Week 05, Sir Thomas Wyatt

Notes on Sir Thomas Wyatt

Renaissance humanism tends to treat the individual as a type, a collection of virtues, after the manner of Aristotle. Our own modern sense of the individual as unique and autonomous would be somewhat foreign to them, even though it’s fair to say that the Renaissance has long fascinated people because of the strong personalities we find during that era—it’s an age of worldly popes and even worldlier rulers. Consider Machiavelli’s Cesare Borgia, Benevenuto Cellini, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, and other remarkable individuals.

Wyatt will probably seem to most readers very “modern” in his sensibilities—he is a Renaissance political figure trying to deal with his own emotions, states of mind, and confusions about his position in the court of Henry VIII. His lyric speaker is often fragile, confused, or threatened. A courtier must behave in an exemplary way, but what are the rules? There are some, but they appear to change based on powerful players’ individual desires. You can read Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier for an idealized version of the court, but Wyatt is in the thick of the real thing. He focuses on personal events—on his thoughts and emotions, and his relationships with women.

“If you would seem honest, be honest” is his advice to his son in a letter. But the court of Henry VIII is all about artifice. Sidney the courtier-poet will later define the literary arts as “feigning notable images” of moral virtue and vice to move readers towards virtuous action. But the Court’s artifice is about more immediate political objectives. It’s hard to maintain a position when one lives in a world that places a premium on the competitive manipulation of appearances, right down to the things one says about oneself, one’s sovereign, and others as well as the clothing one wears and the manners one exhibits. In Castiglione/Hoby’s Courtier, the point of being a courtier is to embody, and to body forth, the goodness and grace of the sovereign. Outward appearances, as any good Neo-Platonist would say, mirror the inward goodness of a person’s soul, and the courtier is the king’s outward appearance, somewhat as Christ is God’s “Word made Flesh” and (a phrase from Milton) his “Effectual Might.” The Renaissance in both England and on the Continent is a materialistic, competitive age that still convincingly speaks the language of a profoundly Christian ethical and symbolic universe. It would be a mistake to think of someone like Niccolo Machiavelli as an atheist (though we can’t be so sure about his hero Cesare Borgia). The period is rife with conflict between the spiritual and the worldly, but it dismisses neither dimension and in fact blends them in fascinating ways. Victorian poet Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues may be eccentric renditions of Renaissance voices, but all the same they don’t seem far off the mark.

Henry VIII was the Sun around which his officials and courtiers revolved. To work for Henry was mainly to exalt his rule, and secondarily to do his bidding in official and unofficial affairs. It wasn’t that anyone considered Henry illegitimate or unworthy to rule, but rather that centralization of power increasingly required exalted claims about how the ruler came by his right to rule. By James I’s time in the early C17, the full “divine right” theory of rulership would supplement dynastic birth as the justification for sovereignty. That same theory would prove to be partly responsible for the troubles of James’ son Charles I with the Puritan faction that eventually executed him during the Civil War of the 1640’s.

Many courtiers came from aristocratic backgrounds, but did not have the liquid wealth to maintain themselves in such lordly status, so as the age of absolutism moved along, once-independent courtiers gravitated towards a place at court. With Henry VIII, the movement to centralism in government approached completion; he reigned from 1509-47, and 1534 saw him copy Martin Luther’s Reformation, except that in Henry’s case, splitting off from the Catholic Church had more to do with marital troubles and with a desire to avoid sharing power and revenue with the Church than with deeply-rooted spiritual conflicts.

Thomas Wyatt’s biography is quite interesting. In 1520, as a young man of 17, he married Elizabeth Brooke. She apparently turned out to be unfaithful, and of course Wyatt anguishes much in his poetry over this problem. At 23, he went to Italy and France as a diplomat. He got into trouble with Henry in 1536 over Anne Boleyn and was sent to the Tower of London , but was subsequently pardoned and became ambassador to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s Court on the Continent. He got into trouble again in 1538 on a treason charge, and was later arrested on the charge in 1541, but was let off again so long as he agreed to reinstate his wife (he had a mistress named Elizabeth Darrell from 1536 to his death, and had become estranged from his wife), but he died in 1542, so he didn’t live long enough to enjoy his return to favor.

With a biography like that, a man may be forgiven his desperate search for constancy, honesty, and truth as opposed to self-interested manipulation and sham in the name of religion and political authority. Wyatt sought fidelity in love and friendship, but fidelity wasn’t easy to find. He never says it was, either—that’s one of the beauties of his poetry, isn’t it? It rings true to Wyatt’s own struggles, and doesn’t whitewash his complicity in courtly and romantic intrigue. Erotic pursuits of the sort in which Wyatt may have become entangled and about which he wrote poetry were part of the political and courtly scene, part of what it meant to be a courtier. Orwell’s 1984 characterizes sex as inherently political, but it’s hardly the first instance of such a notion: sex has had a political dimension at least since the days of Antony and Cleopatra, and no doubt the same was true long before their time, too.

What is the value of lyric poetry for Wyatt? Lyric poetry allows him to assume and explore an honest role, a way to “be honest” and not just to seem that way. The hope is that by taking on a lyric voice, the poet can attain clarity about the erotic, spiritual and political matters that trouble him. It’s customary for us as descendants of the romantics to consider lyric poetry both expressive and cathartic: the soul escaping on the wings of language, as it were. In a Wordsworthian ode such as “Tintern Abbey,” we expect that our speaker will eventually arrive at what has been called an “affective resolution” to the problems that plague him—the loss of creative power, of a once-sustaining connection to nature and other human beings, etc. The best romantic poetry never oversimplifies such problems or claims that imagination conquers all or that language is a transparent medium of expression. Nonetheless, it is generally optimistic about expression’s capacity to deal with the problems of the autonomous self. But in Wyatt’s case, although there may be an initial hope that a hard-won clarity of mind and perception will allow the speaker to solve his troubles in real life, or at least to set up a kind of pastoral refuge from the maelstrom of court life, that hope is likely to be frustrated, and the poem is likely to register such frustration and reflect upon it. Metapoetically, Wyatt tends to admit the failure of his lyric utterances to set him free—free, that is, from complicity in the treacherous and hostile world that he describes. Art may be “wish-fulfillment,” as Freud claims in his essay “Creative Writers and Daydreaming,” but sometimes artists are well aware that fulfillment of their wishes isn’t possible, even in fiction or poetry. To attain clarity on some dilemma, or to rehearse one’s difficulties in dramatic or poetical fashion, is not necessarily to slip out of them.

The meter of Wyatt’s poetry is purposefully rough, not smooth the way his later editors in Tottel’s Miscellany try to make it. He’s trying to capture difficult turns of intellect and emotion, so perfectly smooth verse might actually work against the psychological realism many readers find so attractive about Wyatt’s poetry. The same is partly true of John Donne, whose phrases are often elegant and memorable, but whose meter isn’t always uncomplicated or regular.

Life of Sir Thomas Wyatt

1503—Born at Allington Castle in Kent
1509—Accession of Henry VIII
1516—Probably entered Saint John’s College , Cambridge University
1516—Served as “Sewer Extraordinary”
1520—Married Elizabeth Brooke
1521—Son born
1524—Made Clerk of the King’s Jewels
1525—Made an esquire of the royal body
1525—Estranged from wife
1526—Brief embassy to France
1527—Brief embassy to Venice
1528-1530—Served as the high marshal of Calais
1530—Returned to court to resume his place as esquire of the royal body
1532—Became commissioner of the peace in Essex
1532—Came under the patronage of Thomas Cromwell
1534—Involved in a “great affray” with the sergeants of London and briefly imprisoned
1534—Henry VIII acknowledged “Supreme Head on Earth” of the English church
1536—Formed an attachment to Elizabeth Darrell, his lifelong mistress
1536—Fall of Anne Boleyn
1536—Imprisoned in Tower with 5 other suspected lovers of Anne, but released and rusticated, and then a few months afterward, was made Sheriff of Kent and led soldiers to quell an uprising.
1537—Made ambassador at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V
1538—Returned to England
1538—Charged with treason but cleared
1539—Another diplomatic mission to Charles V’s court
1540—His patron, Cromwell, was executed
1541—Arrested and imprisoned on the 1538’s charges of treason
1541—Pardoned under conditions of his wife’s reinstatement
1542—11 October, died of fever on his way to meet and escort to London the Spanish envoy

Notes on Thomas Wyatt’s Poems

“The long love…” (594); “Whoso list to hunt” (595); “My galley” (597); “Divers doth use” (598); “Madam, withouten many words” (599); “They flee from me,” both versions (599-600); “My lute, awake!” (600-01); “Forget not yet” (601-02); “Blame not my lute” (602-03); “Who list his wealth and ease retain” (603-04); “Mine Own John Poins” (604-06).

“The long love that in my thought doth harbor”

A “conceit” is a sustained metaphor. In this poem, Love is said to be a warrior, and the metaphor extends throughout the sonnet. The “banner” is the poet’s blush, and so forth. The contradiction is that soldiers are supposed to be strong, aggressive, and disciplined, but the speaker here is shy and in a weakened position thanks to his lady’s displeasure. The final line “Good is the life ending faithfully” simply asserts an ideal about fidelity as a virtue, but it doesn’t rescue the speaker from his dilemma. It isn’t a bold Petrarchan declaration. Body and soul are at war in this poem—the lover’s physical advances, though they are natural enough, have not been kindly received. The speaker is a fellow soldier serving his commanding officer, Love. He can’t abandon him, and so is left in a muddled state since Love is in retreat. The poem as a whole is a reflection upon “courtly love” within courtly politics; there are rules of engagement in courtly love, and in fact the whole medieval code of eroticism seems to offer a way of containing and directing an otherwise chaotic, powerful passion towards spiritual ends. Courtly love idealizes eroticism, but such gestures invite critical reflection because lovers know instinctively that erotic impulses are not easily blended with spiritual ideals or the conflicting imperatives of courtly place and politics.

“Whoso list to hunt”

Love here is a dangerous erotic pursuit, as in Ovid and the real court. The deer in Wyatt’s poem is not mild and meek; she (if, as the editors suggest, “she” is Anne Boleyn) belongs to someone else (Henry VIII). There is something of Ovid in Wyatt’s love poetry, even though the Renaissance man seems not to approve of Ovid’s frank characterization of sex as a competition in which both men and women may participate, if not necessarily on the same level. Generally, (Ovid’s women can escape the clutches of divine or human males only by metamorphosing into permanently unattainable objects in the natural world.)

The difficulty in defining or pinning down a slippery love object shows in the conflicting references Wyatt makes. Consider the line “touch me not.” The Norton editors point out that Wyatt has followed Petrarch’s poem “Una candida cerva” and that the line refers to the inscription around the neck of Caesar’s deer. But it also refers to The Gospel According to John, 20:15 -17: “Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master. Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.” In the Vulgate Bible of Jerome, the key line runs “noli me tangere nondum enim ascendi ad Patrem meum.”

Wyatt is responding to John 20:17 , Petrarch, and the expectations of the times for love poetry. He cannot disregard these things. Does he give us a half-beatified lady such as Dante’s beloved Beatrice or Petrarch’s Laura? Wyatt’s deer wears diamonds, which may signify some trace of heaven and purity. She is untouchable, rather like Christ is to Mary Magdalene. Wyatt’s speaker may be acknowledging the potential for a “spiritualized” reading of his erotic pursuit, but for the most part that pursuit seems frankly sexual, and the poem has a bitter, exhausted quality.

Petrarch’s sonnets are a model for those of Wyatt, but the two poets differ markedly. Petrarch’s poems are self-conscious and announce metaphor as metaphor. His poet-speakers live in the land of symbols. He often uses the laurel tree in this respect, and makes an absolute distinction between the heavenly and the earthly. The allusion to John in “Una candida cerva” refers to Christ at a halfway point between death and transfiguration. When Petrarch’s speaker tries to follow, he falls into a river. In his version of the poem, Wyatt emphasizes instead the speaker’s bitterness at failing to attain his material object. The poem is partially secular, and the idea of transcendence does not figure as heavily as it does in Petrarch’s sonnet. The reader, however, may not fully agree with the male speaker’s frustrated point of view since the “hind” has not done anything to deserve condemnation. The male speaker has simply “come in last” in the race or hunt for her affection. We should not suppose that the hind would be indignant about being hunted—indeed, the diamonds she wears may suggest that she is well paid for her role in the hunt. In sum, while Petrarch, almost like a medieval allegorist, dramatizes the agonizing gap between the human and the divine, Wyatt evidently prefers to focus on the wildness of the love pursuit even when it takes place in the labyrinthine environment of Henry VIII’s court. Well, the body of Anne Boleyn is real and attractive, but the speaker “seeks to hold the wind” thereby, and seems frustrated because he has been captured by her power as an object of the court.

“My galley”

Will add comments if time permits.

“Divers doth use”

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“Madame, Withouten Many Words”

Language is an important part of courtly love games, which depend upon deflection and deception concerning the erotic instinct. Love is dangerous, especially for a woman, who stands to lose much by giving in to her suitors. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril, as Oscar Wilde would say; he also says it is dangerous to remain at the surface. That is a very apt way to describe the courts of Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth. So the speaker says the woman should leave aside her jests and use her mind, her “wit.” In the manuscript version, odd punctuation marks — “&, {.}” — indicate a nod or shake of the head, things outside the immediate scope of words. In the madrigal by Dragonetto Bonifacio upon which Wyatt has based his poem, the speaker says “un bel si” (that is, perhaps, a nod) will earn a poem, while “un bel no” (a simple “no”) will grant both parties their freedom. Originality of expression, incidentally, was not a primary concern during the Renaissance any more than it ever had been before. Invention and personal detail certainly come into play, and a poet like Philip Sidney may “swear by the blackest brook of hell” that he is “no pickpurse of another’s wit” in his sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella, but romantic-style uniqueness and inward essence are not imperatives in this age. For a Renaissance poet, the “self” is represented as conforming to a publicly understood pattern.

Stylistically, this poem turns on emphatic, counterpointing phrases—read it with feeling, as something like a one-sided dialog, and it’s easy to see what I mean. Shakespeare’s verse has the same emphatic quality; his style may be “sugared,” but his lines often turn on sharp contrast between word and word, idea and idea. In the present poem, the idea seems to be, as we would say in modern lingo, “Cut the bull—are you going to give me what I want or not? If so, great—if not, we’re both free spirits.” Speech and action are in conflict in this battle with a courtly lady that doth protest and jest too much and too long. The speaker seems tired of the rituals of pursuit and courtship. They’re dangerous anyhow—as with his interest in Boleyn. Even the “cruel mistress” in Petrarch is an ideal, and the speaker isn’t pursuing an airy ideal at this point in the conversation with a potential lover.

“They Flee from Me”

T he pattern of the stanzas is royal rhyme, ABAB BCC. The speaker has had many affairs, and now finds that the tables have been turned on him. The lady also is free to “use new-fangleness.” The speaker is baffled; he suffers from moral confusion over the rules of love and finds the situation strange. People who step outside this game tend to be losers—i.e. while they sit around reflecting on things, the next round has already begun. The word “kindely” may be ironic—it means both “rudely” and “in kind.” In any case, the male figure in this poem deserves such rude treatment. Rather like Ovid, Wyatt here represents the male and the female alike as devious. The sonnet is full of tonal complexities, and its irregular lines and double stresses make it subtler still. Wyatt often uses conversational rhythm, as we can tell from intimate phrases like “dear heart.” The speaker’s idealistic expectations cause him to become disillusioned. He is forced to recognize the distinction between the tameness of court life and the animality of love. The need for secrecy is great, and makes things all the better when he is ensnared in love. The point is not even to achieve clarity about his passion, perhaps, but to “set it out there” in all its rawness. He’s exploring an emotional state. This poem is also about power relations—about sex and the court. Chivalric relations are imaged partly in terms of wildness and animal behavior. The theme of hunting applies to the realm of lust, which involves a degree of violence. In this poem, we find role reversal because the woman seems to be in charge. She says, “how do you like it?” We know that Wyatt sought constancy underneath fine courtly appearances, the enforced civility, the rules and roles of courtly life. But love leads only to “newfangleness.” As in King Lear later on, when chivalry and whatever extends beyond need are stripped away, human beings consider themselves nothing more than “poor, bare, forked animal[s].” Shakespeare makes clear that it is not satisfying to return to that level, at least not for long. One must come in from the storm.

“My lute, awake!”

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“Forget Not Yet”

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“Blame Not My Lute”

The lute is the speaker’s lyric voice, and the question here is, “why not just be honest in matters of love? Circulate the truth and let the chips fall where they may.” The speaker draws sustenance, if not comfort, from his own experiences with courtly women, and finds new “strings” with which to make his honest music. Well, in a broader context, anyone who does that risks offending others, and consequences might ensue. The same seems true of Wyatt’s courtly reflections more generally—circulating them amongst his fellow courtiers was a point of honor and built up his reputation, but it probably entailed some risk, too. “Freedom of the Press” wasn’t the reigning idea about literature or indeed about non-fiction prose in Tudor times. What if Henry read what you wrote and didn’t like it, or considered it insulting or threatening? Sometimes, as in this poem, Wyatt’s structured verse plays against the psychological realism and freedom of thought he aims for, which creates a worthwhile tension between the two imperatives (freedom and structure or formal correctness). Lyric has always been at least partly a vehicle for self-expression, for exploring moods and states of mind. Sappho is exemplary in this regard—she is a social poet, a public voice, but that lyric voice is also exploratory and expressive. Well, Wyatt is suggesting that the function of courtly poetry is not simply to pander to the regime in power or bolster one’s standing. He seems really to believe in the ideals of honesty and fidelity, though he’s painfully aware of being compromised by his function in life. How he responds to that dilemma says much about him.

“Whoso list his wealth and ease retain”

The allusion to Seneca says much—the Greek and Roman gods are all power; they just do what they want. Henry VIII is the “god” who sends thunder out from his throne, striking down those closest to him and those at a distance. As Anne Boleyn is, so might we be.

“Mine Own John Poins”

This poem examines the respective merits of the active and the contemplative life. The Renaissance felt the pull of both the Platonic philosophy urging withdrawal and the Aristotelian view urging engagement. Here, though, the speaker’s idleness and reflectiveness are enforced: in 1536 Wyatt was imprisoned in the Tower with five other suspected lovers of Anne Boleyn, but then he was released and rusticated, and a few months afterward was made Sheriff of Kent and led soldiers to quell an uprising. Now he is at home and has time to reflect and to offer some honest criticism of life at court. The most frustrating contrast in such a setting is the one between seeming and being: everyone is acting a part; people go around pretending to be good, wise, holy, concerned for the realm’s welfare, and so forth, while in fact their activities revolve around self-aggrandizement, the satisfaction of lust, and other unworthy things. Worse yet, the players know what’s going on, but are compelled to cover up the sham with pretty lies. See also William Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey’s fine poem “So cruel prison how could betide” (610). The two poems would make for a good comparative paper.