the records and by modern historical accounts. In what seems to have been a
conscious attempt to displace the very different“art of rule”of the father he
had supplanted, James’s“behavior suggests a concern to make himself
visible.”^77 This is demonstrated in the architecture of his reign–the con-
struction of Holyrood Palace,^78 the“kingis hous”at Stirling, additions to the
Stirling chapel royal and Linlithgow Palace^79 – and even the building of his
ship the“Great Saint Michael”seems to have had propagandist no less than
military impact in view.^80 Such concerns are also reflected by the surviving
accounts of his court ceremonial: they mark, as we have seen, his marriage to
Margaret Tudor, and Macdougall points out that“no Scottish king before
James IV appears to have been so committed to the staging of tournaments
and to taking part in them himself.”^81 His“libiralytie”involved a gift-giving
that extended the reach of the royal body through contiguity.^82 He seems,
too, to have taken care to maximize the royal presence by dispersing it,
imposing on himself afiercely demanding itinerary as he traveled around
Scotland to dispense justice.^83 From this concern for sheer physical mobility–
a desire to stand metonymically for his kingdom, by being everywhere at
once–stems perhaps the tale, alluded to by Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, that
he would ride in disguise through the realm of Scotland to sound his subjects’
minds and test their loyalties: a visual game with disguise and revelation that
meshes with the romance motif of theroi inconnu.^84
Spectacular monarchic presence would have been enhanced by the
physical structure of the Scottish court, which contrasts with the develop-
ments leading to the English Privy Chamber. As Neil Cuddy points out, the
court of Scotland did not undergo changes like those noted by Starkey; it
remained organized along French lines, its distribution of rooms minimiz-
ing the degree of seclusion available to the monarch and retaining him in the
public eye at all times.^85 This, I think, does more than myths of a democratic
Scottish protonationalism to account for Dunbar’s tone of familiarity with
his sovereign, and his work’s pervasive representation of a three-
dimensional court, with its own“chalmers”and recognized personalities
(James Doig, Sir Thomas Norny,“Mistress Musgrave”).
James IV’s strategic brilliance sheds light on Dunbar’s tactical self-
representation, for Dunbar’s self-scattering is a mirror of the monarch’s
permeation of the polity with his presence. In his well-known gloss on
Kantorowicz, Foucault has stated that“In the darkest region of the political
field the condemned man represents the symmetrical, invertedfigure of the
king.”^86 Dunbar’s begging-poems may be said to stage a kind of informal
self-criminalization. His vacillations of moral and social stance, and his
rivalrous self-projection, now proclaim the speaker’s bad faith, now dissolve
“My panefull purs so priclis me” 83