Poetry (1) by Thomas Wyatt

PRIMARY SOURCE: (1557)

1. “My galy charged with forgetfulnes” 
2. “Marvaill no more all tho”

Context

• Publication: Wyatt was born c. 1503 to a Privy Councillor and Tudor loyalist. Wyatt studied at St. Johns College, Cambridge.  He married Elizabeth Brooke, daughter of Lord Cobham, c. 1520, though he divorced her c. 1525 on charges of adultery--around the same time he seems to have interested in Anne Boelyn. Asked to translate Petrarch in 1527, around the same time Henry VIII was interested in Anne Boelyn. Committed briefly to the Fleet for a brawl with the Sergeants of London in 1534. Imprisoned  to the Tower, probably as an ally of Anne, upon Suffolk's suggestion in 1536. After diplomatic missions 1539-40' is arrested in 1541 for association with Cardinal Pole. After a long life of public office in Kent, Wyatt is seized with fever after hard riding and dies at Sherbone. Wyatt's poetry circulated in manuscript, then published in A Booke of Ballets and Certain Psalms. Richard Tottel published 47 of Surrey's poems alongside 90 by Wyatt in the 1557 Miscellany. EEBO link.
• Scholarship: Scholars have been interested in Wyatt's early adoption of the sonnet, his role in politics, and in his use of heraldry.
• Why I'm reading it: The Canon, the court, sonnets, songs.

Content

• Form:

1. “My galy charged with forgetfulnes”: Roughly a Shakespearean sonnet, variable meter.
2. “Marvaill no more all tho”: Iambic trimeter, eight-line stanza, ababacac.

• Genre:

1. “My galy charged with forgetfulnes”: Petrarchan boat poem.
2. “Marvaill no more all tho”: Petrarchan lament

• Conceit:

1. “My galy charged with forgetfulnes”: Sailing-by-starlight metaphor for a Stoic lament.
2. “Marvaill no more all tho”: A synesthetic inventory of lament results in an aestheticized sadness, and thanks to Fortune for the song.