William Dunbar

William Dunbar (1460?-1520?), Scottish poet, educated at the University of Saint Andrews. Some evidence suggests that he became a Franciscan friar and, after travels in England and France, was attached in 1500 to the court of James IV of Scotland. Dunbar is considered by some scholars one of the finest Scottish poets; his work helped to inspire the early 20th-century Scottish literary revival. The robust humor, lively imagination, sharp satire, and invective of Dunbar's poetry are best shown in The Dance of the Sevin Deidly Synnis (1503-1508) and The Twa Maryit Wemen and the Wedo (The Two Married Women and the Widow), a ribald discussion of the women's experiences in marriage. Among his other poems are The Thrissill and the Rois (The Thistle and the Rose), composed in honor of the marriage of Margaret Tudor and James IV in 1503, and The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie—”flyting” being a traditional form of scathing debate. The most famous of his poems, however, is Lament for the Makaris, a meditation on his own mortality, the death of poets of the past, and the mortality of fellow poets (“makars”). The poem serves, incidentally, as a source of names and some identification of these poets.