ABSTRACT
In the late sixteenth century, the Dutch took a keen interest in what was happening in Scotland. Always in search of support for their revolt against Spain, they regarded Scotland as an important potential source of Protestant support, especially since the Scottish Kirk was confessionally quite close to the Dutch Reformed Church. When King James VI began to present himself, as Jenny Wormald has put it, as ‘the most Protestant king in Europe’, he gave the Dutch every reason to keep a hopeful eye on him.1 Since the king was also an author, their interest naturally extended itself to his writings. James made his Dutch literary debut with the epic poem The Battle of Lepanto, first published in 1591 in his second volume of poetry, His Maiesties Poeticall Exercises at Vacant Houres, but probably written some five years earlier.2 In effect, the Lepanto was James’s European breakthrough as a poet. It was immediately translated as a compliment to the king by the immensely popular French Huguenot poet Guillaume de Salluste, Sieur du Bartas, which undoubtedly contributed to its subsequent international fame. In 1593, a Zeeland minister called Abraham van der Myl produced a Dutch translation of the Lepanto, thus making James’s literary work available to a Dutch-speaking audience for the first time. This paper will explore the impression the Dutch were given of James through this text and especially its paratext, both in terms of his skills as a poet and his religio-political position as a king.
