dressed as a fool“That ladis may bait him lyk a buill”( 27 ). The Queen’s
“wardraipper”James Doig is humiliated through both plays on his name
and a fabricated reputation as henpecked husband. His wife in turn is
verbally punished for contemplating his cuckolding, though it is of course
Dunbar himself, setting this slanderous suggestion in circulation, who
becomes theficklefabliauwife (B 72 ;B 73 , 17 – 19 ). Dunbar’s competitors
are threatened with the“Tolbuyth”(B 67 , 60 ), and those who snatch his
beloved benefices even incur heavenly punishment (B 43 , 29 – 30 ).
Readers have found in Dunbar’s short poetic forms evidence of a lack of
poetic integrity, an inability to achieve wholeness in a“decevabill”court, or
a psychological“splitting”caused by the pressures of court existence.^22 Such
fragmentation is starkly illuminated by the petitionary poems, as they at
once recoil from andflirt with identification with the rival of courtly
competition. This combination of desire and disgust, hinging on a loss of
identity at once dreaded and courted, reaches visibility in images of bodily
splintering and metamorphosis. Dunbar projects this condition on to rivals
in the courtly scramble for preferment; the grotesques who populate his
crowded royal anterooms are an extraordinary, expressionistic assemblage of
deformed and apparently disconnected body parts.
“off quhilk my vrytting vitnes beris”Poets and alchemists may both be frauds. Yet when Dunbar mentions his
own writing in these poems, it is often to attest to his plainness, his incapacity
to feign. When a bevy of grotesques preempts the royal attention, it is
“vrytting”that becomes thefinal“vitnes”to Dunbar’s claim to consideration
(B 9 , 73 ). In one standard posture, such hints that the poet’sgiftscountfor
nothing in this world can be loudly ironic:“Allace, I can bot ballattis breif. /
Sic barnheid [childishness] leidis my brydill reynʒe”(B 68 , 48 – 49 ). The poet
becomes the sincere truth-teller adrift in a corrupt court, who
all his tyme neuirflatter couthe nor faine,
Bot humblie into ballat wyse complaine
And patientlie indure his tormenting. (B 75 , 68 – 70 )In such statements, mention of Dunbar’s poetic reputation and work allies
itself with the plain speech that sometimes resembles direct affront:“I say not,
schir,ʒow to repreiff, / Bot doutles I go rycht neirhand it”(B 68 , 78 – 79 ).
Critics have long noted the element of calculation in such outspoken
professions of honest anger and moral discernment among poets close to
power.^23 In Dunbar’s work, too, bluntness is not without its own equivocations,
“My panefull purs so priclis me” 67