William Dunbar

William Dunbar c.1460-c.1520, Scottish poet. After attending the Univ. of St. Andrews he was attached for some time to the Franciscans, probably as a novice. By 1491 he seems to have been connected with the court of James IV as a poet and minor diplomat. Writing in the traditions of Chaucer and the medieval Scottish poets, Dunbar is notable for the liveliness of his verse, his virtuosity in metrical form, his variety of mood, and his caustic satire. Most of his best poetry seems to have appeared between 1503 and 1508. "The Thistle and the Rose," celebrating the marriage of James IV and Margaret Tudor, and "The Golden Targe" are richly decorative allegories. "The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins" combines mordant humor and the grotesque. "The Two Married Women and the Widow" is extravagantly ribald, while "The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie" shows his gift for satiric invective. Other poems, such as "Of the Nativity of Christ," express genuine religious feeling. One of his best-known poems is the gloomy "Lament for the Makers" with its refrain "Timor mortis conturbat me" [the fear of death throws me into confusion].

Bibliography: See edition of his poems by W. M. Mackenzie (1960); biography by J. W. Baxter (1952); studies by T. Scott (1966) and R. Taylor (1931, repr. 1971).

Dunbar, William (c.1460–c.1520). Widely regarded as the greatest of the late medieval Scottish makars (poets), Dunbar may have been a Franciscan novice and student at St Andrews early in life; but apart from the evidence of his poetry, little is known of the man outside the period 1500–13, when he received an annual pension from James IV, increasing from £10 in 1500 to a generous £80 by 1510.

Dunbar's work covers a vast range—formal court poetry like ‘The Thrissell and the Rois’ (1503), celebrating the marriage of James IV and Margaret Tudor; satire, as in his ‘Remonstrance to the King’ or the lampoons of Damian, alchemist and would-be aviator; and personal meditative poems, above all the grim ‘Lament for the Makaris’ (1508). Taken as a whole, Dunbar's poetry, embracing heady confidence, complaints about corruption, and bleak despondency, reflects the changing national mood in James IV's Scotland.

Norman Macdougall

Dunbar, William (?1456–?1513), Scottish poet and priest. In 1503 he wrote ‘The Thrissill and the Rois’, a political allegory in rhyme-royal, the Rose representing Margaret Tudor, married to James IV, the Thistle, and in 1507, ‘The Dance of the Sevin Deidly Synnis’, in which the poet in a trance sees the fiend Mahoun call a dance of unshriven outcasts. At about the same time he wrote ‘The Tretis of the Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo’, a visionary dialogue in which the three interlocutors relate their experiences of marriage; and ‘The Goldyn Targe’, an allegory in which the poet, appearing in a dream before the court of Venus, is wounded by the arrows of Beauty in spite of the shield (‘targe’) of Reason. The ‘Lament for the Makaris’ is a powerful elegy for the transitoriness of things, with its refrain ‘Timor mortis conturbat me’, in which the poet bewails the deaths of his fellow poets including Chaucer, Gower, and Henryson. Dunbar's satirical energy and Rabelaisian humour are particularly well displayed in ‘The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie’.