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Proverbs and Political Anxiety in the Poetry of SirThomas Wyatt and the Earl of SurreyAdrian O. WardPublished online: 09 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Adrian O. Ward (2000) Proverbs and Political Anxiety in the Poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl ofSurrey, English Studies, 81:5, 456-471

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PROVERBS AND POLITICAL ANXIETY IN THE POETRY OFSIR THOMAS WYATT AND THE EARL OF SURREY

In this paper I consider the strikingly contrasting treatment of proverbial ma-terial in the poetry of two Henrician poets who are traditionally and criticallyassociated so closely together, Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-42) and Henry Howard,the Earl of Surrey (1517-47). Long before C. S. Lewis categorised Wyatt andSurrey as fellow ‘drab’ poets, George Puttenham in 1589 paired them togetheras the pioneers of a new English poetry, heralding them as the principal mem-bers of ‘a new company of courtly makers’.1 The significance of Wyatt and Sur-rey in the history of English poetry is confirmed by their status as the maincontributors to the first sixteenth-century poetic miscellany, Richard Tottel’scollection of Songes and Sonettes (1557), later known as Tottel’s Miscellany.2

While the conventional critical linking of Wyatt and Surrey tends to obscure theimportant distinctions between the two of them, a close analysis of their use ofproverbial material brings out their differences from each other.

I

Wyatt is widely acknowledged in critical studies of his work as a proverbial poetand it is in the context of his role as a courtier and a foreign diplomat at a timeof a significant convergence between proverbial language, the establishment ofa new vernacular and Protestantism that a study of his use of proverbial formsis particularly enlightening.3 During the reign of Henry VIII vernacular English

English Studies, 2000, 5, pp. 456-4710013-838X/00/05-0456/$15.00© 2000, Swets & Zeitlinger

1 See C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama (Oxford, 1954),and R. C. Alston (ed), George Puttenham’s The Arte of English Poesie (1589) (Menston,Yorkshire, 1963) p. 62.

2 See H.E. Rollins (ed), Tottel’s Miscellany: 1557-1579, 2 vols (Cambridge, Massachusetts,1926, rev. ed. 1966).

3 Critics have traditionally considered Wyatt’s use of proverbs rather straightforwardly asbeing expressive of an honest and plain-speaking individual. Patricia Thomson, in SirThomas Wyatt and His Background (London, 1964), observes that Wyatt ‘delights inproverbs’ (p. 144). Douglas L. Peterson, in The English Lyric from Wyatt to Donne: A Studyof the Plain and Eloquent Styles (Princeton, New Jersey, 1967), considers Wyatt’s verse to becharacterised by the ‘homely proverb’ (p. 10). More recently critics have looked at Wyatt’suse of proverbs in terms of his experience as a courtier in an environment of intrigue andpower-struggle. According to T. M. Greene, in The Light of Troy: Imitation and Discovery inRenaissance Poetry (London, 1982), the success of proverbs bringing a sense of stability toWyatt’s experience is qualified: ‘the proverb supplies a certain stiffening but it scarcely suf-fices’ (p. 258). The most important new readings of the significance of proverbs in Wyatt’sverse are given by Stephen Greenblatt in his study Renaissance Self-Fashioning From More toShakespeare (London, 1980), and Diane M. Ross, ‘Sir Thomas Wyatt: Proverbs and the Po-etics of Scorn’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 18:2, 1987, pp. 201-12. See also ElizabethHeale, ‘ ‘‘An owl in a sack troubles no man”: proverbs, plainness, and Wyatt’, RenaissanceStudies, 11:4, 1997, pp. 420-33.

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was being used increasingly by English diplomats like Wyatt because it was seenas a more plain and transparent medium than the Latin that had traditionallydominated Catholic Europe.4 Although on the one hand the promotion of thevernacular during the Reformation means that Wyatt’s predilection for prover-bial speech can be viewed as part of a significant nationalistic, linguistic and re-ligious enterprise, on the other hand, proverbial speech was important in hiscapacity as a courtier and statesman abroad in purely pragmatic terms becauseit enhanced his image as a straightforward and honest individual. According toElizabeth Heale, ‘Wyatt’s career, and possibly his life, depended, more thanonce, on his ability to present himself as an honest, bluff, loyal servant, in anEnglish prose that had to appear plain, but in fact had to be flexible, effectiveand, when necessary, devious’.5 For Stephen Greenblatt the use of proverbiallanguage was an important part of his elaborate self-fashioning:

As ambassador, courtier, and poet, Wyatt seems to have self-consciously cultivated a bluff man-ner and a taste for homely proverbs, cultivated, that is, a manner that denies its own cunning …Even the formal skill involved in the structuring of ... a lyric may derive in part from diploma-cy, for beyond imparting a sensitivity to doubleness, Wyatt’s ambassadorial experience shapedhis consciousness of calculated effect, above all through the manipulation of language in thegame of power.6

Whereas Greenblatt’s discussion of Wyatt’s treatment of proverbs is largelyrestricted to his satires, I shall discuss how the characteristic ‘slipperiness’ ofWyatt’s proverbial material, exposing its potential for legitimising expediency,disguising duplicity and exonerating insults, is also evident in his lyric verse.7

Additionally, I examine how the inherent instability of proverbs means thatwhen the poet tries to define his experience, or endeavours to resolve his per-sonal dilemma of how to conduct his affairs at court, he frequently findsproverbial wisdom inadequate as a means categorically to stabilise his experi-ence. My analysis of Wyatt’s lyrics also reveals the proverbial to be embeddedat the deepest level, as if he drew on an essential proverbial vocabulary to com-pose these compact poems, where the proverbial is shown not to be an additionbut at the very core of his understanding of his experience. Fundamentally, asI shall show, Wyatt’s position as a humanist at court who endeavoured to useproverbial material as a means to stabilise his experience, and in his role as aforeign diplomat, where he manipulated proverbs in their slipperiness in orderto look after his own and his country’s interests, represent two contrasting func-tions of proverb use that inform his verse.

On rare occasions in Wyatt’s lyrics the poet accepts proverbial wisdom as a

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4 For a brief discussion of the use of vernacular English in foreign diplomacy see ElizabethHeale, Wyatt, Surrey and Early Tudor Poetry (London, 1998) p. 117.

5 Ibid, p. 117.6 Greenblatt, Self-Fashioning, p. 144.7 According to Heale, in Early Tudor Poetry, Wyatt possessed an ‘extraordinary awareness of

the slipperiness of words ... especially proverbs’ (pp. 17-18).

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means of understanding his experience, as in the case of the proverbial allusionin the fifth stanza of poem [CXI, 146].8

It was not long ere I by proof had foundThat feeble building is on feeble ground;For in her heart this word did never sound:

In aeternum.

The allusion to the proverb ‘Build on a good foundation’ (F619) effectively re-conciles the poet’s personal experience with common wisdom as he has realised,from his own experience, the pertinence or the ‘proof’ of this saying.9 Diane M.Ross comments that,

He now perceives in the familiar old phrase a new value. He has proof, as he says; he has testedthe old saw and found it true. The speaker implicitly acknowledges that the proverb was true be-fore he had the experience to know it. But the proverb’s priority cannot be recognized until livedexperience shows its truth.10

The term ‘proof’, in relation to the proverb in this poem, is significant becauseproving proverbs by personal experience was a major theme in sixteenth-cen-tury poetry. The poet’s disappointment concerning a failed relationship can bedefined in common terms because his experience is not a unique one. Of course,the proverb does not merely describe the hazards of amorous courtship, but canbe applied to a wide range of contexts, serving to underline the commonalty ofthe poet’s experience. Here he recognises his folly in terms of the proverbial ad-vice, but in Wyatt’s lyrics the poet generally does not accept proverbial wisdomas a means of understanding his experience because to categorise it in the mostcommon terms would be to undermine his self-made image as a courtly loverwhose suffering is unique. There is a tension therefore in many of the lyrics be-tween a sense of individual experience and a sense of common wisdom, wherethe lyric makes a subjective or personal statement and the proverb, in contrast,makes an objective or general statement.11 According to Mary Thomas Crane,Wyatt’s lyrics are

repeatedly concerned with testing the efficacy of sayings in the world of the courtly love lyric ...by someone who does not, indeed cannot, follow their advice ... because to follow their advice

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8 All references to Wyatt’s poetry are to R. A. Rebholz (ed.), Sir Thomas Wyatt: The CompletePoems (London, 1978). The number of the poems and the page number on which they beginin the Rebholz edition are given in parenthesis.

9 All proverb references are to Morris Palmer Tilley (ed.), A Dictionary of the Proverbs in Eng-land in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Michigan, 1950). Rebholz notes all theproverbs in the Wyatt poems that I refer to unless otherwise stated.

10 Ross, ‘Poetics of Scorn’, p. 208.11 Ross, in ‘Poetics of Scorn’, points out this contrast (p. 205).

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would be to eschew the painful experiences that delineate the feeling presence of the self and thepoems to which it gives voice.12

An example of the rejection of proverbial material comes in poem LXXXVII[122]. The poet articulates a moral dilemma where his mistress returns his lovebut refuses to satisfy his sexual passion. In the fourth stanza he considers his re-sponse to this predicament.

It helpeth not but to increaseThat that by proof can be no more:That is the heat that cannot cease,And that I have, to crave so sore.What wonder is this greedy lust:To ask and have, and yet therefore

Refrain I must.

The proverb ‘To ask and have’ (A343) suggests one course of action to the poet,implying that if he makes a simple request for consummation it will be granted.However, he refuses to accept the wisdom of the proverb, despite the fact thatit may strengthen his resolve to act by encouraging an elementary course of ac-tion, promising a successful outcome in the most simple and plain languageimaginable. The proverb is shown to be inappropriate to his situation becauseif he follows its advice and presents a crude request for sexual satisfaction hecould jeopardise his relationship with the courtly lady. He resolves to resist theadvice of simple activity recommended by the proverb and remain passive sothat he might conceal his true intentions by elaborating a more sophisticatedappeal which will be couched in appropriate courtly rhetoric as opposed to thedirect and plain language of the proverb.

In the final stanza the poet attempts to rationalise his predicament.

Refrain I must, what is the cause?Sure, as they say, ‘So hawks be taught’.But in my case layeth no such clauseFor with such craft I am not caught.Wherefore I say, and good cause why,With hapless hand no man hath raught

Such hap as I.

He invokes the proverbial ‘So hawks be taught’, comparing his suffering tohawks who are trained by being denied food.13 However, he opposes the rea-soning behind this saying by asserting that his own ‘case’ will not ensnare him‘with such craft’. He is determined not to allow himself to act out a proverbial

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12 Mary Thomas Crane, Framing Authority: Sayings, Self, and Society in Sixteenth-CenturyEngland (Princeton, New Jersey, 1993) p. 157. Crane, in Proverbial and Aphoristic Sayings:Sources of Authority in the English Renaissance (Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1986), con-cludes that ‘sayings remain for Wyatt a sign of the kind of steadfast moral authority he can-not achieve’ (p. 295).

13 This phrase alludes to the proverb ‘As hungry as a hawk (horse)’ (H222).

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role because he believes his experience to be unique, that ‘no man hath raught/ Such hap as I’. The tension between the formulas ‘they say’ and ‘I say’ em-phasises the poet’s concern with the relationship between common wisdom andhis own experience. He rejects the proverbial advice because it oversimplifies hissituation and does not take into account the ramifications of his precariouscourtship. Although he recognises that people may describe his plight in con-ventional terms, he endeavours to resist what he perceives to be an inadequatecategorisation of his experience.14

In poem LXXXII [118] proverbial language, in its slipperiness and instabil-ity, is used as a means to negotiate with a mistress or superior in the contrivedprocess of courtship.

Betimes who giveth willingly,Redoubled thanks ay doth deserve.And I that sue unfeignedly,In fruitless hope, alas, do sterve.How great my cause is for to swerveAnd yet how steadfast is my suit,Lo, here ye see. Where is the fruit?

The first two lines of the second stanza represent an ironic variation of theproverb ‘He that gives quickly (in a trice) gives twice’ (G125), which, at onelevel, appears to commend a person’s propensity to bestow something a secondtime, while, at another level, this benevolence on the part of the person who‘gives quickly’, can be viewed as an ill-conceived gesture as he carelessly givesaway more than he might be able to afford and is seen as a soft touch. The bi-nary structure of the proverbial allusion is important. The poet invokes theproverb by the line ‘Betimes who giveth willingly’, but rather than completingthe maxim by the inclusion of the succeeding component, ‘gives twice’, he turnsthe conventional conceit to state what the giver should gain in return for hisgenerosity. Whereas the original proverb, ‘He that gives quickly (in a trice)gives twice’, states that the recipient will receive an additional portion, here thepoet claims that the giver will be the one to benefit with a generous display ofgratitude. As well as distorting the proverb, the opening two lines of the stanzaare ambiguous because the poet could be referring to the fact that he has servedhis mistress ‘willingly’, and therefore deserves a generous display of gratitude,or, alternatively, he could be asserting that if the lady grants him his reward‘willingly’ or quickly she then will deserve his extra ‘thanks’.

The poet’s proverbial allusion is partially disguised as he invokes and adaptsthe common saying to enhance his discourse of supplication. By doing this hecan shrewdly conceal his true motive to exploit his benefactor for all she isworth. She may recognise the allusion to be a proverbial saying but not neces-sarily realise that the suitor has altered it and may also be confused by the am-

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14 Formulas like ‘as they say’ are common in Wyatt’s verse as a means of invoking a proverb.For example: XCVII [132] ‘For “like to like” the proverb saith’ and VI [73] ‘For, as sayeth aproverb notable, / each thing seeketh his semblable’.

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biguity concerning who is supposed to be the giver and who the recipient of thereward. The reference to a well known proverb establishes an accepted code ofnegotiation as the lady is appealed to in terms of a common saying, the proverbeither suggesting that his willing service deserves a generous reward, or a con-trived reversal where he will reward the lady for her service to him in acquiesc-ing to his wish for ‘fruit’, a euphemism for sexual gratification. The poet twistsa piece of proverbial wisdom in order to beguile the lady and enhance his posi-tion thus corrupting the proverb’s so-called integrity. He exploits the general ac-ceptance of proverbial language as an ethical discourse, establishing truths toabide by, in order to disguise and sanction his pragmatic appeal. Here thesimple diction of a proverbial allusion does not clash with the courtly discourseof appealing for favour and is actually used opportunistically to enhance theappeal.

In the sixth stanza of poem XCVII [132] the poet uses a proverbial allusionin order to convey his resentment towards a courtly lady in an acceptably ob-jective fashion, categorising her infidelity as both common and inevitable.

But though they sparkle in the windYet shall they show your falsed faithWhich is returned unto his kind,For ‘like to like’ the proverb saith.

The poet claims that the lady’s words, which she has directed towards him, dis-play her false ‘faith’ as they ‘sparkle in the wind’, playing on the proverb‘Words are but wind’ (W833).15 Her promises are shown to lack any substanceand they are symptomatic of her lack of integrity. He invokes the proverb ‘Likewill to like’ (L286) to discredit her, claiming that her false words will return toher because she is also false. The phrase ‘the proverb saith’, drawing attentionto the fact that he is using a proverbial saying, means that his assessment of herconduct is not undermined by a resentful subjectivity, but is confirmed to betrue by the objectivity of common wisdom. The phrase ‘like to like’, in its pithysimplicity, is in direct contrast to the lady’s sophisticated utterances that‘sparkle’, but have no real substance, and the poet’s use of the proverb, with itsrecognised meaning, gives his words an authoritative and clear significance. Be-cause of its simple diction the proverb is shown to be authentic and reliable incontrast to the artifice and hypocrisy of the lady’s courtly discourse. Proverbsoffer an acceptable language by which the poet can articulate his resentment to-wards those at court who do not satisfy his desires, because they simultaneous-ly legitimise his accusations and help him escape charges of slander.16

In contrast to the more pragmatic exploitation of the slipperiness of prover-bial forms in the preceding poems, the poet in Wyatt’s lyrics also endeavours todraw on the stability of proverbs in order to resolve his anxiety about his expe-

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15 Rebholz does not note this proverb.16 Ross, in ‘Poetics of Scorn’, examines the trend in Wyatt’s verse for the poet to use proverbs

as an expression of resentment against the courtly mistress.

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rience at court. In the following epigram [XLII, 92] this bid to stabilise experi-ence in terms of proverbial categorisation is particularly extreme as the poetframes the whole poem in proverbial material and the effect of this is to preventany subjective expression or narrative development because he analyses his ex-perience completely in commonplace terms.

He is not dead that sometime hath a fall.The sun returneth that was under the cloud.And when Fortune hath spit out all her gallI trust good luck to me shall be allowed.For I have seen a ship into haven fallAfter the storm hath broke both mast and shroud.And eke the willow that stoopeth with the windDoth rise again and greater wood doth bind.

As Rebholz notes, Wyatt adapts Serafino’s original opening, ‘Even if I havefallen to the ground, I am not dead’, generalising the more ‘particular and per-sonal’ into a statement which alludes to the proverb ‘He that falls today may beup again tomorrow’ (F38).17 The saying emphasises the potential for recoveryby those who ‘fall’ which represents the fundamental theme of the epigram.‘Fall’ of course is associated with political failure at court, and is part of an es-sential proverbial vocabulary used by Wyatt, pointing to a number of proverbs:‘The highest climbers have the greatest falls (The higher he climbs the greaterhis fall)’ (C414), ‘Hasty climbers have sudden falls’ (C413), ‘Climb not too highfor fear of falling’ (F131), and ‘He that mounts (climbs) higher than he oughtfalls lower that he would’ (M1211).18

In relation to the critical opinion that Wyatt’s verse comprises a series of con-ventional and stock phrases, I would suggest that proverbial language was a sig-nificant part of the commonplace material that he drew on in the compositionof his lyric poems.19 One key term like ‘fall’ can function as a signpost to a sys-tem of associated sayings, showing how deeply the proverbial is embedded inhis verse. Wyatt’s lyric poetry invites the concentration of a proverb or a groupof related proverbs into a single word because such compression is appropriateto a poetry characterised by short, pithy statements which can then be un-packed and explored in order to trace their line of proverbial thought. The sig-nificance of the interaction between the poetic and the proverbial in the lyrics istherefore two-fold: at one level a common vocabulary of essential proverbialterms can be easily assimilated into this poetry, while at another, much moreautomatic level, proverbs and other commonplace material such as clichés ac-

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17 Rebholz, Poems, p. 366.18 Rebholz does not note these proverbs.19 According to H. A. Mason, in Humanism and Poetry in the Early Tudor Period: An Essay

(London, 1959), ‘by a little application we could compose a dictionary of conventional phras-es which would show that many of these poems of Wyatt are simply strung together fromthese phrases into set forms’ (p.171). Kenneth Muir (ed.), in Life and Letters of Sir ThomasWyatt (Liverpool, 1963), agrees with the general consensus on Wyatt: ‘his vocabulary issmall, he continually repeats stock phrases and ideas’ (p. 242).

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tually determine the structure and define the generalised sentiments of thepoems. In terms of this distinction, the deep embedding of proverbial materialis either an elaborate process crafted by Wyatt or a natural absorption of acommon discourse.

The second line of the epigram, ‘The sun returneth that was under the cloud’,plays on a number of proverbs: ‘After black clouds clear weather’ (C442), ‘Afterrain (showers) comes fair weather (the sun)’ (R8) and ‘After a storm comes acalm (fair weather)’ (S908).20 Here the sense of optimism implied by the first lineof the epigram is augmented, where to be ‘under a cloud’ is itself a proverbialmetaphor for ‘out of favour’, and the line can refer to being restored to thefavour of an important person or to prosperity in general.21 Because proverbscan be applied to such a wide variety of contexts the material in these openinglines completely generalises the poet’s experience and the common sentimentsare so vague that they can evidently refer to any situation of hardship or fail-ure. Lines five and six echo the proverb ‘As broken a ship has come to land’(S344), the poet comparing his plight to that of a battered ship returning to har-bour after a storm. The political implications are emphasised by the repetitionof the word ‘fall’, highlighting the sense of losing a favourable position at court.In the final couplet the poet alludes to the proverb ‘Willows are weak yet theybind other wood’ (W404). The couplet is linked to the preceding image of the‘storm’ by the words ‘that stoopeth in the wind’ (line 7). The phrase ‘doth riseagain’, in the final line, echoes the sentiments of the proverbial allusion in theopening line: ‘He that falls today may be up again tomorrow’. The final quat-rain implies that those who suffer a loss of favour can recover and regain theirformer position. However, the significance of the phrase ‘and greater wooddoth bind’ (line 8) is not easy to reconcile with the theme of recovery andrestoration. It suggests that those who appear weakest and most vulnerable canbe strengthened by the experience of failure and then be used to reinforce theposition of the successful. This hints at an exploitation of those who ‘rise again’(line 8) by those in positions of authority, undercutting the sense of optimismthat develops through the poem.

Overall, the epigram struggles to retain its unity of theme because the finalproverbial allusion is essentially incongruous with the rest op the poem. Theepigram comprises a selection of proverbial allusions and because they are in-dividually so general the reader is forced to trace their collective significancecarefully. The poem moves from one proverb to another and these transitionsare often tenuous because the allusions and metaphors are so diverse, despitethe common conceit of anticipated recovery. This scrambled assemblage ofproverbs reflects the poet’s anxiety about experience and language as he tries tounderstand his former experience and direct his future actions in terms ofproverbial wisdom. The epigram’s concern with political failure and success isimplied by the terms ‘fall’ and ‘rise’, but the proverbial language makes theexact nature of the situation difficult to define and the poet’s individual experi-

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20 Rebholz does not note the second or third of these three proverbs.21 Rebholz notes the proverb ‘To be under a cloud’ (C441).

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ence is therefore generalised to such an extent that it becomes obscured. This in-comprehensibility appears to be a deliberate strategy on the part of the poet asif he intends to conceal his plight because of fear of reprisal, out of embarrass-ment, or because the memory of it is too painful. On the one hand he endeav-ours to ‘bind’ up his experience with a proverbial language that offers himconsolation and encouragement: on the other hand he wants his experience tobe held in check, bound up and lost in the generalisations of proverbs so that itbecomes completely depersonalised. This process of framing his experience ex-clusively in proverbial terms is appealing because it defines it as common ratherthan specific only to him and offers him a source of optimism for the future –this level of proverbial acceptance being in contrast to the majority of Wyatt’sverse.

The poet’s gathering of proverbs is symptomatic of an acute anxiety con-cerning courtly status as he bids to impose a degree of stability and closure onhis apparently random experiences. By framing the epigram completely inproverbial material that relates to a sense of anticipated recovery he endeavoursto leave no room for any other outcome by elaborating, as it were, a prover-bially guided path of recovery which he hopes his future experience will not de-viate from. In effect, the poet establishes a proverbial cul-de-sac which has onlyone opening – an opening he hopes will lead to this future recovery. However,this reliance on proverbial material means that there is no sense of subjective ornarrative development in the epigram and, by waiting passively for his fortunesto be transformed in accordance with the proverbial directives, the poet himselftakes no decisive action to change his circumstances, where, ‘without narrative… there is literally no place to go’.22

This impasse between, on the one hand, a sense of subjectivity and action,and on the other, objectivity and inaction, exemplifies the tension implicit inWyatt’s use of proverbs. His treatment of proverbial material operates at dif-ferent levels where, for example, in his lyrics the proverbial is deeply embeddedas he draws on an essential proverbial vocabulary to compose these short-linedpoems. At a relatively straightforward level, in the same poems, the poet usual-ly resists the categorisation of his experience in proverbial terms because it un-dermines his sense of unique self-identity or because it fails adequately to definehis dilemma of how to act at court. At a more complex level, Wyatt’s verse con-veys a humanist’s anxiety about making choices concerning how to act at courtand his response to proverbial wisdom as a possible agenda to govern his choic-es and actions fluctuates between a variety of different reactions. Overall, how-ever, the proverbial in Wyatt’s courtly lyrics fails as a means of defining thecourtier’s experience, resolving his dilemma or directing his action in a sphereof complex intrigue. As my analysis of a selection of Wyatt’s verse has shown,proverbial discourse, in its slipperiness and potential to advocate corruption,cannot be regarded as a straightforward and plain alternative to the duplicityof courtly rhetoric because it can be assimilated as part of this pragmatic dis-

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22 Crane, in Framing Authority, makes this general observation in relation to Wyatt’s lyric per-sona who, she claims, remains caught in a dilemma of how to act at court (p. 164).

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course in order to further an individual’s interests and insult a fickle mistress –in this sense at least proverbial language is very useful to the courtier.

II

In strong contrast to Wyatt, Surrey predominantly excludes proverbial mater-ial at every level from his verse and on the rare occasions that he does allude toproverbs he reverses their negative sentiments or invokes proverbs with an op-timistic emphasis. It is surprising that so little critical comment exists upon Sur-rey’s general exclusion of proverbs from his verse, especially when we considerthat in an age when the proverb was so popular in poetry to include virtuallyno proverbial material must have been very much a deliberate strategy.23 Thefundamental exclusion of proverbs by Surrey is especially interesting when weconsider that, despite recognising Wyatt as a user of proverbs, he did not imi-tate him by including a large number of proverbs in his own verse. ‘My Ratclif’[34, 32] concludes with a proverbial allusion that Surrey attributes to Wyatt.24

My Ratclif, when thy rechlesse youth offendes,Receve thy scourge by others chastisement;For such callyng, when it workes none amendes,Then plages are sent without advertisement.

Yet Salomon sayd, the wronged shall recure;But Wiat said true, the skarr doth aye endure.

Wyatt is here presented, like Solomon, as an authority on proverbs, Surrey es-teeming Wyatt’s proverbial wisdom that a ruined reputation is never fully re-stored as a valuable rider to that offered by Solomon who claimed that the‘wronged’ would recover.25

Wyatt probably became associated with the proverb ‘Though the wound behealed yet the scar remains’ (W929) because he used it in his written defence tospeak of his damaged reputation – ‘For tho he hele the wounde yet the scharreshall remayne’ – and also in the poems XXXIV [88] – ‘The wound, alas, hap insome other place / From whence no tool away the scar can rase’ – and LXII [99]– ‘Sure I am, Brian, this wound shall heal again / But yet, alas, the scar shallstill remain’.26 Sir Francis Bryan, alluded to here in the last quotation, like

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23 A rare exception is Ross who, in a footnote to her article on Wyatt’s use of proverbs, ‘Poet-ics of Scorn’, comments that ‘Surrey’s use of the proverb is limited’ (p. 212).

24 All references to Surrey’s poems are to Emrys Jones (ed.), Henry Howard Earl of Surrey:Poems (Oxford, 1964). For the biographical details of Surrey’s cousin, Thomas Radcliffe,Earl of Sussex, see Susan Brigden, ‘Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and the “ConjuredLeage”’, The Historical Journal, 37, 1994, pp. 533-34.

25 Heale, in Early Tudor Poetry, points out that the allusion to Solomon refers to Ecclesiasticus27:21: ‘As for woundes, they maye be bounde up againe ... but who so bewrayeth the secretesof a frende, there is no more hope to be had unto him’ (p. 121). Jonathan Crewe, in Trials ofAuthorship: Anterior Forms and Poetic Reconstruction from Wyatt to Shakespeare (Oxford,1990), considers how Surrey here presents a ‘soothsaying Wyatt’ (p. 31).

26 See Muir, Life and Letters, for Wyatt’s use of the proverb in his defence (p. 193). Jones, inSurrey: Poems, points out the connection with Wyatt’s poem LXII [99] but does not actual-

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Wyatt, was renowned for his proverbial speech and included the same proverbin a poetic sequence attributed to him ‘The Proverbes of Salmon Do PlaynlyDeclare’ – ‘The wounde renewed ys longe in the healinge’ (line 80).27 Healepoints out that ‘a series of intertextual allusions’ links Bryan, Wyatt and Sur-rey, where ‘Wyatt addresses Bryan and cites proverbial wisdom, perhaps aproverb that Bryan himself had recycled, and Surrey in turn addresses Radcliffeand quotes Wyatt and Solomon’.28 Surrey’s participation in such an exchangeof proverbial material makes his general exclusion of proverbs from his verseeven more significant.

I would suggest that Surrey’s treatment of proverbial material was motivat-ed in part by his political concern about being part of an increasingly vulner-able aristocratic faction.29 He presents in his poetry a recurring motif ofaristocratic fidelity, faithfulness, loyalty and chivalry in order to establish thesense of intensely private relationships that transcend political hostility. ‘Socrewell prison’ [25, 27], the elegy to Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, HenryVIII’s illegitimate son, probably written while Surrey was confined at Windsorfor striking his rival Sir Edward Seymour who had questioned his loyalty to theKing, exemplifies Surrey’s poetic enterprise to protect his family name and tovenerate traditional aristocratic ideals.30 He seeks to counter political opposi-tion from the new nobility by reminiscing about an exclusive and private aris-tocratic friendship.

The secret thoughtes imparted with such trust,The wanton talke, the dyvers chaung of playe,The friendship sworne, eche promyse kept so just,Wherwith we past the winter nightes awaye.

Here, in the tenth stanza, Surrey recreates an inviolable world of mutual trustand kinship, not only elegising Richmond, but lamenting the passing of an era

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ly note the proverbial allusion (p. 129). Indeed, none of the proverbs that I refer to in rela-tion to Surrey’s verse are cited by him.

27 The full annotated sequence is included by R.S. Kinsman in ‘“The Proverbes of Salmon DoPlaynly Declare”: A Sententious Poem on Governance and Wisdom Ascribed to Sir FrancisBryan’, The Huntington Library Quarterly, 42, 1978-79, pp. 279-312. The line quoted here isfound on p. 290. The exact data of composition is uncertain.

28 Heale, Early Tudor Poetry, p. 122.29 For a discussion of the political situation, where the pre-eminence of Surrey’s aristocratic

family, the Howards, was threatened by a new breed of noblemen at court such as Sir Ed-ward Seymour, see John Guy, Tudor England (Oxford, 1990), pp. 196-97.

30 William A. Sessions, in Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (Boston, 1986), considers this incidentto be typical of a temperamental Surrey (p. 8). Crane, in Framing Authority, asserts that ‘aris-tocratic writers engaged in reconstituting the signs of class distinction in a postfeudal society;they began to experiment with the love lyric as a way of creating and expressing a privatized,individual self which was fully present and authoritative without humanist education, andwhich sought to preserve, in a private sphere, aspects of feudal ideology that were disap-pearing in society at large’ (p. 145). For a comprehensive study of the endeavour by the six-teenth-century aristocracy to protect their elite status see Frank Whigham, Ambition andPrivilege: The Social Tropes of Elizabethan Courtesy Theory (Berkeley, California, 1984).

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of aristocratic greatness, where his verse typically articulates the voice of a ‘nos-talgic nobleman whose anger is directed against a new social order and a newwealth’.31

In my view, Surrey’s treatment of proverbial language is intended to enhancethis overall effect in his poetry of valorising aristocratic relationships. In manyways Surrey has produced a propagandist verse intended to promote the causeof his increasingly vulnerable aristocratic faction. His poems appeared in theDevonshire Manuscript, a collection of courtly lyrics that circulated amongst acoterie of aristocrats associated with the Howard family and was representativeof a striking poetic enterprise to venerate exclusive and private aristocraticideals of love and loyalty in the face of political opposition.32 When we consid-er that proverbs represent an expression of moderate and traditional values, itis rather paradoxical that Surrey should deliberately exclude proverbial mater-ial from a poetry that is motivated by deeply conservative ideals. The most fea-sible explanation for the anomaly of Surrey’s general exclusion of proverbialmaterial is that whereas proverbs in Wyatt’s verse reveal an anxiety concerningcourtly success and failure, Surrey, in contrast, by ignoring or reversingproverbs or even, on occasions, including proverbs that express positive senti-ments, endeavours to articulate a confidence in his relationships at court. Hetypically resists the inclusion of proverbs in his verse because they predomi-nantly express a sense of loss, lack, failure or commonalty and to include themwould be to establish a sense of deprivation or folly as opposed to the sense ofconfidence, optimism and uniqueness that he works for.

In ‘Norfolk sprang thee’ [35, 32], his elegy to Thomas Clere, Surrey presentsa relationship that is characterised by chivalric loyalty.33 In distinction toWyatt’s practice, the sonnet is significantly marked by a complete absence ofproverbial material.

Norfolk sprang thee, Lambeth holds thee dead,Clere of the County of Cleremont though hight;Within the womb of Ormondes race thou bread,And sawest thy cosine crowned in thy sight.

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31 Heale, Early Tudor Poetry, p. 145. For further analysis of the poem see C. W. Jentoft, ‘Sur-rey’s Five Elegies: Rhetoric, Structure, and the Poetry of Praise’, Publications of the ModernLanguage Association of America, 91, 1976, pp. 23-32, and Stephen Guy Bray, ‘“We TwoBoys Clinging”: The Earl of Surrey and the Duke of Richmond’, English Studies in Canada,21:2, 1995, pp. 138-50.

32 Crane, in Framing Authority, discusses the significance of this poetic volume which circulat-ed amongst a courtly coterie that included Surrey himself, Henry Fitzroy, the illegitimate sonof Henry VIII, – Surrey’s childhood friend celebrated in ‘So crewell prison’ [25, 27] – MaryDouglas, who married Surrey’s uncle Thomas Howard, and Thomas Clere – Surrey’s com-panion celebrated in this poem (p. 149).

33 S. P. Zitner, in ‘Truth and Mourning in a Sonnet by Surrey’, English Literary History, 50,1983, asserts that ‘Surrey’s intensities of feeling seem to have been both circumscribed andcolored less by egoism than by loyalties of caste. Because these were more narrowly loyaltiesto the Howard kinship group, they could exclude the “lowborn” rival Seymours and fully em-brace Thomas Clere. Surrey’s “love”, like his hate, is to be understood as a sentiment politi-cized by being made familial’ (p. 523).

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Shelton for love, Surrey for Lord thou chase:Ay me, while life did last that league was tender,Tracing whose steps thou sawest Kelsall blaze,Laundersey burnt, and battered Bullen render.At Muttrell gates, hopeles of all recure,Thine Earl halfe dead gave in thy hand his Will;Which cause did thee his pining death procure,Ere Sommers four times seaven thou couldest fulfill.

Ah Clere, if love had booted, care, or cost,Heaven had not wonn, nor Earth so timely lost.

In the first five lines Clere is remembered in terms of his ancestry and his con-nections with eminent aristocratic friends, serving to justify his burial in theHoward family tomb. With Clere having been part of an exclusive aristocraticcircle Surrey uses the elegy to venerate this whole group as he cites Clere’s mar-riage to Margaret Shelton, his relation to Anne Boleyn, the ‘cosine’ he saw‘crowned’ (line 4), and his devotion to Surrey himself as his ‘Lord’ (line 15).34

William A. Sessions observes that the autobiographical material in the sonnet

shows Surrey’s version of a knight’s tale and indicates that there may have been a chivalric sac-rifice by Clere to save Surrey’s life before the Abbeville gate at Montreuil, although this episodeis likely as fictional as any of the other extratextual myths that emerge from Surrey’s work.35

The incident alluded to in the poem emphasises Surrey’s concern to present hisfriend as a chivalric hero, loyal and faithful to his master and at the same timethe description of Surrey as a wounded military leader establishes himself as aromanticised figure in this myth-like story of chivalry. By venerating his loyalcompanion Surrey endeavours to establish a family history of which Clere canbe an integral part.

This sonnet exemplifies Surrey’s deliberate exclusion of proverbial material.In the final couplet Surrey expresses his regret that Clere’s love for him meantthat he did not take into account the risk to his own life – the ‘care’ or ‘cost’(line 13). Although the terms ‘care’ and ‘cost’ are part of a core proverb vo-cabulary they are significantly not yoked together in any proverb that we knowof, helping Surrey to work against a proverbial conclusion to his sonnet. ‘Cost’in proverbs like ‘All is lost, both labour and cost’ (A140), ‘It is good drinkingof wine at another man’s cost’ (D610), and ‘It is easy to cry yule at other men’scost’ (Y53) has negative overtones and Surrey therefore avoids alluding to anysuch material because it would undermine the sense of Clere’s heroic loyalty.‘Care’ most obviously refers to Clere’s bravery in the face of danger but theproverbial frame of reference opened up by treating the term as part of an es-sential proverbial vocabulary can subtly shift the emphasis of the sonnet’s con-clusion onto Surrey himself and his attitude towards his dead friend. Forexample, the saying ‘Past cure past care’ (C921), hinted at by the rhymes ‘re-

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34 Douglas Brooks-Davies (ed.), in Silver Poets of the Sixteenth Century (London, 1992), notesthe various details in the poem relating to military campaigns that Surrey and Clere partici-pated in (p. 407).

35 Sessions, Earl of Surrey, p. 125.

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cure’ (line 9) and ‘procure’ (line 11), implies a lack of sincerity on the part ofSurrey as if he is not really concerned with the welfare of his friend because thesituation is obviously irredeemable. The proverb ‘Riches are gotten with pain,kept with care, and lost with grief’ (R108), in the context of the poem, warnsagainst grieving because it brings the risk of losing what has been earned, im-plying that Surrey recognises the folly of excessive mourning because his polit-ical standing could be jeopardised if he were to be unduly distracted by it.Although this proverbial material can be excavated from the poem, Surreyagain deliberately works against these kinds of proverbial associations becausethey not only undermine the veneration of Clere but also his own self-venera-tion as a superior worthy of such an act of chivalry.

Surrey, in the final line, counterpoints the death of Clere in terms of ‘Heav-en’ winning his soul and ‘Earth’ losing it. Indeed, here Surrey comes close toproducing a proverb-like statement which could run ‘Earth’s loss is heaven’sgain’. Although ‘heaven’ is a relatively rare proverbial term, included for ex-ample in the proverbs ‘To be in heaven’ (H350) and ‘Heaven is not so soon got-ten as wished for’ (H349), the terms ‘win’ and ‘lost’, in contrast, both featureprominently in proverbs and are particularly pertinent to describe political suc-cess and failure. This political application is typified by the sayings ‘No manloses (wins) but another wins (loses)’ (M337), ‘He that ventures too far loses all’(A190), and ‘He that will have all loses all’ (A192). These sentiments reinforcethe political subtext to the poem where the loss of an important ally as well asfriend is particularly significant for an increasingly vulnerable faction at court.However, Surrey again resists the common proverbial dichotomy of success andfailure because he does not want to create a sense of failure or folly but ratherto remember his friend in heroic terms. The proverb ‘He that has lost his cred-it is dead to the world’ (C817) is interesting in relation to the loss of reputationsuffered by both Clere and Surrey for various transgressions at court and mostnotably for their riotous behaviour in London during Lent.36 Surrey’s elegy istherefore conceivably an attempt to restore both his friend’s and his own ma-ligned name. ‘Earth’ most obviously refers to terrestrial life in distinction to‘Heaven’, but it also relates to the ground and burial. The theme of death is ex-pressed in the sayings ‘Death is the grand leveler’ (D143) and ‘We shall lie allalike in our graves’ (G428), but Surrey again avoids any allusion to suchproverbial material because he wants to present Clere as a hero of noble descentand noble deeds whose uniqueness and supremacy is realised most fully in hisdeath.

Although, as exemplified by the preceding poem, Surrey predominantly ex-cludes proverbial material, on rare occasions he does use positive proverbial al-lusions in order to enhance his presentation of faithful and intimate aristocraticrelationships. For example, in the poem ‘Geve place, ye lovers’ [12, 7] the loverargues the superiority of his beloved ‘Penelope’ over all the other ladies at courtand uses a proverbial allusion in the final stanza to reinforce his claim.

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36 Sessions, in Earl of Surrey, notes this incident (p. 10).

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Sith Nature thus gave her the prayseTo be the chiefest worke she wrought,In faith, me thinke some better waiesOn your behalfe might well be sought,Than to compare, as ye have done,To matche the candle with the sonne.

The juxtaposition of the ‘sonne’ and ‘candle’ brings to mind the proverb ‘To setforth the sun with a candle (lantern, taper)’ (S988), thus completing the poemwith a comparison that emphasises the superiority of ‘Penelope’. The proverbialstatement also plays on the sayings ‘Two suns cannot shine in one sphere’(S992) and ‘To go out like a candle in a snuff’ (C49), both of which underlinethe superior beauty of ‘Penelope’ in comparison to other ladies. The poet usesa proverbial allusion to reinforce his exaltation of ‘Penelope’ as an exceptionallady and to articulate a sense of devotion rather than the sense of resentmentand disillusionment in relation to courtship that is so common in Wyatt’s lyrics.In the third stanza the poet claims that ‘Nature’ lamented the loss of ‘the perfitmold’ after she had made ‘Penelope’, and in stanza four ‘Nature’ realises that‘She coulde not make the lyke agayne’. Surrey uses a single proverbial image,with a clear positive emphasis, to eulogise ‘Penelope’ as a pristine and inim-itable creation. This tribute functions as an allegory for the superiority anduniqueness of his aristocratic caste that remains inimitable despite the threat ofemerging families like the Seymours.

In distinction to his general exclusion and rare inclusion of positive prover-bial material, in various poems Surrey reverses common proverbial sentimentsin order to express the sense of mutual fidelity between lover and beloved, andin these instances Surrey does at least rely on the reader’s having a prior knowl-edge of the proverb. For example, in the second stanza of the same poem, thepoet claims that ‘For what she saeth, ye may it trust’ in order to express the‘vertues’ as well as beauty of his ‘fayre’ lady. The poet’s compliment representsa significant reversal of the proverb ‘No trust is to be given to a woman’s word(a woman)’ (T551) to express a woman’s fidelity. Another example of this typeof reversal is in the poem ‘If care do cause men cry’ [17, 14] where the poet de-scribes how, despite their enforced separation, he and his wife or mistress sharea relationship that is characterised by reciprocal love. His claim ‘wavering is shenot’ (line 43) reverses the proverb ‘Women are as wavering (changeable, incon-stant) as the wind’ (W698) to emphasise the faithfulness of his beloved as an ex-ception to the general rule of the proverb.

Surrey’s positive reversal of proverbs is indicative of his poetic enterprise topresent relationships that are characterised by loyalty and fidelity. WhereasWyatt’s lyrics predominantly express a sense of unrequited love or resentmentin courting a lady or superior, reflecting an anxiety about succeeding at court,Surrey, as an aristocrat, voices a concern not so much with winning favour aswith retaining his exclusive status. For both poets the treatment of proverbiallanguage represents a significant articulation of albeit differing political anxi-eties. Wyatt’s explicit use of proverbial material conveys a humanist’s concernwith success and failure at court while Surrey’s resistance to or recasting of the

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proverbial and occasional invocation of positive proverbial sentiments, al-though seemingly expressing a confidence in his aristocratic status, in fact be-lies an equally acute political anxiety. My main discovery about Wyatt’s use ofproverbs is that he drew on their authority for two conflicting reasons. As a hu-manist he tried to harness the stability of proverbial recommendations in orderto direct his conduct at court, whereas in his role as a diplomat and a courtierwho needed to look after his country’s and his own interests, he took advantageof the slipperiness of proverbial discourse for pragmatic political purposes. Sur-rey’s treatment of proverbial forms is so interesting because his general exclu-sion of this commonplace language is exceptional in the mid-sixteenth centuryand very much a deliberate strategy. I have suggested that this approach wasmotivated by his political concern to produce a poetry that venerated aristo-cratic ideals. Because of his conservative intentions, his neglect of proverbialmaterial is even more surprising when we consider its status as a traditional andmoderate discourse.

Department of English and American Studies ADRIAN O. WARD

University of ManchesterOxford RoadManchesterM13 9PL.

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