The section we looked at today was the opening three scenes – Diligence’s opening speech, followed by that of Rex Humanitus and then the three courtiers, Solace, Wantonness and Placebo. What became apparent was how quickly the tone of the play changes and develops. Diligence’s opening speech, as worked on by Liam Brennan, in performance has a clear authorial feel. This is partly because of the way it sets up the play, both in turns of creating the audience as a specific image and assuming responsibility for preparing them for what is going to happen. The extent to which Diligence is a version of Lyndsay (one of many in the play – including Folly ) was emphasised by the passage at the end of the speech seeking to protect the play from accusations of sedition or slander. Seeing these words worked on gave me  real sense of the extent to which Diligence’s opening speech is a prologue designed to set up the play and announce Lyndsay’s aims. From Lyndsay’s Diligence,  James Mackenzie’s Rex Humanitus is a king out of his depth. His opening speeches are conventional but they also create a real sense of the pressures of early modern kingship. With the entry of Solace, Wantonness and Placebo another very different tone is set – realism but also comedy.

Watching the actors working on the first three sections of the play reminded how heterogeneous it is. It goes from authorial prologue, to the language of conventional morality plays to something altogether different when the courtiers appear. In particular, there is a sense as an audience of being instantly seduced by the three courtiers. In rehearsal this was partly because the actors playing these roles, Callum Cutherbertson, Richard Conlon and Ewan Donald, brought so much energy to their performances. But I also think that this is a deliberate ploy by Lyndsay. Diligence has important points to make about the play, Rex Humanitus’ speech is serous and moving, Solace’s account of his mother’s various lovers and the different fathers she gave him is comic, realist ( albeit misogynistic ) and unserious. It is almost as though from the opening of the play Lyndsay is tempting the audience to behave in exactly the way that Folly accuses them of behaving at the end. Surely only a foolish person would be seduced by the antics of Wantonness, Placebo and Solace.