Henry VIII's Courtier, Sir Thomas Wyatt

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2022

⏱️ 53 minutes

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Summary

No one represented the complexities of the court of Henry VIII better than Sir Thomas Wyatt, a skilled diplomat who was forced to live with the moral and mortal consequences of his shifting allegiances. He was also an outstanding and pioneering poet, who penned the first English sonnets. His satires covertly speak truth to power, alluding to events that it would have been treasonous to talk about openly.

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Professor Susan Brigden, author of Thomas Wyatt: The Heart's Forest, an outstanding biography which won the prestigious Wolfson History Prize.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Professor S. Analybskum and this is not just the tutors.
0:12.9	Let me start by reading to you one of the most mysterious and beautiful poems to come out of Henry VIII's
0:19.2	court. They flee from me that sometimes did me seek with naked foot stalking in my chamber.
0:30.2	I have seen them gentle, tame and meek that now are wild and do not remember that sometime
0:38.8	they put themselves in danger to take bread at my hand and now they range
0:46.0	busily seeking with a continual change. Thank be fortunate hath been otherwise 20 times better
0:54.6	but once in special in thin array after a peasant guise when her loose gown from her shoulders did
1:03.3	fall and she meek caught in her arms long and small therewithal sweetly did me kiss and softly said
1:14.0	dear heart how like you this it was no dream I lay broad waking but all is turned through my
1:23.6	gentleness into a strange fashion of forsaking and I have lived to go of her goodness and she also
1:31.0	to use new fanguordness but since that I so kindly am served I would feign know what she has deserved
1:43.5	what appears to be and indeed is a reflection on a moment of intimacy also carries echoes of the
1:55.3	court of Henry VIII especially here we have the question of what is served and what is deserved
2:05.2	it was written by an accomplished poet and linguist one who has been described as one of the
2:11.0	morning stars of the Renaissance in England a man who introduced into English the Petraken sonnet
2:17.2	the epigram the Horatian verse epistle and difficult Italian verse forms from Dante and
2:24.0	Petrake like the Terza Rima in which rhymes into weave between groups of three lines or
2:29.9	tersets a b a b c b c d c and so on but he was also an ambassador a diplomat and a spy in service
2:42.4	to Henry VIII his name was Sotomous Wyatt linked to Anne Bolin and escaping from both the
2:51.6	Inquisition and from the Justice of Henry VIII's court after having been thrown into the tower on two
2:58.7	occasions so Thomas Wyatt's life is as mysterious as his poem he flees from us to talk about this
3:09.8	bright star I'm joined by another Dr. Susan Britten is a super numery fellow at Lincoln College
	...

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