Works, iv, xxix.