Language Notes
Text: English
Three Estates: A Pleasant Satire in Commendation of Virtue and in Vituperation of Vice FROM THE PUBLISHER
Sir David Lindsay's masterpiece of 16th century Scottish political theater has not been available in English before. This verse translation is of over 3000 lines, in an edition which combines an historical and critical introduction with the possibilities of modern performance. Besides issues of text and translation, the introduction examines the background of Scotland in 1552, the author and his audience, the play's performance history, and its position as a Renaissance text. A work on a grand scale with a cast of over 40, the play confronts and resolves the ill-counselled, misrule of young King Humanity through the intervention, not only of King Correction and of learned contemporaries, but also through the fearless condemnations of the Poor Man arid the political resolution of John The Common Weal. Its conclusion, which are not those of a medieval, divine resolution, are humanly centered, popularly representative, and yet strikingly realistic.
FROM THE CRITICS
Booknews
A play first produced (in this version) in 1552 at Cupar in Fife in a Scotland reeling from the end of two reigns of powerful, unifying, and reforming kings, James IV and V. Lindsay had been the country's principal ambassador for a decade. He voices the anger and distress of the people at the same time as he reasserts the humanity and hope of a people and an age betrayed. This first translation of Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis into standard modern English serves as both a performance edition and a literary and historical document. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
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