Jamie Reid-Baxter, the early theatre and Scottish literature expert, discusses his previous experience of working on productions of A Satire of the Three Estates, focusing on his part of Folly, a character who was cut out of the famous Edinburgh University productions. Jamie says that that this was wholly wrong, as he serves as the “mirror image of Diligence in the play” suggesting that “both Diligence and Folly are David Lindsay’s alter egos”.

Jamie speaks about his excitement at a full, unedited version being performed in June, particularly the political urgency of the piece that will be revealed as a result.  He also discusses the “fundamental” place Lindsay holds in the Scottish canon, in that his work looks both backwards and forwards.  As a former translator at the European Parliament, Jamie helpfully discusses the dramatic appeal of the Middle Scots tongue, talking about the “roughness of Scots, the Germanic side of Scots, what you call in France the terrien, the clods of earth, the earthiness of it… but also the grandeur of those harsher consonants and pure vowel sounds”.  Reid-Baxter finishes by putting Lindsay in the literary tradition of William Dunbar, Gavin Douglas, Alexander Scott and Alexander Montgomerie, saying his work can “shed light right across the canon”, but is also innovative, discussing how Lindsay extends the Scottish tradition of flyting in this play.