We British: The Poetry of a People. Andrew Marr

suddenly have a much larger number of poets to choose from: simply, much more stuff survives.

      Politically, the biggest change was the victory of the Tudor dynasty in England, those bringers of Protestantism and a more ruthless royal overlordship. It was the court of Henry VIII that would take poetry forward again, and so it is appropriate that the first major poet of England in this century was a highly political figure, and indeed the first Poet Laureate to be mentioned here. John Skelton probably came from Diss in Norfolk, and was an unruly, unpredictable but star figure at Oxford and Cambridge. Notorious for secretly marrying a wife while a vicar, and having a child – who he presented, naked, to his congregation – by her, he later became a great flayer of priestly corruption just as England was in revolt against the Roman Church. To start with he can sound old-fashioned and medieval, as in his jeering, triumphalist response to the death of Scotland’s King James IV at Flodden:

      Kynge Jamy, Jomy your joye is all go.

      Ye summoned our kynge. Why dyde ye so?

      Ye have determyned to make a fraye,

      Our kynge than beynge out of the waye;

      But by the power and myght of God

      Ye were beten weth your owne rod.

      By your wanton wyll, syr,at a worde,

      Ye have loste spores, cote armure and sworde …

      Of the out yles ye rough foted Scottes

      We have well eased you of the bottes.

      Ye rowe ranke Scottes and dronken Danes

      Of our Englysshe bowes ye have fette your banes.

      It’s not a lot more advanced than ‘Na-na-na-na,’ but Skelton was a much more sophisticated satirist than this, though known at the time and ever afterwards as a peculiarly sarcastic poet. And, often enough, nasty too. Alongside the conventions of chivalric love there was a bitterly misogynistic strain to English poetry. In the previous chapter I refrained from including the revoltingly racist poem by Dunbar after he had seen a black woman in Edinburgh. But we shouldn’t sanitise our own history, so here is Skelton ripping to pieces a woman whose main sin seems to be that she was elderly:

      Her lothely lere

      Is nothynge clere,

      But ugly of chere,

      Droupy and drowsy,

      Scurvy and lowsy;

      Her face all bowsy,

      Comely crynkled,

      Woundersly wrynkled,

      Lyke a rost pygges eare,

      Brystled wyth here.

      Her lewde lyppes twayne,

      They slaver, men sayne,

      Lyke a ropy rayne,

      A gummy glayre:

      She is ugly fayre;

      Her nose somdele hoked,

      And camously croked,

      Never stoppynge,

      But ever droppynge;

      Her skynne lose and slacke,

      Grained lyke a sacke;

      With a croked backe

      Ugh. Skelton was tutor to the future Henry VIII, and became heavily embroiled in his fight with Cardinal Wolsey: the ferocious assaults on Church corruption, which deeply offended the cardinal and put Skelton in serious danger, were also however an expression of the growing anti-clerical mood of pre-Reformation England. Skelton’s verse is always vigorous and exciting, and it’s not hard to see why he was such a politically controversial figure. In his famous poem ‘Speke, Parott’ he uses the bird to deliver a tirade of abuse against Wolsey’s Church. Like much of Skelton’s writing, the poem is almost manic, and doesn’t feel like a piece written to order, but rather the cry of an early reformer against the flabby, corrupt and greedy Church. Is it so different in tone to an angry blog post today directed at the political elite?

      So many morall maters, and so lytell vsyd;

      So myche newe makyng, and so madd tyme spente;

      So myche translacion in to Englyshe confused;

      So myche nobyll prechyng, and so lytell amendment;

      So myche consultacion, almoste to none entente;

      So myche provision, and so lytell wytte at nede;–

Syns Dewcalyons flodde* there can no clerkes rede.

      So lytyll dyscressyon, and so myche reasonyng;

      So myche hardy dardy, and so lytell manlynes;

      So prodigall expence, and so shamfull reconyng;

      So gorgyous garmentes, and so myche wrechydnese;

      So myche portlye pride, with pursys penyles

      So myche spente before, and so myche vnpayd behynde;–

      Syns Dewcalyons flodde there can no clerkes fynde.

      So myche forcastyng, and so farre an after dele;

      So myche poletyke pratyng, and so lytell stondythe in stede;

      So lytell secretnese, and so myche grete councell;

      So manye bolde barons, there hertes as dull as lede;

      So many nobyll bodyes vndyr on dawys hedd;

      So royall a kyng as reynythe vppon vs all;–

      Syns Dewcalyons flodde was nevyr sene nor shall.

      So many complayntes, and so smalle redresse;

      So myche callyng on, and so smalle takyng hede;

      So myche losse of merchaundyse, and so remedyles;

      So lytell care for the comyn weall, and so myche nede;

      So myche dowtfull daunger, and so lytell drede;

      So myche pride of prelattes, so cruell and so kene;–

      Syns Dewcalyons flodde, I trowe, was nevyr sene.

      Skelton was a one-off, similar at times in tone to his contemporary William Dunbar. But he introduces us to the fact, unavoidable at this period, that poetry and the royal court intersected deeply. Particularly at Henry VIII’s court, poetry became an essential part of daily life as perhaps it had never been before and has not been since. It was a world of incessant cod-Arthurian games, elaborate tournaments, masques and literary competitions; for an ambitious courtier, to be able to produce instant, fluent poems was a great advantage. These would not have been printed or publicly available – most would have been written on scraps of paper to be passed around the court from hand to hand. Thus a courtier might declare his love, or lament its passing. Because one such courtier, Sir Thomas Wyatt, was a minor genius, aspects of this artificial, highly-coloured world have survived.

      A tall, handsome man who in a Holbein drawing looks like a heavily bearded modern hipster, Wyatt served both Henry VII and his son. He was suspected of having an affair with Anne Boleyn, and was imprisoned in the Tower by Henry VIII for adultery with her. There he witnessed other alleged adulterers being executed, and possibly Anne herself. Life at Henry VIII’s court was dangerous, particularly for a glamorous and sexually driven man like Wyatt; and yet, despite flying close to the sun on numerous occasions, he survived to die of old age. From our point of view he is most important as the man who took Petrarch’s new sonnet form and introduced it properly into English verse. In Wyatt’s writing there is a specificity of description, and a humane directness, which make it sound as if it comes from a different century, almost a different planet, from Skelton’s. The metaphor of timid deer for women might