Thomas Wyatt's Poetry: The Politics of Love

Author(s): JONATHAN Z. KAMHOLTZ

Source: Criticism , Fall 1978, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Fall 1978), pp. 349-365
Published by: Wayne State University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23102683

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 JONATHAN Z. KAMHOLTZ*

Thomas Wyatt's Poetry:

The Politics of Love

Wyatt's "He is not ded that sometyme hath a fall" examines

various natural consolations for political disgrace.

HE is not ded that sometyme hath a fall.

The Sonne retorneth that was vnder the clowd
And when fortune hath spitt oute all her gall
I trust good luck to me shalbe allowd.
For I have sene a shippe into haven fall
After the storme hath broke boeth mast and shrowd;
And eke the willowe that stowpeth with the wynde
Doeth ryse again, and greater wode doeth bynd.1
Wyatt, closely following his source in Serafino, searches for a
satisfactory metaphorical model: by grace of what force can the
fallen one be restored?2 In considering these various alternatives,
the speaker tries to find a way to exert some influence over circum
stances that have bereft him of control of his life. As long as the
speaker continues to propose comparisons, he stresses the ways that
falls are unlike deaths. Activity of the imagination is itself a kind
of consolation for political frustration. The speaker's imagination
is the most active force in the poem. The images he chooses depict
survival as a passive activity: the sun's reemergence depends upon

•Jonathan Z. Kamholtz is in the English Department at the University of

Cincinnati.
1 Kenneth Muir and Patricia Thomson, eds., Collected Poevts of Sir Thomas
Wyatt (Liverpool: Liverpool Univ. Press, 1969), poem LX, p. 45. The
text of all Wyatt poems is from the Muir-Thomson edition; subsequent
references in the text will identify the poem by edition and roman numeral,
e. g., M-T LX. The titles from Tottel are from Hyder Edward Rollins, ed.,
Tottel's Miscellany (1557-1587) (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1928-9).
2 Wyatt may have been drawn to Serafino's multiple alternatives, as in
"Venemus Thorns" (M-T LXXVI)—part of the logical and rhetorical force
Patricia Thomson sees as Wyatt's debt to Serafino. This essay—and any
serious work on Wyatt—is much indebted to the full-length studies by
Patricia Thomson, Sir Thomas Wyatt and his Background (Stanford: Stanford
Univ. Press, 1964) and Raymond Southall, The Courtly Maker (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1964).
349

Copyright © 1979 by Wayne State University Press

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350 Jonathan Z. Kamholtz

the passing of the clouds, the ship must have luck befall it, and
the willow "stowpeth." Yet only the willow, the speaker assures
us, " doeth ryse "—although possibly in a different form, lending its
strength to those who are greater: but it alone has specifically solved
the problem of falling. Presumably by its very nature, it cannot help
but be flexible. It is a worthy model for the courtier: it knows
when to give.
Wyatt's political poetry is filled with ambiguity about the nature
and identity of its heroes. The lyric begins " He is not ded," but
by line four, it asserts " I trust good luck to me shalbe allowed."
Muir-Thomson note that in the best manuscript, the Egerton, " I am
not ded" has been altered in Wyatt's own hand to "He" (p. 312).
Though Wyatt's alteration might be the rather obvious subterfuge
of politically prudent disguise, the resulting confusion typifies
larger problems in Wyatt's court poetry.3 Is Wyatt more concerned
with the fall of Henry's great men, content to see himself as poet
and observer while men like Cromwell and Wolsey pay for the risks
they have taken, or is Wyatt concerned with his own political ups
and downs, with himself as actor-victim? In choosing to retreat to
the pose of an outsider ("For I have sene a shippe.Wyatt
suggests that he prefers to be remembered as an observer, a mind
that has visited the court and learned its lessons. In altering the
manuscript's stoic—and possibly self-pitying—" I am not ded all
though I had a fall" to "HE," Wyatt may also be obliquely trans
forming court politics into another phenomenon from which a shrewd
observer—the speaker—can learn, as he did from observing the clouded
sun, the battered ship and the bending willow. By alluding to the court
but stepping back from it, Wyatt continues to pursue his quest for the
still spot in the turning world where he might find quiet of mind.
The editor of Tottel's Miscellany printed the revised version
("He"), but adds a puzzling title: "The lover hopeth of better
chance." The editor—the poem's earliest published interpreter and
critic—has read the verse as a love lyric. But where is the erotic
content?

We know that Tottel's editor altered and possibly warped many

8 Thomas A. Hannen notes that Wyatt's political verse is frequently " about
the difficulty of achieving self-knowledge" in public situations. " The
Humanism of Sir Thomas Wyatt" in The Rhetoric of Renaissance Poetry from
Wyatt to Milton, Thomas O. Sloan and Raymond B. Waddington, eds. (Berke
ley: Univ, of California Press, 1974), p. 39.

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 Thomas Wyatt's Poetry: The Politics of Love 351

poems he printed (the regularization of the rhythm of "They fle

from me " is the infamous example). Furthermore, the titles that
Tottel's editor assigned the lyrics virtually created the persona of
" the lover " through whose complaining lips we hear an enormous
number of the anthologized lyrics. The very act of titling—asserting
the presence of a speaker and frequently proposing moral sententiae—
imposes some distortion on the courtly lyrics, as does the change from
manuscript to printed word. The printed poem belongs to a different
political context and a different literary tradition.4 Perhaps Tottel's
editor hoped to infuse bourgeois married love with the high-minded
ness and sexual sublimation of the courtly love ethos.
Nevertheless, the title suggests that to the sixteenth century ear,
"He is not ded" could sound like an amatory poem. Though we
should not preclude the possibility that the imagery of rising and
falling refers indirectly to the flux of male sexual energy, it seems
more likely that the political-amatory correspondence takes place on
a more general level: the problems of political flux were seen as
being applicable to the flux of love's fortunes as well. The poet
then seeks safe harbor from the storms of love as well as those of
political controversy and disgrace.
The evidence in Tottel suggests that the poem has a fundamentally
dual significance. Courtly love achieves the status of a natural
force—and of political forces. Perhaps "the lover" hopes that love
places him beyond politics—or that he will fare at least as well as
disgraced courtiers, hoping that the same consolations are available
to the heartbroken as to the crestfallen. This reading would add
new poignance to the female personification of fortune, and to the
speaker's humbly passive suit when he deals with his own plight
most directly: " I trust good luck to me shalbe allowed." Love
and politics may be seen as complementary despotisms. Seeing both
the political and erotic implications of the poem suggests the multi
plicity of social obligations imposed upon the courtier poet: he can

4 Significant discussions of this can be found in J. W. Saunders, The Pro

fession of E?iglish Letters (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964), pp.
31-67, and Edwin H. Miller, The Professional Writer in Elizabethan England
(Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1959). More theoretical accounts are
given in Marshall MacLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typo
graphic Man (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1962), and Walter Benjamin,
"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" in Illuminations,
ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken, 1968), pp. 217-51.

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352 Jonathan Z. Kamholtz

be distant from the fall of others, and yet is destined to love and
have to sue politely to a force as powerful and potentially hostile
as fortuna.
Raymond Southall, in The Courtly Maker, insists that Wyatt's
reader not overlook " the political aspect of the amorous complaint,"
and notes that the conventions of the courtly love lyric could
" express the real character of courtly existence," where, he notes,
" the pattern of personal relationships could be kaleidoscoped at
any moment by the exigencies of national and international politics "
(pp. 49, 25, 8). A review of the situation at court in the opening
decades of the sixteenth century will help us understand the political
world which Wyatt's love lyrics reflect and express.
Some of the anxieties of Wyatt's poetry may well reflect the
political ambiguities that accompanied what has been called the
Henrican revolution.5 During the Tudor years, England underwent
a basic transition from a medieval state, held together by the static,
contractual interpersonal relationships of feudal ties, towards a
modern state, governed by more impersonal, bureaucratic and fluid
bonds. Court attitudes and courtly art forms reflect the transition
between these two systems.
The medieval, feudal court depended upon mutual, reciprocal
agreements between king and aristocracy; each offered protection
to the other. The key term in medieval government, notes G. R.
Elton, is the "household," and service to the state centered around
the court—which was the royal household—and service to the king's
person (p. 19). Security, the goal of the feudal state servant, was
attained by being granted a court office, affording the courtier a
literal as well as a metaphorical place at court.
Around the turn of the sixteenth century, however, new con
stituencies sought and found ways to serve the king. Louis B.
Wright has called the Tudor monarchy a "bourgeois dynasty" and
historians generally agree that members of the increasingly influential
middle class rose into positions of greater public importance than
ever before—men like Wolsey, Cromwell, More and even Wyatt

5 A good general discussion of the policies and ideals of Henry's court

may be found in G. R. Elton, The Tudor Revolution in Government (Cam
bridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1953). Also valuable is Wallace T. MacCaffrey,
" Place and Patronage in Elizabethan Politics" in Elizabethan Government
and Society: Essays Presented to Sir John Neale, S. T. Bin doff et al., eds.
(London: Univ. of London Press, 1961), p. 104.

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 Thomas Wyatt's Poetry: The Politics of Love 353

himself.6 Their loyalty was measured not merely by service to the

king's person, but by serving the increasingly far-flung national and
international network of laws and interests associated with the needs
of a strong, centralized state.7 Authority was increasingly delegated,
and managerial and administrative talents became vital. But with
avenues of success open to larger numbers of people, the terrors
that accompany competition become of greater concern: fallings
follow risings, successful men displace the less successful, factionalism
disrupts unity of purpose.
Henry VIII combined the personal authority of the king's medieval
role with the legal authority of the modern state. The feudal system
had been weakened by years of war and the rise of new sources of
economic strength and influence. Thomson notes the increasing
fictiveness of traditional medieval roles: "The master-servant link
had, in fact, lost much of its feudal strength. At most, the master
represented an intermediate loyality between servant and state"
(p. 52). In this context, decisions to perpetuate feudal roles become
stronger statements about the need for archaic political ideals. Henry
was fascinated by medieval culture and kept alive its formal network
of symbolic actions, including jousts and state pageants which were
a form of public courtly romance. G. R. Elton notes that Henry's
own talents and interests were more towards the older system. Henry
seems to have rebelled against the bureaucratic state he had helped
to create, preferring to exercise personal pleasure over legal needs
(pp. 67-71). England's Reformation was itself a curious mixture of
assertion of feudal prerogatives and the consolidation of a modern,
independent national state.
The transitional nature of the state is reflected in changes, anxieties
and pressures on courtly art as well. Even the system of unpublishing
courtly amateurs whose poetry circulates in manuscript form is
breaking down; nearly a century intervenes between Chaucer's
death and the exposure of his poetry to a non-courtly audience,
while Wyatt's poetry appears in print within fifteen years of his
death.

"Wright, Middle-Class Culture in Elizabethan England (1935; Ithaca: Cornell

University Press, 1958), p. 5. An important dissenting view may be found
in Jack H. Hexter, Reappraisals in History (London: Longmans, 1961), pp.
71-116.

7 See Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy: 1558-1641 (Abridged

Edition) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 5-36.

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354 Jonathan Z. Kamholtz

C. S. Lewis asks us to see Wyatt as a feudal court poet; he notes

that a song by Wyatt

was not intended to be read. It has little meaning until it

is sung in a room with many ladies present. The whole scene
comes before us. The poet did not write for those who
would sit down to The Poetical Works of Wyatt. We are
having a little music after supper. In that atmosphere all
the confessional or autobiographical tone of the songs falls
away 8
Lewis reminds us that the ceremonial conversations of the courtly
love lyric can be envisioned within the feudal context of household
service. But Lewis treats rather unambiguously a role in which
Wyatt often seems to feel uncomfortable. The artificer as medieval
court servant is perhaps a fading ideal, a nostalgic indulgence, against
which to measure the true tone of Wyatt's poetry. The bitterness
of Wyatt's songs may not merely be a pose adopted towards un
gracious ladies. Songs like " My lute, awake! " (M-T LXVI) and
"My pen, take payn" (M-T CLXXIX) hint at an artistic mode
on the verge of collapse, for they are lyrics which end symbolically
in the silence of the court artist. Wyatt's poetry moves beyond the
conventions of court satire and amatory complaint to examine the
difficulty he feels in transmitting his words in the sort of context
Lewis describes.

Wyatt's love poetry reflects the ambiguity of functioning in a

transitional state. Wyatt writes about both the courtly love situ
ation, which depends upon a system of lovers with clear if frustrating
hierarchical places, and the Petrarchan love situation, which depicts
the lover without an authentic, natural place, thrown back upon, and
within, himself. Wyatt complains about the oppressive rigidity of
the courtly love setting with its accretion of traditional and restrictive
understandings. Yet he equally fears the " newfanglenes" of the
second, where lovers serve no system but themselves and their egos.
Love is subjected to an unprecedented series of rises and falls.
Wyatt sees himself as caught between the oppressions of stasis and the
oppressions of change. Through it all, Wyatt seems to be searching

8 Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama (Ox

ford: Clarendon Press, 1954), p. 230. There is an interesting related discussion
in H. A. Mason, Humanism and Poetry in the Early Tudor Period: An Essay
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959), pp. 164-65, 172-73.

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 Thomas Wyatt's Poetry: The Politics of Love 355

for a harbor—for a place at court and a place in the heart, wh

a trucc can be called to the warring competitions between individ
set free from the traditional feudal and courtly roles. In doin
he wants to be part of a system that he can see is becoming weak
and weaker. Wyatt suggests that contemporary politician and
temporary lover share a common frame of mind: both lack,
need, a place.
The domestication of the Petrarchan paradox offered the ea
Renaissance poet a shorthand way of describing states of min
which no known natural state corresponded. Love's freezing f
and burning rains can only be felt by men out of harmony w
their world. Nature cannot cure the lover, or suggest a way
him to express himself, so he turns within. Only internally can t
lover regain control over his situation, for the imagination, as Sidn
was to argue, does not disdain to be bound by the limits of f
nature's laws.

Wyatt s adaptation of Petrarch's Rime cii, " Caesar, when that the
traytour of Egipt" (M-T III), explores the relationship between the
paradoxical states of mind of the politician and the lover. We do
not expect great men or political heroes to express themselves plainly:

CAESAR, when that the traytour of Egipt

With th'onourale hed did him present
Covering his gladness did represent
Playnt with his teeres owteward, as it is writt:
And Hannyball eke, when fortune him shitt
Clene from his reign and from all his intent,
Laught to his folke whome sorrowe did torment,
His cruell dispite for to disgorge and qwit.

Men who have a political role to play may have to divorce, for
reasons of policy, their public selves from their private ones. They
either hide or redirect the passions that demand expression.
Tottels editor entitles the poem "Of others fained sorrow, and
the lovers fained mirth." While Muir-Thomson warn that the
poem does not need to be read as a love poem (p. 264), the sonnet's
sestet seems to focus on amatory, not political, experiences:

So chaunceth it oft that every passion

The mynde hideth by colour contrary
With fayned visage, now sad, now mery:
Whereby, if I laught, any tyme, or season

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356 Jonathan Z. Kamholtz

It is for bicause I have nother way

To cloke my caxe but vnder spoort and play.9
In the public world, all passions are masked, but the poets concern
focuses only on the falseness of his expressions of joy. The sonnet
is richest when read in a dual context. The sestet shows the poet
anchoring the paradoxical style of his love in history, as well as in
his emotions; the poet appropriates the unchanging exemplars of
history to his argument about love. He has found models in the
political world for love's " disdaynfull dowblenes" (M-T V). In
so doing, he changes the status of the lover, giving the lover a new,
if only partial, heroism: the lover is like a fragmented public hero
more like the conquered Hannibal, however, than the conquering
Caesar in that his misery, rather than his mirth is being concealed.
The Miscellany title also suggests that this alliance with the past
is accompanied by alienation from the present: " others" feel one
way, the lover feels another. The title helps call to mind the
competitive stance Wyatt so often adopts toward his fellow courtiers:
the audience Wyatt tends to address remains an undifferentiated mass
of male consciousness from whom he has detached himself (rather
than, say, his friends at court). The alienation also suggests the
continuing English Renaissance lyric drama between public calling
and private pain. This receives expression in a line of courtier
poems that extends from Wyatt's "Ffarewel, Love, and all thy lawes
for ever" (M-T XIII) to Sidney's "Your words my friend" or
"Having this day my horse" (Astrophil and Stella XXI and XLI).
The conflict between the courtier's ambition to be absorbed into the
public world and the lover's inability to express himself in publicly
useful ways finds form in the deflected feudal imagery of such poems
as "The longe love" (M-T IV).
These poems also reflect changes in the traditional expectations of
the courtier. Under a feudal system, a young man's public duty was
primarily military in nature. But as David Bevington notes:
In its battle against maintenance and feudal autonomy, the
Tudor monarchy introduced new criteria for political success
in England. No longer supreme was the military warlord
with his chivalrous pursuits 10
9 While M-T argue for the occasional nature of the poem, Wyatt has ex
plicitly denied the particularity of the occasion: " if I laught, any tyme, or
season."
10 Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press,
1968), p. 42.

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 Thomas Wyatt's Poetry: The Politics of Love 357

The courtier's new duties were more literate—and even literary.

These poems thus complain against a betrayal of political expectations
in a transitional state. "The furyous gonne" (M-T LXI)—another
poem which Tottel's editor takes to be a drama about "the lover"—
can be read in terms of the courtier's fear that love has caused him
to betray his calling as a public warrior.

THE furyous gonne in his rajing yre,

When that the bowle is rammed in to sore,
And that the flame cannot part from the fire,
Cracketh in sonder, and in the ayre doeth rore
The shevered peces; right so doeth my desire
Whose flame encreseth from more to more,
Wych to let owt I dare not loke nor speke:
So now hard force my hert doeth all to breke.

Love is blocking the traditional public avenues of young men towards

success. The lover is left only with self-destructive inner warfare
as a way to release the latent violence of his ambitions—and the
violence locked in the experience and language of love.
Wyatt sees both love and politics as a constant process of slipping
and falling. He seeks a common goal in both: the desire to stand,
to find independent footing. Raymond Southall notes that "ex
perience for Wyatt is a continual search for stability within instability,
for a point of rest within a restless world..." (p. 77). This stability
is frequently pictured in terms of flexibility, mask and pretense, as
well as stoic self-assertion and rigidity; the resolution of " He is not
ded," after all, was that a man can do worse than to be like the
willow and rise with others, binding the " greater wode" which
could not bend.

A similar image of the poet seeking a way to stand appears

CCXXXVI:

THE piller pearisht is whearto I Lent

The strongest staye of myne vnquyet mynde;
The lyke of it no man agayne can fynde
From East to west still seking though he went....
Muir-Thomson note that "modern scholars have not followed
T[ottel] in labelling this a love poem" (p. 430). They stress the
biographical nature of the poem as a response to the falls that
threaten public life, especially Wyatt's emotional reaction to the
execution of his patron Cromwell and Wyatt's own subsequent in

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358 Jonathan Z. Kamholtz

carcerations.11 And clearly the poem is occasional, but like most

occasional poems, it reveals more about the speaker than about his
subject. In entitling the sonnet "The lover lamentes the death of
his love," Tottel's editor may have been reading the poem against
the background of its Petrarchan original, which doubly lamented
the losses of both patron and lover (Laura). Moreover, the reading
implied in Tottel may suggest the intensity of the bond between
courtier and patron; some public ties are private ties as well, just
as some forms of public favor—especially those associated with the
personal ties of feudalism—can be expressions of love.
While the poem's primary concern with grim political reality
seems to have absorbed the amatory aspects of the lyric, Tottel's
editor may also have responded to the general similarity of the terms
of political and erotic mourning. In both types of poem, Wyatt is
torn between dependence and independence—between leaning and
standing. In both, the weakness of the individual is compensated
for by union with others. Both types of poem depict the restless
" unquyet mynde " seeking stability; both types depict the intangible
spirit questing for something tangible to rest on.
Muir-Thomson points out that Wyatt has altered the Petrarchan
original by focusing the last six lines upon his self-hatred and
possible guilt. Perhaps Wyatt has replaced his mourning for a lost
love with mourning for himself:

But syns that thus it is by destenye

What can I more but have a wofull hart,
My penne in playnt, my voyce in wofull crye,
My mynde in woe, my bodye full of smart,
And I my self my self alwayes to hate
Till dreadfull death do ease my dolefull state?
Both love and mourning turn the mind inward. Wyatt depicts the
kind of self-conscious, divided self that produces the world of para
dox: " I my self my self alwayes to hate." The themes of love and
politics both produce a sense of doubleness, of dual selves; the
unstable mind is the result of the unstable self, shaken by the fear
that all around it is falling.12

11 There is a detailed account of this episode in Wyatt's life in Mason, pp.

19J-98.

12 Recent articles by Donald M. Friedman have focused upon the mental

world of Wyatt's poems; note especially his " The Mind in the Poem: Wyatt's
' They Fie From Me,"' SEL 7 (1967), 1-13.

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 Thomas Wyatt's Poetry: The Politics of Love 359

The political form of Wyatt's fear of slipping and falling is

expressed in Wyatt's adaptation of Seneca, " Stond who so list upon
the Slipper toppe/Of courtes estates..." (M-T CCXL). The speaker
sees himself looking on while others await their imminent fall.18
(The fear of falling probably held a special poignance for Wyatt
who, as a courtier with middle-class roots, had gotten where he was
by rising. Surrey, who was to the manner born, looked upon his
misfortunes differently.) Tottel's editor prints an altered version,
locating the courtiers on Fortune's "slipper whele." The text of
the Arundel manuscript suggests that the place itself, not the
machinery of fate, is slippery. Wyatt poses frequently as one who
is literally out of place: he is removed, looking out, withdrawn to
find some place stabler and more quiet, as he does in "Myne owne
John Poyntz" (M-T CV)—even though the place is an exile or
prison as often as it is a true harbor.
The language of falling pervades Wyatt's love poetry as well as
his political poetry. When Wyatt bids " Ffarewell, Love, and all
thy lawes for ever" (M-T XIII), it is because he "lusteth no lenger
rotten boughes to clyme." Love's laws create an insecure place
from which the poet might someday fall. One can fall from love
despite the faithfulness of one's service, as in " My pen, take payn"
(M-T CLXXIX), where the poet asks " Wherefore/To hold so
fast and yet to ffall? " In "It may be good, like it who list" (M-T
XXI), the poet argues that the paradoxical state of mind itself
creates an inherently unstable floor through which to fall:
Alas! I tred an endles maze
That seketh to accorde two contraries;
And hope still, and nothing hase,
Imprisoned in libertes,
As oon unhard and still that cries;
Alwaies thursty and yet nothing I tast:
For dred to fall I stond not fast.

The need to stand and the fear to fall: the poet's private life and
public life are brought together by a common language. Wyatt
seeks the secure place but finds only pitfalls.
Love and the state both try to subject the courtier to authority.
While Wyatt might be willing to be bound by court hierarchy and

1 Strong readings of this poem can be found in Hannen, p. 39, and Mason,
pp. 182-85.

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360 Jonathan Z. Kamholtz

by "lovers laws" (M-T CCXIV), the laws of neither are plain or

immutable. Both offer ways to ascend into favor, but the avenues
are insecure and the perches gained are brittle. Wyatt seeks what
Shakespeare's Ulysses, in his speech on order in Troilus and Cressida,
called an " authentic place "—a place he may securely occupy in
both a woman's heart and the world of court service. Wyatt
pictures himself as being helpless in the face of political and sexual
authority, but those authorities are in turn helpless to create stable
order in their world. They are unable to serve those who serve
them. Wyatt aspires to both types of preferment because they
promise stability; but both are themselves unstable, constantly
evolving new rules and creating new favorites. Both authorities are
strong because of the intangible (or paradoxical) obligations they
impose upon the speaker; both are weak because they can provide
no tangible place or harbor for him. In consequence, Wyatt's
standing in court and in love feels intangible, while his ensuing fall
seems quite tangible.
Wyatt chooses to see himself as a reasoning man in an unreasonable
world. Several of his lyrics counterpoint the stalemate of illogic
with a brief climactic note of logic:

I FYNDE no peace and all my warr is done;

I fere and hope I burne and freise like yse;
I fiey above the wynde yet can I not arrise;
And noght I have and all the worold I seson....
Withoute Iyen, I se; and withoute tong I plain;
I desire to perisshe and yet I aske helthe;
I love an othre and thus I hate my self;
I fede me in sorrowe and laugh in all my pain;
Likewise displeaseth me boeth deth and lyffe;
And my delite is causer of this stryff.
(M-T XXVI)

With " thus," the poet imposes momentary control over his situation,
without of course resolving the internalized paradoxes from which
many Petrarchan lyrics derive their energy. In "What worde is
this " (M-T L), Wyatt tries to solve the problem of the illogic and
instability of love by finding a word that will not slide:

WHAT wourde is that that chaungeth not,

Though it be tourned and made in twain?
It is myn aunswer, god it wot,

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 Thomas Wyatt's Poetry: The Politics of Love 361

And eke the causer of my payn.

A love rewardeth with disdain,
Yet is it loved. What would ye more?
It is my helth eke and my sore.

The poem's energy comes from its mixture of stability and paradox.
Wyatt's riddle creates a world of paradox for which he hopes to
find an " aunswer " in a word that cannot be changed, no matter how
it is assaulted by experience and intellectual ingenuity.
The " aunswer," of course, has traditionally been given as " Anna,'
and the poem is probably correctly read as one of Wyatt's poems to
Anne Boleyn.14 Tottel's editor, who characteristically prefers reason
to paradox, agrees; he prints the third line as "It is mine Anna"
and entitles the poem " Of his love called Anna "—thus overem
phasizing the solution to the experiential and linguistic riddle. The
editor is unable to abide Wyatt's question: " What would ye more? "
Wyatt's interest is in posing the riddle; unresolvable paradoxes have
more weight than their elusive resolutions. He searches for the
plain word, and the plain love, but falls short of finding them.
There is a political dimension to love's paradoxes and ciphers in
this case as well. In so far as the poem is addressed to Anne Boleyn,
Wyatt's love is literally as unutterable as it is unfulfillable. The
poet's choice of partial articulateness reflects political pressures.
Numerous opaque legends have survived about Henry's jealousy of
Wyatt; competition for this love was unthinkable. In noting that
love could be " a form of social rebellion," and hence dangerous,
Southall notes that "impolitic love, therefore, may be defined as
real affection when opposed to the political order of degrees and estates "
(p. 24). Prudence in dangerous situations could force the courtier
lover to speak in ciphers.15 Part of the drama of the poem resides
in Wyatt's quest for a forbidden word to express a still more
forbidden experience. This complicates our reading of Wyatt's
intentions and themes. As both courtly and Petrarchan lover, Wyatt

14 Thomson discusses the relationship between Wyatt and Anne on pp. 18-45,
and mentions the possibility of Anne's having written a riddling reply to
this poem. Tottel printed a number of other riddling name poems, including
" Of his love named White" and " Deserts of Nymphs," an acrostic.
16 Hannen notes that Henry's court " was a place of deadly serious intrigue
where each faction plotted against every other for royal favor. Behind the
artificial frivolity and the macabre mask of charm, every work or deed was
weighed for the information it could yield..." (p. 43).

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362 Jonathan Z. Kamholtz

would be expected to transform his attachment to others into internal

stress. Tottel's emendation is thus considerably less perceptive than
Wyatt's own vision of his situation: the correct answer is not the
plain word but the paradox, not " Anna " but " It is my helth eke
and my sore."
In Who so list to hounte (M-T VII), the speaker seeks to create
stability and plainness for himself in a world that offers him only
instability, paradox, uncertainty, exhaustion and danger. The poem
depicts a moment at which the poet's sense of alienation from both
court and love first becomes self-conscious and receives articulation.
It revolves around an episode of political and sexual self-discovery.
The sonnet suggests the kinds of burdens that the courtier's life
places upon citizens of Henry's court, reminding the speaker that the
fictions of neither courtly love nor Petrarchan love are experienced
in a political vacuum.
The sonnet is another of Wyatt's " whoso" poems: one man at
court is speaking to a faceless group of others. The poem is filled
with reminders that love is a public, not a private, pursuit; the "I"
and " thou " of the love unit is cluttered with the presence of others—
those " who " are addressed, the group " of theim " with whom the
poet shares his plight, and, of course, the implied presence of Caesar.

WHO SO list to hounte I know where is an hynde;

But as for me, helas, I may no more:
The vayne travaill hath weried me so sore,
I ame of theim that farthest cometh behinde

In the second quatrain, he hints at his paradoxical situation: his mind,

as well as his body, has become involved in love, for his mind
becomes the wounding arrow. Yet it is the hunter who staggers as
if wounded; the experience that seeks to go outward rebounds
inwardly.

Yet may I by no meanes my weried mynde

Drawe from the Diere: but as she fleeth afore
Faynting I folowe; I leve of therefore,
Sithens in a nett I seke to hold the wynde.

The resolution proposed is related to that of " I fynde no peace "—the

speaker wishes to impose logic on his situation and presumably
reassert his mind's control over his life (with the strong " therefore ").
The speaker seeks to harness the resolving power of received, tra
ditional language, and offers a proverbial explanation: "In a nett I

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 Thomas Wyatt's Poetry: The Politics of Love 363

seke to hold the wynde." Having extricated himself from

seeking (another characteristic pose), and having found a v
and even a natural excuse (the image of the wind) to leave
the poem's personal drama ought to end here.
But the speaker remains haunted by his experience. Petr
dream is Wyatt's nightmare. He is dissatisfied with his prov
solution; as in " Satire III," Wyatt finds the plainness of com
place to be inconclusive. The sestet reopens the case with almos
same formulation as the octet: " Who list her hount."

Who list her hount I put him owte of dowbte,

As well as I may spend his tyme in vain;
And graven with Diamondes in letters plain
There is written her faier neck rounde abowte:
'Noli me tangere for Cesars I ame,
And wylcie for to hold though I seme tame

The sestet proposes an alternate explanation, one that will put its
audience " owte of dowbte " and whose meaning is " plain."
The message he finds is, of course, not at all plain. In Petrarch's
version, the collar explained that certain deer were still protected
by Caesar even though they had been set free: Caesar's I was, not
" for Cesars I ame." The message around her neck describes the
complex interplay between obedience due to wordly and other
worldly rulers. The motto is composed of a conflation of the
Gospels: John's touch me not, for I have not yet ascended, and
Mark's and Luke's render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. The final
two lines thus offer three possibly distinct reasons for the speaker's
failure to hold his love: this beauty is other-wordly and belongs to
no one (as in Petrarch's vision); this beauty has already been
claimed by Caesar, one who is far more powerful than the speaker;
this beauty is a wild thing of nature which no one captures. Stay
back, stay back, stay back.
Critical interest has focused upon the middle message, the warning
from wordly Caesar, who is usually seen as Henry pursuing his deer,
Anne Boleyn, a reading I accept.16 The poem thus fulfills our
dual expectations of Henry's court, filled with hints of wondrous
love and despotic terror. The pun on " graven" suggests both the
glories of courtly artistic wealth and the morbidity of the tomb.
The passive construction ("There is written"), of course, enables

18 M-T summarize the scholarly positions on p. 267.

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364 Jonathan Z. Kamholtz

us to read the message as having been written by Anne as well.

She warns the speaker to note the distinction between appearance
and being, exposing the gap between " I ame" and " I seme." This
gap was not an issue in the Petrarchan original, where the hind was
a vision from start to finish.17
If, however, we choose to read the message as coming from Henry,
the poem becomes more revealing about the relationship between
Tudor love and politics. Lovers keep their physical distance because
they sublimate their courtly passions, but also because of their
obedience to King and state. The lover's alienation affirms the
traditional social order and defuses his potential competition and
rebellion. He must show reverence for Caesar as well as for the
lady. Courtly love engenders a variety of conflicting and overlapping
loyalties. The graven collar announces that the woman is the true
servant of Caesar; the lover's alienation testifies that he too must
primarily be Caesar's servant rather than Anne's.
The poem is about physical space as well as a frame of mind. The
poem literally presents a speaker addressing his audience about a
place ("I know where is an hynde") where they may see what
he has seen. The poem depicts love that has left the ordered
confines of the court for the forest wilderness, and in doing so, has
lost its bearings. Wandering exhaustedly, the poet discovers that he
has no authentic place. His search for a safe harbor has failed and
he becomes like Wyatt's friend, Bryan, restless and rootless. The
speaker's dreadful experience in the woods is augmented by the
horror of court life, which has followed him into the forest: he
both seeks endlessly and endlessly falls ("Faynting I folowe").
In the sestet, the message on the collar modifies the images that
might explain the speaker's failure. While he wanted to think in
terms of having sought "to hold the wynde," the collar reminds
him that he cannot touch her because she is "wylde for to hold
thogh I seme tame." Wind is always wild and belongs to no one.
But animals that are wild can be made tame, and tame animals can
revert back to their wild state (as they do in "They fle from me").
In seeing Anne not as the "wynde" but as something "wylde,"
Wyatt reminds us that the human order can influence the natural
order. This manipulation is the essence of societies, political systems
and the arts. As we have seen in " He is not ded," poets use meta
phors to imaginatively manipulate nature. So do kings.

" In concluding his remarks on this poem, Mason argues that " Petrarch's
moral world is mediaeval while Wyatt's is Humanist and modern" (p. 190).

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 Thomas Wyatt's Poetry: The Politics of Love 365

This interference in the natural order is a crucial element in con

sidering the relationship between politics and love in Wyatt's lyrics.
The Tudor court enclosed a world of symbol makers. " Who so
list to hounte " describes the speaker's experience of coming across
a symbol that he did not himself create: he has encountered another's
metaphor. Part of the poem's impact comes from the speaker's
implied discovery that love poetry is not the only means to impose
symbolic values on events. Political power creates symbols as well.
Wyatt searches to find through love acceptable images to express
his mind's quest for quiet and stability. Sometimes he finds other
seekers—other courtly makers—instead. Perhaps Wyatt uses the
example of the political powers of King and court to illustrate a
general problem of the sixteenth century love poet: there are limits
to the extent to which the artist can impose his reason and imagination
upon another. There are rival quests to offer explanations for the
human mystery. The poet's may be more haunting and even more
persuasive, but the King's has more power and takes precedence.
The interplay between love and politics in Wyatt's poetry demon
strates some limits to the poet's power to define his world. It is
part of Wyatt's continuing struggle to try to see things in a stable way
in a world where no one will let him do so.

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