The Columbia History of British Poetry by Carl Woodring, James Shapiro
Authors: Carl Woodring, James Shapiro
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great verve and relish. Although the poem is signed "Skelton Laureat," it would be difficult to fit it into any medieval theory of poetry. In his epilogue Skelton pretends to invite dirty drunken women to listen to it, presumably for their castigation and reformation, but he can hardly be taken seriously since the invitation is in Latin. The poem is more properly a joke, a tour de force of low language and low life for the educated to laugh at.
The three poems Skelton wrote against Wolsey all use different speakers and modes: the parrot of "Speak Parrot" is a wise bird who makes oracular polyglot remarks in rhyme royal with baffling inconsequence. The politics of the day are filtered through the nonhuman, semidivine bird of paradise, whose snippets of talk are far more suggestive than informative. Scholarly industry has decoded a number of the parrot's darker remarks as allusions to Wolsey and his dominance over the young Henry VIII, but the poem is still largely a tantalizing riddle. Skelton has here perhaps taken up the old line about poetic obscurity for his own purposes: "Speak Parrot" is a poem that demands to be decoded: but the key, if there ever was one, is probably lost forever.
In "Colin Clout" the poet resorts to Skeltonics for a wide attack on religious and secular abuses, particularly Wolsey's luxury. The persona
Page 53
recalls the Langlandian figure of a simple rustic who can criticize society with greater truth than the rich and learned:
For though my ryme be ragged,
Tattered and jagged,
Rudely rayne-beaten,
Rusty and mothe-eaten,
Yf ye take well therwith
It hath in it some pyth.
But the persona is dropped entirely in the most vitriolic of Skelton's satires, "Why Come Ye Nat to Courte?" Wolsey, "the bochers dogge," "madde Amalecke," "Naman Sirus" is treated to accusations of all sorts, from treason to syphilis, in a linguistic register that ranges from a sneer at "the primordyall / of his wretched originall,'' to "The devyll kysse his arse!" Abuse was Skelton's speciality in his later life; he was invited by the King to engage in a flyting competition with Sir Christopher Garnesche, and he wrote several invectives against the Scots. When he wrote the poem "Against Venemous tongues," he knew what he was talking about.
The last known, and in some ways the nastiest, of Skelton's poems is his savage attack on two Cambridge students who were charged with heresy in 1527. It is interesting because Skelton added a postscript to it (as he did to many of his poems), in which he defends his right as a poet to embroil himself in theological and philosophical questions. After citing King David, a poet equal to any of the Greeks, Skelton makes an appeal to the "divine fury" view of poetry:
With me ye must consent . . .
How there is a spyrituall,
And a mysteriall,
And a mysticall
Effecte energiall,
As Grekes do it call,
Of suche an industry . . .
Of hevenly inspyracion
In laureate creacyon,
Of poetes commendacion,
That of divyne myseracion
God maketh his habytacion
In poetes whiche excelles . . .
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This is new in England. Diligent poets, earnest, improving (and sometimes guilt-ridden) poets of the Middle Ages give way to a more self-confident breed. They look to the newly discovered works of Plato for notions of divine inspiration and ally themselves with Renaissance artists in the reevaluation of the uniqueness and value of the artistic endeavor.
Further Reading
Andrew, Malcolm, and Ronald Waldron, eds. The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
Burrow, John W. Medieval Writers and Their Work: Middle English Literature and Its Background, 1100-1500 . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Donatelli, Joseph M. P., ed. Death and Liffe. Speculum Anniversary Monographs 15. Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval Academy of America, 1989.
Harvey, E. Ruth, ed. The Court of Sapience. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984.
Lawton, David. "Dullness and
The three poems Skelton wrote against Wolsey all use different speakers and modes: the parrot of "Speak Parrot" is a wise bird who makes oracular polyglot remarks in rhyme royal with baffling inconsequence. The politics of the day are filtered through the nonhuman, semidivine bird of paradise, whose snippets of talk are far more suggestive than informative. Scholarly industry has decoded a number of the parrot's darker remarks as allusions to Wolsey and his dominance over the young Henry VIII, but the poem is still largely a tantalizing riddle. Skelton has here perhaps taken up the old line about poetic obscurity for his own purposes: "Speak Parrot" is a poem that demands to be decoded: but the key, if there ever was one, is probably lost forever.
In "Colin Clout" the poet resorts to Skeltonics for a wide attack on religious and secular abuses, particularly Wolsey's luxury. The persona
Page 53
recalls the Langlandian figure of a simple rustic who can criticize society with greater truth than the rich and learned:
For though my ryme be ragged,
Tattered and jagged,
Rudely rayne-beaten,
Rusty and mothe-eaten,
Yf ye take well therwith
It hath in it some pyth.
But the persona is dropped entirely in the most vitriolic of Skelton's satires, "Why Come Ye Nat to Courte?" Wolsey, "the bochers dogge," "madde Amalecke," "Naman Sirus" is treated to accusations of all sorts, from treason to syphilis, in a linguistic register that ranges from a sneer at "the primordyall / of his wretched originall,'' to "The devyll kysse his arse!" Abuse was Skelton's speciality in his later life; he was invited by the King to engage in a flyting competition with Sir Christopher Garnesche, and he wrote several invectives against the Scots. When he wrote the poem "Against Venemous tongues," he knew what he was talking about.
The last known, and in some ways the nastiest, of Skelton's poems is his savage attack on two Cambridge students who were charged with heresy in 1527. It is interesting because Skelton added a postscript to it (as he did to many of his poems), in which he defends his right as a poet to embroil himself in theological and philosophical questions. After citing King David, a poet equal to any of the Greeks, Skelton makes an appeal to the "divine fury" view of poetry:
With me ye must consent . . .
How there is a spyrituall,
And a mysteriall,
And a mysticall
Effecte energiall,
As Grekes do it call,
Of suche an industry . . .
Of hevenly inspyracion
In laureate creacyon,
Of poetes commendacion,
That of divyne myseracion
God maketh his habytacion
In poetes whiche excelles . . .
Page 54
This is new in England. Diligent poets, earnest, improving (and sometimes guilt-ridden) poets of the Middle Ages give way to a more self-confident breed. They look to the newly discovered works of Plato for notions of divine inspiration and ally themselves with Renaissance artists in the reevaluation of the uniqueness and value of the artistic endeavor.
Further Reading
Andrew, Malcolm, and Ronald Waldron, eds. The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
Burrow, John W. Medieval Writers and Their Work: Middle English Literature and Its Background, 1100-1500 . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Donatelli, Joseph M. P., ed. Death and Liffe. Speculum Anniversary Monographs 15. Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval Academy of America, 1989.
Harvey, E. Ruth, ed. The Court of Sapience. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984.
Lawton, David. "Dullness and
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