laim no more authority.’In another of his sonnets, ‘I abide and abide,’ Wyatt reveals his envy of a common, non-courtier man. The speaker of the poem, who claims to ‘abide and abide and tarry the hide,’ shows his frustration at ‘Nother obtaining nor [being] yet denied.’ Rather than continue in this fashion of constantly remaining in between the grounds of being reward by his love or being turned away by her, the speaker admits from the point of view of a courtier, ‘much were it better for to be plain.’These two poems, as well as a third entitled ‘Complaint for true love unrequited’ are what have been labelled today in the Dictionary of Literary-Rhetorical Conventions of the English Renaissance as complaint poems. Complaint poems were often aimed in the sixteenth century at correcting the problem of which the poem’s speaker complains; ‘in some of these poems the complaint merges with satire to urge correction of man’s foolish and vicious behaviour.’ Wyatt’s ‘complaint’ poems show an attempt to change the laws of Courtly love and to employ the Renaissance philosophy of ‘old freedoms regained,’ thereby classifying them as satirical.In addition to criticising Courtly love, Wyatt mocks the relationship of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn in his sonnet ‘Whoso Lists to hunt.’ In the poem, Wyatt compares the fantasy of courtly love with hunters chasing after a hind. The hunters symbolise the courtiers while Anne Boleyn is the hunted hind. The poem contains the bloody imagery that can be associated with a hunt; the speaker does not ‘Draw from the deer’ his wearied mind. This imagery accompanied with the inscription on the collar around the deer’s neck, ‘for Caesar’s I am,’ shows the disintegration of the institution of the Court. Henry VIII, who was well known for his hunting a...
