Sir Thomas Wyatt's "They Flee from Me"
Jonathan has brought up Sir Thomas Wyatt's "They Flee from Me" a couple of times in the past week:
To get what is to me the least interesting question out of the way first, Jonathan notes that many critics argue over Wyatt's meter. I don't see what the big mystery is. This poem, for example, is contructed on an accentual-syllabic base, with five roughly alternating stresses per line, and each line tends to be somewhere from nine to eleven syllables, depending on how you pronounce certain words. It's tempting to refer to it as loose iambic pentameter, but Wyatt himself probably wouldn't have used that term, which was at the time associated with quantitative Greek and Latin measure (of course, he wouldn't have called it "accentual syllabic" either, so whatever). As far as I know, the first persons who actually conceived of English meter as something you could refer to as “iambic” were classicists like Thomas Drant and Gabriel Harvey and other so-called "reformed versifiers." So Wyatt isn't trying, and failing, to write iambic pentameter; he's just writing like Chaucer, who as it happened wrote in a measure that usually coincided with (and inspired) what would later come to be known as English iambic pentameter. It's true that Richard Tottel tried, in the 1550's, to "correct" Wyatt's verse by adding a syllable or two here and there (thus the fourth line, for example, became "That now are wild and do not once remember") but even he didn't call it iambic pentameter. At least, we don't know that he did.
Blah blah blah. God, meter is boring! Why did I ever think I wanted my dissertation to focus on quantitative versification in Elizabethan poetry? I've been meaning to respond to Tim's comments from a week or two ago about the irrelevance of scansion as a critical tool: I couldn't agree more. Scansion is generally speaking most valuable as a diagnostic process for checking whether a given poem realizes its own intended rhythmic goals. It can be useful to demonstrate that a poet who is trying to write in a particular meter is more or less successful or unsuccessful, depending on whether and how much that poet was striving for mechanical regularity. As such, it can also be useful as a kind of training-wheel apparatus for poets who want to develop enough of an "ear" for certain verbal rhythms to gain the confidence to write outside conventional meters. But--and this is what I take Tim's point to be--if you are reading a poem by, say, Yeats or someone like that (i.e., someone who knows as much or more about traditional metrical craft as anyone else), the idea that scansion can be used meaningfully for interpretive or evaluative purposes seems highly suspect. I can think of a few relatively trivial counterexamples, such as using scansion to demonstrate that the stress is more likely to fall on a certain word in a poem written according to a definite metrical scheme, thereby rendering more likely the possibility of an ironic tone or something, but in general, scansion tells us nothing beyond what meter a poem is in and whether the poet really knows how that meter works. And when we're talking about using scansion to analyze poems that are not written in conventional meters in the first place, forget about it. Again, a couple of special counterexamples spring to mind, but who really cares?
Wyatt’s poem can be accused of "choppiness," etc., but only if one assumes that it is intended to exhibit metrical regularity. It is certainly the case that readers in the decades--centuries, really--following his death tended to prefer his friend Surrey's measures, their syllable-counts and rhythmic structures being far more assimilable to an emergent model of English iambic practice. More modern readers, however, are inclined to favor what they see as Wyatt's rugged, rough-hewn expressiveness.
So anyway, Jonathan notes that the number changes after the first stanza: "they" become a "she." This makes perfect sense, I think, when you consider that the emphasis in the first stanza is on the metaphoric vehicle (deer in the King's forest), and the emphasis in the second and third is on the tenor (the poet's former lover, who may also be the King's mistress or wife). Thus the poem begins with a wry observation ("I used to know some deer who were pretty tame when they liked the snack I had to offer them, but now something new appears more attractive to them--or has spooked them--and they're unwilling--or afraid--to acknowledge my existence"), and in what follows, the poet drops the figurative analogy and concentrates on the (singular) woman he has had in mind all along. It simply makes more sense to speak of multiple deer, since that's generally how deer move around, than the single deer that would be required to keep the analogy more logically consistent; of course, as Jonathan observes, it also suggests that there have been many other human "deres" (a little Henrician humor for you there) in the poet’s past as well.
When the poet says he now has "leve to goo" of his lover's "goodenes / and she also to use new fangilnes," he is being ironic: he frames having been cruelly dumped by her as having been given kind permission to step out of the relationship, just as he frames his complete inability to do anything about it as giving her, in turn, permission to be fickle (new-fangled). Just as with the implied deer (who are also implied women) in the first stanza, he speaks through layers of innuendo and indirection. Such conspicuous secrecy-speak is probably intended to evoke the real dangers of speaking openly in Henry VIII's court about one’s private affairs, especially when those affairs may directly involve the King's "property."
They fle from me that sometyme did me seke
with naked fote stalking in my chambre
I have sene theim gentill tame and meke
that nowe are wyld and do not remembre
that sometyme they put theimself in daunger
to take bred at my hand and nowe they raunge
besely seking with a continuell chaunge
Thancked be fortune it hath ben othrewise
twenty tymes better but ons in speciall
in thyn arraye after a pleasaunt gyse
When her lose gowne from her shoulders did fall
and she me caught in her armes long and small
therewithall swetely did me kysse
and softely said dere hert howe like you this
It was no dreme I lay brode waking
but all is torned thorough my gentilnes
into a straunge fasshion of forsaking
and I have leve to goo of her goodenes
and she also to use new fangilnes
but syns that I so kyndely ame served
I would fain knowe what she hath deserved
—British Library, MS Egerton 2711
To get what is to me the least interesting question out of the way first, Jonathan notes that many critics argue over Wyatt's meter. I don't see what the big mystery is. This poem, for example, is contructed on an accentual-syllabic base, with five roughly alternating stresses per line, and each line tends to be somewhere from nine to eleven syllables, depending on how you pronounce certain words. It's tempting to refer to it as loose iambic pentameter, but Wyatt himself probably wouldn't have used that term, which was at the time associated with quantitative Greek and Latin measure (of course, he wouldn't have called it "accentual syllabic" either, so whatever). As far as I know, the first persons who actually conceived of English meter as something you could refer to as “iambic” were classicists like Thomas Drant and Gabriel Harvey and other so-called "reformed versifiers." So Wyatt isn't trying, and failing, to write iambic pentameter; he's just writing like Chaucer, who as it happened wrote in a measure that usually coincided with (and inspired) what would later come to be known as English iambic pentameter. It's true that Richard Tottel tried, in the 1550's, to "correct" Wyatt's verse by adding a syllable or two here and there (thus the fourth line, for example, became "That now are wild and do not once remember") but even he didn't call it iambic pentameter. At least, we don't know that he did.
Blah blah blah. God, meter is boring! Why did I ever think I wanted my dissertation to focus on quantitative versification in Elizabethan poetry? I've been meaning to respond to Tim's comments from a week or two ago about the irrelevance of scansion as a critical tool: I couldn't agree more. Scansion is generally speaking most valuable as a diagnostic process for checking whether a given poem realizes its own intended rhythmic goals. It can be useful to demonstrate that a poet who is trying to write in a particular meter is more or less successful or unsuccessful, depending on whether and how much that poet was striving for mechanical regularity. As such, it can also be useful as a kind of training-wheel apparatus for poets who want to develop enough of an "ear" for certain verbal rhythms to gain the confidence to write outside conventional meters. But--and this is what I take Tim's point to be--if you are reading a poem by, say, Yeats or someone like that (i.e., someone who knows as much or more about traditional metrical craft as anyone else), the idea that scansion can be used meaningfully for interpretive or evaluative purposes seems highly suspect. I can think of a few relatively trivial counterexamples, such as using scansion to demonstrate that the stress is more likely to fall on a certain word in a poem written according to a definite metrical scheme, thereby rendering more likely the possibility of an ironic tone or something, but in general, scansion tells us nothing beyond what meter a poem is in and whether the poet really knows how that meter works. And when we're talking about using scansion to analyze poems that are not written in conventional meters in the first place, forget about it. Again, a couple of special counterexamples spring to mind, but who really cares?
Wyatt’s poem can be accused of "choppiness," etc., but only if one assumes that it is intended to exhibit metrical regularity. It is certainly the case that readers in the decades--centuries, really--following his death tended to prefer his friend Surrey's measures, their syllable-counts and rhythmic structures being far more assimilable to an emergent model of English iambic practice. More modern readers, however, are inclined to favor what they see as Wyatt's rugged, rough-hewn expressiveness.
So anyway, Jonathan notes that the number changes after the first stanza: "they" become a "she." This makes perfect sense, I think, when you consider that the emphasis in the first stanza is on the metaphoric vehicle (deer in the King's forest), and the emphasis in the second and third is on the tenor (the poet's former lover, who may also be the King's mistress or wife). Thus the poem begins with a wry observation ("I used to know some deer who were pretty tame when they liked the snack I had to offer them, but now something new appears more attractive to them--or has spooked them--and they're unwilling--or afraid--to acknowledge my existence"), and in what follows, the poet drops the figurative analogy and concentrates on the (singular) woman he has had in mind all along. It simply makes more sense to speak of multiple deer, since that's generally how deer move around, than the single deer that would be required to keep the analogy more logically consistent; of course, as Jonathan observes, it also suggests that there have been many other human "deres" (a little Henrician humor for you there) in the poet’s past as well.
When the poet says he now has "leve to goo" of his lover's "goodenes / and she also to use new fangilnes," he is being ironic: he frames having been cruelly dumped by her as having been given kind permission to step out of the relationship, just as he frames his complete inability to do anything about it as giving her, in turn, permission to be fickle (new-fangled). Just as with the implied deer (who are also implied women) in the first stanza, he speaks through layers of innuendo and indirection. Such conspicuous secrecy-speak is probably intended to evoke the real dangers of speaking openly in Henry VIII's court about one’s private affairs, especially when those affairs may directly involve the King's "property."
