2 - Faith, pastime, performance and drama in Scotland to 1603

Summary

Faded, often damaged and disrupted by prejudice, war and the accidents of time, manuscript witnesses to early Scottish play are only too eloquent about the transience of the pleasures they record. The mainly fifteenth- and sixteenth-century historians, scribes and notaries whose hands left traces of recreation rarely, if ever, did so for the reasons which prompt the modern scholar to read them. Consequently, their silences cannot be easily interpreted either. Although conscious of history, they were not writing for the distant future, and would have been dismayed that education had so declined from its proper subjects and language that scholars would find value in an account of a fool's fee written in Latin or pageant expenses written in Scots. Nevertheless, they have left evidence of variety and continuity in play. From the priest of Inverkeithing who, in 1282, led the young women of the parish in a semimimetic phallic dance (with stage prop) to the French tightrope walker whom James VI (1566–1625) astutely employed to divert his court, Scotland enjoyed a heterogeneous and habitual life of play, often showing features which we associate with theatre, but best understood in its hybridity rather than under any strict consideration of genre. Poem, debate and dialogue merged with image, pageant and ritual; procession blended into masque, and all with the frequent inflection of song, music and dance.