George Buchanan, Dramatic Strategies, and Polemics in the Scottish Reformation

The paper reads George Buchanan’s tragedy Baptistes (in the printed version, which is a palimpsest of the original version written in exile) as a companion-piece to his polemic dialogue De Jure Regni apud Scotos. Both texts are directed against contemporary ‘tyrants’ and false councillors, and the latter explicitly against the royal secretary William Maitland. The paper discusses the tensions between Calvinist critique against theatre and Buchanan’s play that reveals an aggressive rhetoric far beyond the expectations of a school play. The fact that the Calvinist Reformation remained vitally adept in the deployment of dramatic device is finally realized in the highly dramatic dialogue De Iure Regni apud Scotos.