Reviewed by: The Phanaticks by Archibald Pitcairne Alasdair Raffe Archibald Pitcairne. The Phanaticks, ed. John MacQueen. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2012. Pp. lxxxii + 247. £35. Is The Phanaticks a hitherto unknown play by Archibald Pitcairne (1652–1713), the Scottish physician, Jacobite, and Latin poet? Alas, not—though Mr. MacQueen’s handsome edition publishes for the first time the original Scots-language text of the play otherwise known as The Assembly. Unlike the previous scholarly editor, Terence Tobin in 1972, Mr. MacQueen has established his text from manuscript copies of the play, which was written in the early 1690s. In doing so, he captures its linguistic vigor, but also underlines its weak construction. For though it might have been performed in Edinburgh in the 1690s or early eighteenth century, it seems that the play was primarily intended for domestic readings, with the parts performed by like-minded Scots—Episcopalians fueled by a hatred of Presbyterianism and a love of good claret. Several manuscript copies indicate how the play circulated. As well as the first printed editions of the play, published in 1722 and 1752, Mr. MacQueen has consulted three manuscript versions. These copies present various textual difficulties, and many of this edition’s generous notes detail and discuss variant readings. Yet the most obvious results of Mr. MacQueen’s study of the manuscripts are his renaming of the play, and his speculations about its authorship. “As a title,” Mr. MacQueen asserts, “The Assembly lacks authority.” One manuscript (which he labels “B”) indeed names the play “The Assembly or Scotch Reformation,” but he discounts this evidence. Yet the other manuscripts he has consulted do not give any title. A further manuscript copy, not cited by Mr. MacQueen (National Records of Scotland, CH12/16/25, dated March 6, 1696), bears the title “The Assemblie, or The Scotch Reformation.” In short, The Assembly is the appropriate name for the play. Mr. MacQueen disregards manuscript B’s title, but builds an elaborate theory on its reference, on the title page, to “the authors who is Roges.” To persons in the know, we are told, “R” would have recalled the intertwined “A. P.” of Pitcairne’s monogram. Perhaps “og” was to resemble the initials of the mathematician David Gregory, one of Pitcairne’s closest friends; and “es” might have suggested the initials of another associate, Bertram Stott. Or possibly by “Roges” was meant the Scots form of “rogues.” Or conceivably (my suggestion) the Latin “you may ask.” It is probable that the play had multiple authors. The evidence of Pitcairne’s other works—notably his poetic satire on Presbyterianism, [End Page 111] Babell (1692)—strongly suggests that he was one of them. Stott and Gregory could have been present as the play was written, though Gregory might have left Edinburgh for England before it was completed. More than this, we may ask but are unlikely to learn. Most of the persons in the play are satirical portraits of contemporary Presbyterian ministers and noblemen. The authors give to several traits that contemporaries would have recognized, such as the muddled Latinity of Salathiel Littlesense (Gilbert Rule) or Lord Huffie’s violent use of a whip (referring to an incident in the life of David Melville, third earl of Leven). Detailed notes allow readers to identify these allusive jokes, and indeed to laugh at some of them. A further strength of this edition is Mr. MacQueen’s intimate familiarity with the other works of Pitcairne, especially the Latin poetry he edited with Winifred MacQueen in 2009. Often the play is more humorous when we appreciate the parallels between its text and Pitcairne’s satirical verse. Mr. MacQueen’s introduction and notes place the play in its historical context. He argues that the play’s “comittie” of Presbyterians represents not the Kirk’s general assembly itself, but rather the commission for southern Scotland appointed by the assembly of 1690, the first to meet after the reestablishment of Scottish Presbyterianism in that year. Much of the play’s political satire relates to the activities of the commission in 1691, and Mr. MacQueen accepts the statements in the preface that the play was written in that year. But in places the play...