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

i6o
THE WORKS OF SIR DAVID LINDSAY
fool-tradition. The French aspect must, of course, not be ignored,
since Lindsay was several times in France, but it must not be insisted
on to the exclusion of native sources.
Influence : Various attempts have been made, notably by Brandi
and his followers in Germany, to trace the influence of Ane Satyre
on later English drama. Most of the arguments are vitiated by the
belief that 1602 represents the 1540, or even the fictitious 1535 per¬
formance, and by claims that because similar type-names recur, how¬
ever different the function of the types may be, the influence of Ane
Satyre is apparent. Most of the arguments axe fanciful.
(i) Bp. John Bale, King Johan. MS. in the possession of the Duke of
Devonshire; ed. J. P. Collier, Camden Society, Series 1, No. 2 (1838) ;
Manly, Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama (1897), i.; W. Bang,
Materialien, XXV. (1909) ; Malone Society (1931).
Schelling, Elizabethan Drama, i. 70, states that Ane Satyre was the
pattern of “ King Johann (c. 1538),’’ but may accept Chalmers’s date
of 1535 for the former. The statement is frequently repeated. Some¬
thing may be due to a hesitation to accept a date of composition of
King Johan much before 1548.
The evidence of date of Bale’s play is fully discussed by the Malone
Society editors, who produce uncontrovertible evidence for 1534-36,
a two-part play recast into a single play about 1538, and performed
at the Archbishop of Canterbury’s, 2nd January 1539, and again revised
for Elizabeth’s visit to Ipswich in August .1561. Bale’s play was there¬
fore in existence, and revised, a little over four years before Lindsay’s
Version I.
Characters: King Johan [John]; England, a widow; Sedition;
Nobility; Clergy; Civil Order; Dissimulation; Usurped Power;
Private Wealth ; The Pope ; Cardinal Pandulphus ; Stephen Langton ;
Raymundus; Commonalty; Treason; Simon of Swynsett; Verity;
Imperial Majesty ; The Interpreter.
I find no trace of similarity with Ane Satyre beyond a common hatred
of Church abuses, the wrongs of the poor, the name of Verity, and the
fact that both plays were written in two parts. There is changing of
costume, but off the stage, and, developed from the practice of doubling
actors’ parts, identification of abstract characters with historical
persons (Usurped Power = Pope ; Sedition = Stephen Langton ;
Private Wealth = " Cardinal ” Pandulphus), but this is beyond the
scope of Ane Satyre. The possibility of influence by Lindsay’s play is
wiped out by the fact that Bale, who did not know in 1548 whether
Lindsay was still alive, does not mention Ane Satyre in either his Index
(1548-1553, ed. R. L. Poole, Oxford, 1902) or Catalogue, ptd. Basle,
I559-
Herford, Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth
Century (1886), 135, stating that Ane Satyre " evidently supplied the
hint of the corresponding three classes of John’s subjects," says that
the fact that Bale’s play was produced in January 1539 [*.«., before
Lindsay’s] is unimportant [!]. He then proceeds to draw an excellent
parallel between King Johan and Kirchmayer's Latin play Pammachius
[pp. 124-38].