Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542) was a prominent figure in the court of King Henry VIII. He played an important ambassadorial role in representing the King's petition to Pope Clement VII to have Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn annulled. Wyatt was also an innovative, accomplished poet, the power and complexity of whose work only became fully understood when revisited and studied in the early 20th century.
Even for the tall, handsome and brilliant Wyatt, however, life at the court of Henry VIII was a dangerous, knife-edged business. Wyatt had been an admirer but possibly lover of Boleyn before she caught the royal eye. In this he was not alone. When in 1536 he was imprisoned in the Tower for adultery with Boleyn, he was able to watch from his prison window the beheading of five other accused Boleyn adulterers and then the death of the queen herself. Wyatt survived and, having supporters within Henry's court, was subsequently released.
In his famous poem about his sexual passion, Wyatt disguises the pursuit of Anne Boleyn as a deer hunt:
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hindBut as for me, helas! I may no moreThe vain travail hath wearied me so soreI am of them that furthest come behind.
The poem ends with a warning. This deer wears a diamond necklace on which is engraved:
Noli me tangere, [Do not touch me], for Caesar's I amAnd wild for to hold, though I seem tame.
This is a classic example, as are some other Wyatt poems, such as 'They flee from me that sometime did me seek', of the courtly poet's language being deliberately ambiguous. It was a matter of self protection.
Little wonder that Wyatt often found court life not only perilous but repugnant and dreamed of escape. Seneca's Stet quicunque volet potens from his tragedy Thyestes became the vehicle for a typically oblique, escapist translation: 'Stand whoso list upon the slipper top/Of court's estate,' Wyatt muses, but as for himself he would 'rejoice' to be 'unknown in court, that hath such brackish joys'.
That arresting word 'brackish' tells us this is no mere idle dreaming but a heartfelt wish. And if there were any doubts, the ferocity of the conclusion resolves them: the meretricious court life prevents self-knowledge — until the end, when it's too late, when a suddenly implacable Death grabs the courtier by the throat:
For him death grippeth right hard by the cropThat is much known of