The Poems of William Dunbar

Collected editions of Dunbar's Poetical Works are especially important because his poems were not originally preserved as a single authorial collection. They survived scattered through early printed books and important manuscript compilations, particularly the sixteenth-century Bannatyne and Maitland manuscripts. Modern and nineteenth-century editors therefore played a crucial role in identifying, assembling and preserving his surviving canon.

The poems demonstrate the extraordinary expressive range of Middle Scots as a literary language. Dunbar could move from elaborate, Latinate “aureate” language to vigorous colloquial Scots, comic insult and earthy satire. This versatility makes his work an exceptionally rich source for the vocabulary, humour, beliefs and court culture of early sixteenth-century Scotland.

His poetry is also historically valuable because much of it reflects the world of James IV's court immediately before the catastrophe of Flodden in 1513. Yet Dunbar's importance extends far beyond historical interest. Poems such as the Lament for the Makaris confront mortality and the passing of generations with an intensity that remains strikingly modern.

Alongside Robert Henryson and Gavin Douglas, Dunbar represents the high point of medieval and early Renaissance Scottish poetry. His Poetical Works therefore preserve one of the finest bodies of writing in Older Scots and provide essential evidence of Scotland's sophisticated literary culture before the Reformation.

William Dunbar (c.1460–c.1520) was one of the greatest poets of medieval Scotland and a leading figure among the Scottish Makars, the remarkable group of writers who brought Middle Scots poetry to its height during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Alongside Robert Henryson and Gavin Douglas, Dunbar is regarded as one of the most important figures in early Scottish literature.
Little is known with certainty about Dunbar's early life. He was probably born in East Lothian and studied at the University of St Andrews, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1477 and master's degree in 1479. He later entered the Franciscan order, although he appears eventually to have abandoned the religious life. By around 1500 he was associated with the court of James IV of Scotland, where he received a royal pension and composed poems connected with court life, politics and important ceremonial occasions.
Dunbar possessed an extraordinary poetic range. His surviving works include religious and moral poems, court satire, comic verse, elegies and elaborate allegories. Among his best-known works are The Thrissil and the Rois, written in 1503 to celebrate the marriage of James IV and Margaret Tudor; The Goldyn Targe, a sophisticated allegorical dream-poem; and The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins, a brilliantly imaginative mixture of morality, satire and grotesque humour.

Perhaps his most moving poem is Lament for the Makaris, written in response to the illness of his fellow poet Walter Kennedy. In it Dunbar remembers deceased Scottish poets while repeatedly confronting the inevitability of death with the refrain “Timor mortis conturbat me” – “the fear of death troubles me.” The poem is particularly valuable because it preserves the names of several Scottish writers whose works have otherwise been lost.

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