Ahead of its world premiere in Edinburgh next week, acclaimed playwright Rona Munro has defended her decision to place a speculative lesbian love affair at the heart of a new drama about James V.
The latest of her James Plays, a critically-lauded cycle about Scotland’s Stewart monarchs, James V: Katherine is set in the late 1520s and deals with the onset of the Reformation. Commissioned initially by the National Theatre of Scotland, the first three plays were performed back-to-back at the 2014 Edinburgh International Festival, with the pandemic-delayed fourth staged in 2022.
A decade into the project, this fifth instalment turns on the life of mid-ranking noblewoman Katherine Hamilton. Wife of the captain of Dunbar Castle she was also the sister of Protestant reformer Patrick Hamilton, who was tried as a heretic and burned at the stake in St Andrews on February 29, 1528.
But though there was no evidence Katherine was a lesbian, Ms Munro’s aim in the play is to also shine a light on queer history, a subject which has had “vanishingly small academic attention”. So she has added what she termed a “completely speculative” affair between Katherine and a female friend.
“We can’t know that Katherine was queer, but we can be pretty certain statistically there would have been a lot more queer women who were of Katherine’s social status in this period,” she said.
“It’s then about speculating what life was like for them. And the reason I’ve pinned that onto the Reformation is that after the Reformation things got significantly tougher if you were queer within Scottish society. It was a much more puritanical version of theology that came in.”
She added: “It’s as valid to see that she might have been [queer] as it is to say that she wasn’t. I don’t think that’s any more offensive than asserting that she must inevitably have been heterosexual, unless you’ve got a particularly biased viewpoint.”
One of those helping Ms Munro research the period was historian and translator Ashley Douglas, who has written about an anonymous lesbian love poem published in 1586 and ascribed by her to Marie Maitland. Maitland was the daughter of Sir Richard Maitland, Keeper of the Great Seal under Mary, Queen of Scots.
“Marie Maitland, was a woman of very similar class and status to Katherine just 30 or so years later on, and she’s writing explicitly lesbian poetry. She also ends up being a married woman. So we can’t know that Katherine was queer, but we know there was at least one, and statistically there would have been a lot more queer women who were of Katherine’s type and status and lifestyle in this period. So it’s showing that, as well as the history.”
READ MORE
James plays are about making Scottish history visible, says Rona Munro
How much do you know about Scotland's kings?
The playwright has had a long interest in these sorts of “invisible” histories. Women have featured heavily in the previous James Plays – Sofie Gråbøl of Scandi Noir hit The Killing starred in James III: The True Mirror – and the most recent instalment, James IV: Queen Of The Fight, turned on the documented presence of Black people at court in early 16th century Scotland, as well as on the racism they faced from some quarters.
“The ambition has always been to make invisible history, visible,” Ms Munro said. “I’m really aware that women’s history is particularly invisible, Black history is particularly invisible, Queer history is particularly invisible.”
Directed by Orla O’Loughlin, James V: Katherine stars Catriona Faint as Katherine and Alyth Ross as her friend Jenny alongside Sean Connor as James V and Benjamin Osugo as Patrick Hamilton. It previews at Capital Theatres’ The Studio in Edinburgh from April 5 (until April 20) before transferring to Glasgow’s Tron Theatre then touring widely across Scotland.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel