does take the liberty of giving moral advice through his use of sarcasm. In his third satire, to Sir Francis Brian, Wyatt says to ‘Use virtue as it goeth nowadays/ In word alone to make thy language sweet,/ And of the deed yet do not as thou says.’ Nowhere in his satires, however, does a command for abandoning the structure of the Court emerge. All of the satire found in Wyatt’s poetry addresses the one seemingly overwhelming problem of the Court’s influence and restraint on an individual’s morals and emotions. According to Stephen Greenblatt in an essay on culture, the more severe punishments which are used against those who do not behave in a socially acceptable way, such as imprisonment (in Wyatt’s case), are not nearly as effective as ‘seemingly innocuous responses: a condescending smile, laughter poised between the genial and the sarcastic, a small dose of indulgent pity laced with contempt, cool silence.’ In literary works, Greenblatt connects these responses with the effect that blame has in enforcing cultural boundaries through the use of satire; as I have shown, Wyatt uses poetry, although obscurely because of the jeopardy it imposed on his freedom, as his own method of social control. ...
