Scottish Text Society publications > Third series > Works of Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, 1490-1555 > Volume 4, 1936

XXVI
INTRODUCTION.
took an active part in the agitation. But nothing is
definitely known of other political activities. When at
the beginning of 1540 Sadler went to Edinburgh, he was
conducted from his lodgings to the King by Lindsay and
the Rothesay Herald, and back to his lodgings. Next
day he was escorted by Lindsay and others to the Queen.1
This. was official activity rather than political, part of
his duties as herald.
But he had already, on January 6, 1540, contributed
to the literary side of the agitation in the production of
the first version of Ane Satyre of the Time Estaitis at Lin¬
lithgow before the King, Queen, and Court. No text of
this version survives, but a prose account was sent by
Sir William Eure to Cromwell, Lord Privy Seal of England,
in a letter dated January 26 [1540].2 This states that the
play, called an “ enterluyde,” was produced at Linlithgow
on the Feast of the Epiphany [January 6]. The Treasurer’s
Accounts give the records of preparations for a play on
that date,3 three play-coats of red and yellow taffeta lined
with buckram, a purple cape, and a red hood being pro¬
vided, small provision indeed for so large a performance
as it is generally claimed to have been.
It is commonly stated, though without evidence, that
the text was identical with the versions produced at
Cupar in 1552 and in Edinburgh in 1554, and that it was
performed in the open air. Against the first is the certainty
that the version at Linlithgow was much shorter than
those produced later; against the second is the im¬
probability of an open-air production in mid-winter. I
think it must have been an indoor play, produced on the
evening of Twelfth Night, concentrated in its action,
and wanting in many of the comic features of the later
versions. Moreover, Eure’s account points to essential
differences. We are told, for example, that the King
1 App. I., 128. 2 Vol. II., 1-6. 3 App. I., 126.