Reflections on Staging Sir David Lyndsay's Satire of the Three Estates at Linlithgow Palace, June 2013

This article reflects on the discoveries gained from performing the full text of Sir David Lyndsay's A Satire of the Three Estates at Linlithgow Palace in June 2013 as part of the AHRC-funded 'Staging and Representing the Scottish Renaissance Court' project. It describes the nature and aims of the project, and discusses the ways in which recreating the production suggests rather different conclusions about the nature of the play to those created by the seminal revival, directed by Tyrone Guthrie for the Edinburgh International Festival of 1948. By contrasting the two productions, the essay suggests ways in which staging the full text allows rather different political and dramaturgical agenda to emerge to those embraced by Guthrie's necessarily circumscribed version. In particular the role of Pauper emerges as a far more significant and radical figure, capable, like the play as a whole, of addressing contemporary issues and anxieties as powerfully in 2013 as it seems to have done in 1552 and 1554.