Wyatt
Essay Preview: Wyatt
Report this essay
Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)
Notes on Life and Works
Sir Thomas Wyatt was born at Allington Castle, Kent, in 1503, the son of Henry Wyatt and Anne Skinner. He was educated at St. Johns College Cambridge, become a diplomat in the service of Henry VIII about 1526 and travelled to Italy first in 1527. After a brief imprisonment for his affair with Anne Boleyn in 1536, the kings second wife who was executed for treason, Wyatt went to Spain as English ambassador to Charles V from 1537 to 1539. In 1541, after the fall of Thomas Cromwell, Wyatt was arrested again and charged with treason but his release followed shortly. He died October 11, 1542, and was buried at Sherborne. Having separated from his wife Elizabeth Brooke, daughter of Lord Cobham, Wyatt was survived by his mistress Elizabeth Darrell and their son Francis.
The best modern editions of Wyatts poems are Sir Thomas Wyatt: The Complete Poems, ed. R. A. Rebholz (Penguin, 1978), Richard C. Harriers The Canon of Sir Thomas Wyatts Poetry (a diplomatic transcription of the Egerton MS poems, for which see below), and the Collected Poems, edited by Kenneth Muir and Patricia Thomson (London: Routledge, 1969), who give especially full notes.
For biographical information, see Patricia Thomsons Sir Thomas Wyatt and his Background (London: Routledge, 1964) and Kenneth Muirs Life and Letters of Sir Thomas Wyatt (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1963).
Thirteen original sources exist for Wyatts poems.
Harington MS, Arundel Castle: see The Arundel Harington Manuscript of Tudor Poetry, 2 vols. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1960).
Blage MS, Trinity College, Dublin
Parker MS 168, Corpus Christi College Cambridge
Devonshire Ms 17492, British Library
Egerton MS 2711, British Library: see Richard Harrier, The Canon of Sir Thomas Wyatts Poetry (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), Part II, the best edition of the best version.
Harleian MS 78, British Library
Additional MS 36529, British Library (Park-Hill MS)
Royal MS 17.A.xxii, British Library
University MS Ff.5.14, Cambridge University Library
Certayne psalmes chosen out of the psalter of Dauid, called thee. vii. penytentiall psalmes, drawen into englyshe meter by sir T. Wyat, ed. J. Harrington (London, 1549). STC 2726.
A Boke of Balettes, extant in one copy only, a fragment of two leaves. STC 26053.5.
Songes and sonettes, written by Henry Haward late earle of Surrey, and other (June 5, 1557). STC 13860. See Tottells Miscellany (1557-1587), ed. H. E. Rollins, 2 vols., 2nd edn. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965).
The courte of Venus, a fragment of an edition ca. 1563. STC 24650.5. See The Court of Venus, ed. R. A. Fraser (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1955).
Wyatts poems were circulated in manuscript during his lifetime. The most important early MS is the Egerton. Fifteen years after Wyatts death, Richard Tottel included 97 poems attributed to Wyatt in a collection of Surreys poems. Tottel supplied Wyatts poems with titles of his own and, in his desire to appeal to contemporary taste, frequently departed from the manuscript copy of his earlier authors, removing archaisms and smoothing out the rhythm.
Wyatt also published Petrarchs De tranquillitate animi in English translation: see Tho, wyatis translatyon of Plutarckes boke, of the quyete of mynde in 1528 (STC 20058.5) and Plutarchs Quyete of Mynde translated by Thomas Wyat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1931). Many of Wyatts and Surreys sonnets are translations or adaptations of Petrarchs Sonnetti in Vita di Madonna Laura and Sonnetti in Morte di Madonna Laura. Petrarchs poems are numbered as in modern standard editions with Petrarchs original numbering in brackets. The difference in numbering is due to the inclusion in Petrarchs sonnet cycle of a number of poems in other forms, including canzoni, madrigali, and ballate. The Italian texts are from Le Rime di Francesco Petrarca, ed. Giovanni Mestica (Firenze: G. BarbДÐra, 1896; PQ 4476 E96 ROBA).
Modernization has not been applied to those passages where it might have grossly obscured the rhythm of the original.
Biographical information
Given name: Sir Thomas
Family name: Wyatt
Birth date: 1503
Death date: 1542
Nationality: English
Family relations
father: Henry Wyatt
mother: Anne Wyatt
wife: Elizabeth Wyatt (from 1520)
son: Thomas Wyatt
Languages
English
French
Italian
Spanish
Education
St. Johns College, Cambridge (B.A.) to 1518
St. Johns College, Cambridge (M.A.) to 1520
Literary period: Renaissance
Occupations
Soldier
Esquire of the body to the king
Treasurer to the kings chamber: 1524
Clerk of the kings jewels: 1524
Residence: Allington Castle, Kent: 1503
Buried at: Great Church of Sherborne
First RPO edition: 1994
nglish poet.
INTRODUCTION
Diplomat and courtier Thomas Wyatt has been hailed as the most important poet of the early Tudor period. A significant poetic innovator, he