Dunbar, William (c. 1460-c. 1520)

Scottish poet at the court of James IV. His poems include a political allegory, The Thrissil and the Rois, written in 1503, celebrating James IV's marriage with Margaret Tudor, and the lament with the refrain ‘Timor mortis conturbat me’ (‘Fear of death confounds me’), printed in 1508.

Dunbar has strength, swiftness, and humour in his writing. His descriptive touch is vivid and full of colour and he is a virtuoso of language and metre.

He was probably born in East Lothian and educated at St Andrews, but practically nothing is known of his early years, and little of his later life except that he entered the Franciscan order of monks, giving this up for employment by James IV in court and political business.

His chief poems include The Dance of the Sevin Deidly Synnis, an allegory written before 1508; The Goldyn Targe (1508), another allegory; and various lyrics of which the most notable is The Lament for the Makaris (poets of Scotland and England), written about 1507. In his allegorical poems Dunbar follows Chaucer in his setting, and is thus more or less imitative and conventional: in his satirical pieces and lyrics he shows his individual power. Of his comic poems, the best is The Twa Marriit Wemen and the Wedo, a satire on bourgeois marriage. Other works are The Merle and the Nightingale and The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie.