Global InformationAne Dance in the Quenis Chalmer information
Ane Dance in the Quenis Chalmer or A dance in the Queen's chamber is a humorous or satiric Scots poem by William Dunbar.[1]
The verses describe a dance in the chamber of Margaret Tudor, wife of James IV of Scotland.[2] Various courtiers are introduced and their dance moves described in comic terms.[3] The refrain, in modern spelling is, "A merrier dance might no man see". Dancers include Master Robert Schaw who provided medicinal recipes to the queen's apothecary William Foular,[4] and appears to have been a physician serving the women of the court.[5] Perhaps to widen the appeal of the poem for a court audience that may have include the subjects of the satire, Dunbar introduces himself as a dancer who clumsily sheds a slipper or panton.[6]
- ^ Michelle Beer, Queenship at the Renaissance Courts of Britain (Woodbridge, 2018), p. 93.
- ^ William Hepburn, The Household and Court of James IV of Scotland (Boydell, 2023), p. 108.
- ^ Alastair Cherry, Princes, Poets & Patrons: The Stuarts and Scotland (Edinburgh, 1987), p. 26.
- ^ James Balfour Paul, Accounts of the Treasurer: 1500-1504, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1900), p. 445.
- ^ John Small, Poems of William Dunbar, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1893), p. cclvii: Priscilla Bawcutt, Dunbar the Makar (Oxford, 1992), p. 52.
- ^ R. D. S. Jack, The Dramatic Voice of William Dunbar, Janet Hadley Williams, Medieval English Theatre, 37 (2015), pp. 75-76.