Epigram for Her Majesty Adelhait

This epigram, written in a narrative style similar to that used in a number of Sir Thomas Wyatt’s epigrams and other poems1, is meant to poke fun at the self-obsessed courtly poet/narrator who doesn’t recognize what an absolute jackass he is in presuming to deserve the attention of his (generally undesired) affections, a tradition that Wyatt introduced to England via Petrarch, who innovates this narrator persona in his Canzoniere. Given how straightforwardly most poems of this tradition celebrate what, today, we frequently consider gross or undesirable behavior2, I wanted to undercut any sense of sympathy for the narrator by making it clear his actions are ridiculous and that he’s judged accordingly.

Also, like Wyatt, I wanted to make thinly veiled references to royal court, suggesting the same sort of stupid danger in Wyatt’s poems (in talking about his relationship with Anne Boleyn)3 that this narrator believeshe has with Atlantia’s queen, to the point that the narrator is using informal/intimate 2nd sg. “thou” pronouns when addressing her (a direct address that Wyatt does not use often, instead speaking to a third party, even if it is an inanimate object), and whose reproach, provided indirectly via the guard, is both mic-drop and pun on her name.4

The structure is rime royal, which was introduced to English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer5and used in several of Wyatt’s poems: one or more seven-line stanzas rhyming ABABBCC.Within the stanza, there are frequently several groupings of lines to suggest related ideas communicated across them (e.g., an initial tercet and two couplets, or a quatrain and a tercet). In this poem, I employ an initial problem statement (the first tercet), a failed attempt to solve that problem (the middle couplet), and the judgment (the final couplet). It is also no coincidence that the rime royal stanza is used to reflect the status of the target of the narrator’s affections and the “royally” stupid way he goes about proclaiming those affections.

Wyatt, like Chaucer and Henryson, employed iambic pentameter in nearly all of his poems with a rime royal structure, and I have followed that model. Of course, technically the A lines here don’tstrictly follow the meter, as they instead include a feminine/double rhyme also commonly found in 16th c. courtly poems, including some by Wyatt, who frequently used feminine rhyme with 3rd pr. sg. verbs, e.g. “seeketh”.

About the Accompanying Image

The image prepared for this poem (which appears in the attached PDF file below this documentation) is a Photoshopped composite of several popular woodcut images used to accompany a number of English broadsides printed ca. 1600-1620.

Why effect a broadside?

I wanted to let the poem serve as an enjoyable one-sheet document rather than as “simply” a poem on a sheet of paper or as a component of a larger collected body of poetry. The broadside genre seemed to be a suitable form, although its popularity soared right at the end of the SCA period and beyond.

Given that Wyatt’s poetry was published over and over from his death through the end of the SCA period, it seemed reasonable to me to effect the appearance of a broadside with a poem whose style was slightly “out of date” for the visual aesthetic.

That said, it’s not really true that Tudor-era courtly poetry was published in the broadside form. In this regard, I am willing to concede authenticity for modern SCAdian enjoyment.

From left to right in the image, are the figures and a list of the broadsides that use an identical woodcut printing of one or more figures, courtesy of the English Broadside Ballad Archivecatalog:

• The “fool,” often a young man or courtier: EBBA 20077, 20129.

  • Similar, but not identical, images of a man dressed in this fashion appear frequently, e.g.

    • EBBA 20217, 36027, 20111, 20167, 20172, 20174, 20199, 20204, 30319, 30464, 20584

    • EBBA 20062, 20067, 20075, 20080, 20108, 20113, 20118, 20134, 20150

• The “guard,” a soldier: EBBA 20098, 20114, 20120, 20139, 20195, 20282, 30221, 30304, 30310

• The “queen,” a gentlewoman: EBBA 20098, 20107, 20116, 20144, 20158, 20159, 20183, 20189, 20195

References

Benson, Larry, ed. The Riverside Chaucer. Houghton Mifflin, 1986.

English Broadside Ballad Archive. UC Santa Barbara. http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/

Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford UP. https://www.oed.com/

Wyatt, Sir Thomas. The Complete Poems. Ed. R.A. Rehbolz. Penguin, 1997.

• 1. Wyatt uses this narrative approach so frequently that a comprehensive list would be unwieldy. Some examples include “Thou sleepest fast and I with woeful heart,” “Hate whom ye list for I care not,” “What vaileth truth or by it to take pain,” “Venus, in sport,” and “Ye know my heart, my lady dear.”
• 2. In addition to this sentiment being demonstrated in the poems noted in the previous note, there are similar perspectives narrated in “Behold, Love, thy power how she despiseth,” “Was I never yet of your love grieved,” “I find no peace and all my war is done,” and “Ever mine hap is slack and slow in coming.”
• 3. This occurs in “Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,” but also in “My mother’s maids” “My galley charged with forgetfulness,” and “They flee from me, that sometime did me seek,” among others.
• 4. The “mic-drop” is meant as the kind of shutdown that Wyatt describes in “Whoso list to hunt,” in which the precious deer wears a necklace inscribed with the message: Noli me tangere (“Do not touch me”), although my poem lacks the qualifier in Wyatt’s poem that the passive deer belongs to the king, as the queen possesses her own agency to act.
• 5. For a brief explanation of Chaucer’s innovation of this form, see Benson, p. lxiii.