SOURCE: "Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Court of Henry VIII: The Courtier's Ambivalence," in The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Vol. XXIII, No. 1, Winter, 1993, pp. 113-41.

In the following essay, Wyatt's conflicting attitudes toward the court are examined as a key to understanding his work.

In 1548, six years after Sir Thomas Wyatt's death, his good friend, Sir Francis Bryan, published an English translation of the Spaniard Antonio de Guevara's Menosprecio de Corte y Alabanza de Aldea.¹ As in the case of Wyatt, so also the most important fact about Bryan is that he spent his life as a courtier in the service of Henry VIII.² Like Wyatt, moreover, his contemporaries at Henry VIII's court knew him also as a poet. Those of his poems that may remain, however, are shrouded in anonymity, whereas Wyatt left a considerable body of identifiable work that has given him a secure...