The Popular Voice in Sir David Lyndsay\u27s Satire of the Thrie Estaitis

Analyzes the representation of the Scottish people in the 16th century Scottish drama A Satire of the Thrie Estaitis by Sir David Lyndsay [or Lindsay] (1490-1555), through the figure of the Pauper or Poor Man in the first version (the 1540 interlude performed at Linlithgow), and the character of John of the Commonwealth in the two fuller versions (at Cupar in 1552 and Edinburgh in 1554). Distinguishes Lyndsay\u27s Pauper from equivalent figures in plays by John Bale and Nicholas Udall, and argues (by contrast with Tyrone Guthrie\u27s famous 1948 Edinburgh festival production) that John of the Commonwealth is less a voice of the Scottish people than a voice for them

Unpopular literature?:John Heywood’s The Spider and the Flie

This article examines an idiosyncratic, lavishly illustrated mid-Tudor English printed book, John Heywood’s The Spider and the Flie (1556), a book condemned both in the sixteenth century and since as incomprehensible and virtually unreadable. The article argues, rather, that the book’s gestation period was long and complex, but that, once this is understood, the book becomes readily comprehensible, in both its structure and implications. It looks briefly at evidence for ownership of the book, and then moves to discuss what it, along with Heywood’s collected volumes of proverbs and epigrams, can contribute to a discussion of early-modern popular literature, the subject of the UNA Europa funded network, Popular Respublica Litteraria, to which this article is a contribution