In February 1549 the Treasurer's accounts show a payment to "Williame Lauder, for making of his play, and expensis maid thairupoun, £11:5:0" performed at the wedding celebrations of Alexander, Lord Gordon, and Lady Barbara Hamilton.
A few years later he is on record furnishing a play, or dramatic representation, which was performed at the expense of the Magistrates and Council of Edinburgh for the Dowager Queen, Mary of Guise, on 28 December 1554, for which he was handsomely paid.
Four years later, Lauder's inventive powers were again exercised in producing one of those plays, or 'moralities', which were so common at that time, to celebrate the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots with Francis, Dauphin of France, at Paris, in July 1558.
Although these two plays appear now to be lost, the Council Records and the Lord High Treasurer's Accounts enable us to ascertain the nature of the last performance, in which the chief personages were the Seven Planets, and Cupid.
A further poem was also bound into the volume, entitled The Lamenta[t]ioun Of the Pure, twitching the Miserabill Estait of this Present Warld, "Compylit be William Lauder, at Perth, Primo Fabruarie, 1568" (1568/9).