I'm stood outside Linlithgow Palace in West Lothian, or to be more precise, the ruins of Linlithgow Palace on the shores of Linlithgow loch in West Lothian I'm here because this is where the story of Scottish drama begins 500 years ago, in 1540 here in the Great Hall of Linlithgow Palace, an interlude, a short play was performed in the court of King James the fifth 12 years later, a longer version of that play was performed in Cooper in Fife, and two years after that, in 1554 it was performed again in Edinburgh, in the shadow of Colton Hill, close to where the Edinburgh Playhouse stands today, the play from that 1554 production lives on in two different texts, Making it the earliest surviving Scottish Play, and the perfect place to start this podcast, which will over six episodes chart the evolution of Scottish drama from the 16th century to the present day. I'm Fergus Morgan, and this is A History Of Scottish Drama In Six Plays. Episode One A Satire Of The Three Estates.

I want you to imagine you are an inhabitant of Edinburgh in the 1550s walking in a throng of people from the city which clusters around the castle on a mound down to the green space on the north side of Colquitt, where several connected wooden stages have been constructed. Perhaps you're wearing coarse woolen clothes, perhaps you have a sack with some bread in it, maybe a jug or something to drink. Perhaps the babble of excited conversation surrounds you. On your way, you're off to see a play. You arrive, find a spot among the jostling crowd, and then it begins the

feather and thunder of faith and Felicity that your fashion form. It in his similitude and his son, your Savior, shield and necessity that bought you from Baals ransom. It in the root reply to his prisoners with his hurt blood, the holy guest, Governor and grounder of grace, of wisdom and welfare, both fountain and flood, save you all that I see, cease it in this place and shield ye from sin and with his spreet Ye inspire till I have shown My desire silence, sovereigns I require for newer begin.

That clip of the opening lines of A Satire Of The Three Estates is taken from a staging of the play at Linlithgow palace that happened in 2013 I'll tell you more about it later. First, though, before we find out about the play, I want to understand the world in which it was written in 1540 Scotland was an independent country ruled by a young king, James the fifth. James the fifth court was cultural, Cosmopolitan, European and fashionable to the south. Henry the eighth. James the fifth uncle had broken with the Catholic Church in Scotland, though its revolutionary ideas were gradually gaining ground, the convulsions of the Reformation were yet to come. What did drama? What did theater in this pre reformation Scotland look like? I spoke to Dr Leslie Mickel of the University of the Highlands and Islands to find out,

hmm, see that that is actually quite a difficult question, because it depends what you mean by theater, and it depends what you mean by drama. I mean, there's lots of theatricality happening in Scotland, I would say, but a lot of that might be included in, say, folk drama or folk rituals, may games, may plays, there's a lot of court theatricality going on as well.

Regular folk, then would have found their entertainment in the pageants, festivities, songs and storytelling that marked the agricultural calendars, the nobility, the Court of James the fifth and the households of powerful families would have been entertained by minstrels and jesters, by tournaments and spectacles. These were not the only early forms of drama that existed in pre reformation Scotland. Though, communities across Scotland would regularly organize religious dramas, Mystery Plays under the auspices of the Catholic Church, often based on stories from the Bible

up. Absolutely, and that's very much linked to the ecclesiastical calendar. So, for example, Easter and, you know, epiphany and things like that. Where you, I mean, where you get dramatic episodes, you know, from the Bible, played out, usually in front of the church. And then, you know, you've got ordinary people, probably kind of prominent Burgesses or members of a guild, for example, participating that and taking on part. So I also always think it's quite bizarre, because, you know, if you you could be looking at, I don't know, the local baker being John the Baptist, or something like that, into

this 16th century world of folk festivity, court spectacle and religious drama. Strides Sir David Lindsay, the writer behind the satire of the three estates. We know a little about him. He was born in the late 15th century into an aristocratic family in Fife, and was engaged as a companion to James the fifth when he was young. He worked as an educator, a diplomat who went on envoys to the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of France. He was an advisor, and he was a poet. Here is Dr Leslie Mickle again. Well,

he seems to have been quite a colorful character. So in and obviously he didn't just write this play. He wrote, wrote lots of poems as well. He was very close to, if we if we believe his own account, he was very close to the young James the fifth. Apparently, he kind of slept by the sort of, you know, the young the prince as a young boy, he helped care for him, he amused him. You know, he talks about carrying the king on his back, and, you know, joking about and acting in plays, you know, for the king's amusement. So he seems to be quite close to the king. He's often actually physically a kind of intermediary between the monarchy and Parliament as well. So he's actually physically present when certain legislation is taking place. So he has, he has a really interesting insight, I think, due to his kind of early, his kind of close relationship with James the fifth, and then later on, his kind of central position within the sort of, should we say, the mechanics, the mechanisms of sort of government and legislation. He's kind of upfront to all of that, and I think we can pick that up in the satire of three estates, because he has a really pragmatic view of what good governance looks like.

So Lindsay was perfectly placed to write about the king, his relationship with the factions in his kingdom, and how he should rule best, and that is exactly what he did in the satire of the three estates. The play is broadly in two parts. The first follows a young king, Rex Humanitas, who is led astray by his passions and exploited by personifications of vice who disguise themselves as clerics. Personifications of virtues are consigned to prison. At the end of the first part, the character of divine correction and emissary from God enters. The vices flee. The virtues are freed. The king promises to change, and divine correction orders him to call a parliament. Before the second half begins, an extraordinary interlude sees a pauper emerge from the audience and complain at his mistreatment at the hands of a greedy clergy and an exploitative nobility only to be exploited there and then by a fraudulent fryer

swathe beggar Bogle, hasty away, thou, but our perilous play,

08:37

I will not give for all Your plays. Woof. He sounds fat. Father is right. Little play at my hungry heart.

08:48

What deal ails this crooked Carl

08:51

Marty muckles, sorrow I cannot get though I gasp to beg nor to borrow.

The second half of the play sees the king open parliament, representatives of the three estates of the title, that is the clergy, the secular Lords and the merchants or Burgesses, enter backwards. John Commonweal, a man representing the people, stands and tells the king of their crimes. The Estates agree to reform. The vices are executed, and the play ends with another interlude proclaiming that the king will now ensure honesty, probity, good government in his realm. Our

virtuous people mean to be rejoice it that the Commonwealth has gotten in keigar Moon and ignorance have been out of the Kirk. Deposit devote doctors and clerics are renowned new and the Kirk shall have dominion and good counsel when Lady Verity are professed with a king's majesty.

A Satire Of The Three Estates is difficult to read. It's written in impenetrable. Middle Scots, and it is long. I mean, really long. It would take all day to perform in full. Director Gregory Thompson knows all about staging it. He was part of a team led by Professor Greg Walker of Edinburgh University and Professor Thomas beetridge of Brunel University, but staged the play in full at the nifco Palace and Stirling Castle as part of a research project funded by The Arts and Humanities Research Council in 2013 the clips you're hearing in this podcast are taken from the Linlithgow performance. Here is Gregory Thompson, the director, discussing why A Satire Of The Three Estates is so important so

Lin The remarkable thing about what Lindsay does is he takes the kind of form of theater that people know it, that is known, you know the morality play. It starts as a kind of medieval piece of theater. It becomes a historical drama. It becomes a domestic comedy. There's then a kind of Brechtian drama where a poor man steps out of the audience and says, you know, you're watching a play, but what about me? You know, I've had my cows stolen from me. I can no longer afford to live because of the actions of the church. It then almost becomes like a verbatim play of this is how Parliament works. It's a kind of plea for political change. I mean, remarkable David Lindsay, who is, you know, the the state poet, writes a play where a poor man comes and says, I cannot afford to live because of your greed. You know, be you, you take so much from me in the form of rent, death duties, tax that I can't afford to live and that and that has to change. And this, this play, is saying, you know, this has to change. This kind of, you know, and it's a humanist view of the world. It's kind of Lindsay in 1550 kind of almost pre figuring, you know, the kind of post war settlement of the 1950s or the, you know, votes for everyone. You know, the parliament is the people. I mean, it's a kind of, it really is an astonishing work,

A Satire Of The Three Estates, then, is a remarkable play because of its formal invention, twisting from genre to genre over several hours, and because of its remarkably bold subject matter, challenging the status quo of Scotland way back in 1540 it's also remarkable because of the window it offers into what Scotland looked like on the eve of the Reformation. The ideas of Martin Luther and the English Bible of William Tyndale had gained ground in Scotland in the 1520s fanned by the flames that engulfed Scotland's first Protestant martyr, Patrick Hamilton. In 1528 the King James the fifth was forced to walk a fine line between loyalty to the Pope and sympathy with the growing cause to pursue major theological and structural changes within the Scottish church across the country, people were unhappy with their situation, and more and more of them were listening to those that laid the blame at the door of an exploitative and bloated Catholic Church. James the fifth, very legitimacy as monarch, though, stemmed from his ties to the Pope. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place, and there was clear evidence of this tension in A Satire Of The Three Estates. Here is Dr Leslie Mickle, again, quoting from a report on the play that was sent to Thomas Cromwell in 1540

so apparently, after it was performed, we're told the king of Scots is fully minded to expel all spiritual men from having any authority by office under his grace, either in household or elsewhere, and daily studyeth and deviseth for that intent. So, so this is very much reformation of the clergy is very much on James of this radar. It's his, it's it's his agenda, if you like. So it feels to me that there's probably been some sort of collusion, if you like, on the part of Lindsay and James, which has led to this play a little bit. The other thing as well to think of, I suppose, to notice, is the play itself, then absolutely engages with the Reformation. It refers to, obviously, the major sort of exponents of the Reformation, Luther in particular, Melanchthon as well. There's lots of references to the New Testament, yes, so the New Testament is key, and translations of the New Testament coming from England. So the vices in this play, are horrified when they see you know character. You know, this character called Verity, truth you know comes bearing the New Testament in the English tongue you know, which is absolute anathema to the church, if like as it is, then the spirituality. Because, of course, if people can read the Bible. Able they can read God's word, then they can interpret God's word for themselves. They don't need anybody else to do it for them.

O reverent fathers of the spiritual state, we conceal you. Be wise and vigilant. Name Verity has light it now of late, and in her hand bear in the New Testament. Be she receive it but DUT we are but shant. Let her not Lodge, therefore into this land. And this we read you do incontinent No, while the king is with his love sleep on a

satire of the three estates also contains a host of comic portraits of the clergy savagely satirizing them for being greedy, lazy, ignorant and immoral and for making the life of common people difficult. Crucially, though perhaps this reflects James the fifth own feelings on the matter, his own desire to walk with a tightrope of power, the play stops short of demanding the complete destruction of the Catholic Church in its current form.

So in terms of how does the play engage with the Reformation. Absolutely, it does. It's powerfully informed by the Reformation, but at the same time, it's not seeking to overturn the church. I think that's quite important. We've not got to. We're not yet at that sort of John knoxian point of wanting to sort of get rid of the church, you know, lock, stock and barrel, and introduce, you know, some something else Lindsay is, is really pragmatic. You know, he's been, he's been around, and he kind of knows, he knows what's realistic and what's not. And I think as long as we've got educated clergy who, you know, offer spiritual and material support, you know, to their flock, if you like. And as long as we've got a king that's not tyrannical and is ruled by, you know, principles of good governance, then that's that's pretty good. And other stuff can probably slide a little bit at the edges.

In the modern day, A Satire Of The Three Estates has been seen fairly regularly on Scottish stages. It was staged by Tyrone Guthrie at the second Edinburgh International Festival in 1948 and again at the festival in 1959 and 1973 throughout the 1980s the Scottish Theater Company toured a popular traditional version directed by Tom Fleming in 1996 John McGrath, who will be a big figure in future episodes of this podcast series adapted it into a satire of the four estates, adding the media into the mix. Joyce McMillan, theater critic of the Scotsman, will be a familiar voice on this podcast. She has, she thinks, seen four or five different versions of A Satire Of The Three Estates nearly 500 years after it was first written. She says the play has lost none of its power. There's

something about the satire of the three estates that makes me think it should be done, maybe not annually, but maybe kind of triennially. There should be some kind of obligation on somebody in Scotland to do a decent sized production of the three estates, because it really is a great play. Is a great European, late medieval, early Renaissance play. It's about the quality of governance. Is about how you train your Monarch not to be a terrible monarch. It's about and it has, in it, sort of ingrained into it so many things that are really deep in Scottish culture, but also in the whole story of the evolution of democracy in Europe, which is the idea that the people should have a say in how they're governed, that the governors should be responsible to that, you know, when John the Commonweal finally takes his place, you know, with the Parliament, and the Parliament is no longer just a corrupt assembly of different power groups like, you know, barons, bishops, merchants, you know all the rich people that are using the parliament to further their own interests. When John The Commonweal gets to stand up and speak there, then that is like the a kind of huge movement in the play, and it's, it's such a profound moment in European culture where people began to realize that that was necessary and very far ahead of its time. I mean, what you nearly three centuries before, Tom Paine and the Rights of Man and all that, but there it was. You know, I think it's a brilliant piece of work

we're going to leave A Satire Of The Three Estates behind now and focus on what happened afterwards. Because whatever David Lindsay wanted, whatever James the fifth wanted, a full scale reformation did arrive in Scotland. James the fifth died in 1542 not long after the first known iteration of A Satire Of The Three Estates was performed at Lyn Lithgow. He was succeeded by Mary Queen of Scots, who was a child in France when the second and third performances of the play occurred. Within seven years of the second performance, the radical Calvinist ideas of John Knox had spread like wildfire, precipitating a war that ultimately led to the Scottish reformation Parliament being called in 1516, Three, when Scotland broke with the Catholic Church, Mary, a Catholic returned to rule in 1561, and a tumultuous few years followed, culminating in her abdication in favor of her Protestant son, James the sixth in 1567, within a few short decades, Scotland and Scottish culture had been utterly transformed. There is a prevailing narrative that the reformed Scottish Church's stern attitude towards popular entertainment meant that nothing of any theatrical interest happened in Scotland for the next two centuries. This theory does have an element of truth to it, but it's not quite accurate. It's true that the Church of Scotland enacted legislation against theater and made repeated attempts to suppress it throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. But it's not true to say that it was totally successful in doing so, or that the patchy evolution of Scottish drama was entirely due to the church's actions. Things are more complicated than that. Firstly, it's important to acknowledge that there is another Scottish Play that survives from the 16th century. It's called philitus, and it is a comedy of errors in Scots about an old man's romantic pursuit of a teenage girl. We don't know who wrote it, but it was probably composed for the court of Mary, Queen of Scots, or James the sixth Philetus aside, it's true that no plays written and performed in Scotland survive from the last four decades of the 16th century. It's also true that there seems to have been almost no formal drama at all in Scotland in the 17th century until the 1660s beyond the pageant for Charles the First's coronation in 1633 it's not correct, though, to lay this entirely at the door of the Reformation. There's another factor to consider. The union of crowns in 1603 saw James the sixth of Scotland inherit the throne of England from his cousin Elizabeth and become James the First of England too. That same year, he left Scotland for England, and despite promising to come back regularly, only ever returned once in 1617, his departure dealt a huge blow to Scottish drama. The king's presence was the principal reason formal drama existed in Scotland. The Royal Court was the context within which plays like A Satire Of The Three Estates were written and performed in post reformation Scotland, it was a haven within which the arts could flourish without the shelter it provided. There was simply no world in which formal drama could exist. So yes, the Reformed Church of Scotland was responsible for a dearth of formal drama in Scotland in the late 16th and 17th centuries. But the absence of the monarch deprived it of its chief protector and promoter too. Who knows what might have happened had James the sixth stuck to his promise to return to Scotland regularly. So if there was no formal drama in Scotland after the departure of James the sixth in 1603 until the 1660s what was there? Did any theatrical activity prevail against the church? Here is Professor Trish Reid of the University of Reading,

Calvinism is, for sure, an anti theatrical kind of sect. But one of the things that happens, I think, that's as interesting, is that in Scotland, is that theatrical impulses are kind of displaced in some other areas of culture. So I think, you know, some people have written really interestingly about the Cayley, for example, like the tradition of the Cayley, you know, now we just think of a Cali as somewhere where you dance, but like, you know, historically, the Cayley was also a gathering. It was a gathering where there was also storytelling, and there was, you know, there was more, you know, there was kind of oral performance and stuff. And then also, I think the Kirk itself, I'm not a person. I'm not a I didn't grow up, you know, church Scotland. I'm a Glaswegian Catholic, but a Glaswegian collapsed Catholic. But I understand, I think, also, that the tradition of kind of preaching and argument argument that developed in the Kirk is also very theatrical, you know, so there were different kinds of performance.

So while it may be accurate to say that without a monarch present to protect and support it, formal drama in Scotland did not exist in the decades following the Reformation, it is not accurate to say that quasi theatrical activity ceased entirely folk drama, those pageants, festivities, stories and songs discussed earlier in this episode proved harder to suppress, and the Reformed Church itself displayed theatrical tendencies in its traditions of preaching. It even encouraged drama in schools and universities. A Dunbar schoolmaster, Alexander Holm wrote an educational drama featuring personifications of grammar under the reign of James the sixth that continued to be performed well into the 18th century. Strangely, it has not received the revival in the modern era. Yet, in the mid 17th century, Scotland. Was wracked by bloody civil war. It was invaded by Oliver Cromwell after the execution of Charles the First subsumed into the Commonwealth and governed by George monk Cromwell's death and the restoration of the monarch in 1660 allowed formal drama to flourish in Scotland once again for a few years, several plays survived from this restoration period, William Clark's Marciano, or the discovery Thomas sidsurfs, torugos, Wiles and Archibald bitkens, the assembly, among them, permanent theater, the tennis court theater was even established in the grounds of Holyrood palace, where plays were sporadically performed for the nobility, away from the censorious eyes of the church, the presence in Edinburgh of the Duke of York, Charles, the second younger brother for three years, helped enormously after his departure in 1682 the church seems to have squashed theatrical activity once again for several decades, Scottish playwrights did exist in the late 17th and early 18th century, like Catherine, Trotter, numer Hamilton, James Thompson and David mallet, but they all worked in London. Perhaps we could call them early examples of the brain drain, whereby promising artists lacking opportunities in Scotland seek out the bright lights of London instead. Gradually, though, despite stern opposition from the church and the hurdle of the 1737 Licensing Act, which strictly regulated theatrical activity. Theater was re established in Scotland in the second half of the 18th century, illegitimate, unlicensed theaters sprang up and were shut down. Acting troops were set up and disbanded. Controversy was common, and riots, both for and against entertainment, were regular. In Edinburgh, a man called Alan Ramsey fought tirelessly for some kind of theater, even writing a pamphlet in defensive drama in 1727 his 1725 play the gentle Shepherd, a pastoral comedy set somewhere near Pennycook, was first performed in 1729 by pupils of Haddington Grammar School in a hall on Cowgate in Edinburgh, and proved phenomenally popular. Gradually, the church's suppression of formal drama lessened until it was finally beaten for good in an extraordinary event during the winter of 1756 and 1757 in December that year, the play Douglas A bloody and sentimental blank verse tragedy in which almost everybody dies, written by John Holm, a minister drew the ire of the church, who responded by censoring other ministers that had attended the play and issuing another declaration, declaring playhouses immoral. The play was popular, though, and the church's attack had no real effect. Holm resigned his post, left for London, where Douglas was presented by David Garrick and became a huge hit, continuing to be performed for the next 100 years. That episode was the last time that the church seriously attempted to intervene in the theatrical life of Scotland. 11 years later, in 1767, Scotland's first legitimate theater with a royal patent under the Licensing Act was established in Edinburgh. Henry Mackenzie's the prince of Tunis was the first play written by a Scot to be performed there in March 1773 formal drama, it seems, was back, and this time it was here to stay. So what can we truthfully conclude about formal drama in Scotland in the 16th and 17th centuries after the Reformation. Well, we can say that drama in Scotland did exist, but that it struggled to find a secure footing when it was protected by royal or aristocratic patronage. It flourished when it wasn't. It was suppressed by the church. We can say that drama existed in Scotland in sporadic fits and starts, unlike in England, where a much more continuous tradition of playwriting came about. Here is Professor Trish Reed, again,

with the exception of the interregnum between like 1642 and 1660 in England, they have. England has more or less a consistent history and playwriting that goes all the way from, like, you know, the 1580s 1590s all the way up. And they have, like, very successful, very well known playwrights all the way through. And whereas Scotland has little kind of gaps, I do wonder Fergus, whether it's worth, you know, all the effort that it would take to argue that Scotland has just a strong tradition in playwriting as England, because I just don't actually think that's true. And I don't think it necessarily needs to be a problem. Very few countries on the planet have such a strong tradition in playwriting as England. Yeah.

We're going to pause the story here at the end of the 18th century, after covering two centuries of theatrical activity in 10 minutes, and pick it up again in the next episode. Before we finish though, I want to return to two points that have arisen in this episode, and that will recur again and again in different forms. Films throughout this podcast series, the first concerns the significant role of the state in supporting drama in Scotland back in the 16th century, Sir David Lindsay's A Satire Of The Three Estates only came into being because the king wanted it to the support James the fifth was essential to its existence. It was, after all, first performed here in his court at Linlithgow palace. Perhaps we should think about James the fifth as the first provider of state subsidy for playwriting, as a 16th century forerunner to creative Scotland. The second point is the one made by Professor Trish Reid that throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, Scotland's playwriting history is patchy. Plays were written and performed in Scotland in this time, but not a lot, and there's no point pretending otherwise just because formal drama struggled to establish itself in the centuries following A Satire Of The Three Estates, though that doesn't mean theater itself did not exist despite, or perhaps because of the church's dislike of it. Theater flourished in other less formal settings bear those two points in mind, because they are vital in understanding the subsequent development of Scottish drama down the years. The next episode will begin with another headlong dash through the 19th century and then focus on the theatrical activity that occurred in Glasgow in the first half of the 20th when playwriting in Scotland took a remarkable, radical turn.

You new boots. You've kicked the toes with them again. Well, I will learn you to play football. Leave me alone. I hate you.

A History Of Scottish Drama In Six Plays is written and produced by me Fergus Morgan, with the support of the Scottish Society of Playwrights through their SSP@50 Fellowships, which are supported by Creative Scotland and by Bespoken Media. It's made in association with the Traverse Theatre.