Context and Legacy
It is arguable that the existence of the 'Castalians' (whether or not they were a formal group) was passed over in general literary histories. Scottish Jacobean writers have largely been overshadowed by the contemporaneous literary scene in London in the age of Shakespeare. Appreciation also has been coloured by the arguable historical view that their work marked a decline and end to the tradition of the makars. The modernist Scots poet Hugh MacDiarmid, one of their detractors, dismissed their legacy in his terms as royalist and episcopalian and described their work as "circumscribed in outlook".
More recent critics and scholars have attempted to demonstrate the injustice of such prejudicial factors and seek a more favourable appreciation of their work. The full range of their prolific output has never properly been represented in modern publication and much in their writing, situated in a continuous tradition from the period of earlier writers such as Dunbar, prefigures the metaphysical poets in England. Not only are the 'Castalians' of interest in their own right as the last court poets in a purely Scottish context, but at their best, and especially when their language is correctly appraised, their proficient use of sometimes highly mannered verse forms to express complex ideas and personal emotion can stand with later popular works of figures such as Donne, Herrick and Marvell.
Read more about this topic: Castalian Band
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