scenarios that grasp it. Skelton’s patronal dislocation, his aggression (how-
ever motivated) against Wolsey, his allusions to European politicsfind
expression in a utopian desire that is not easily distinguished from the
boundless conditions of reception, the uncertain line of demarcation
between author and reader, sketched in Skelton’s distich.
It has been suggested that Parott is thefigure of the court poet, com-
promising the high and noble destiny of a vocation by entertaining ladies.
Parott’s courtly role, however, becomes indissociable from his status as
allegorical author and reader. Skelton criticism is familiar with the lover
Parott, and my aim here is to bring out the style in which his role as erotic
object–“a fayre byrd for a lady”( 211 )–is bound to“the dynamic, often
rhythmical oscillation between the poles of conservation and loss, achieve-
ment and interdiction”that Uebelfinds in the paradisal-utopian subject,^17
and that here refuses to allow a clear distinction between Parott as Amant
Vert and Parott as tongue-in-beak“bybyll clarke” ( 119 ). Parott’s first
appearance stresses the glittering, playfully autoerotic bird“given to know-
ing, phallic innuendo”:^18
Wythe my beke bente, and my lytell wanton iye,
My fethyrs fresshe as ys the emerawde grene,
Abowte my necke a cerculett lyke the ryche rubye,
My lytell legges, my fete bothe fete and clene,
I am a mynyon to wayte apon a quene... ( 15 – 19 )This is the amatory bird of Ovid and of Jean Lemaire de Belges’sLes Épîtres de
l’amant vert, so far from jealousy that when his mistress Margaret of Austria is
with her two successive royal spouses he shows“grand joye...En devisant et
faisant noise et bruit / Pour n’empescher de ton plaisir le fruit.”^19 As Henrician
minion embodying the love-speech of an entire tradition, he complements the
ladies in an idealized circularity, becoming a pedagogic and prosthetic aid to
love (“With ladyes I lerne and goe with them to scole,” 21 ).^20 A veritable stock
of parrot-lore (green feathers,“rubye”circlet), he is thoroughly self-contained–
“With my beke I can pyke my lyttel praty too”( 107 )–and certainly legible at
first as ambitious courtier, there to procure ambiguous pleasure for ladies and
through ladies for male readers. His identification with the languages bestowed
on him often has a wildly polymorphous perversity; at times, as Richard
Halpern notes, he“dislocates the speaking subject”parrot-style,“referring to
himself by name and in the third person, as if he were elsewhere, not in this
voice that emerges from his body.”^21 Parott’s“wantonness,”however, soon
begins to run through the poem in an ebb andflow that is of a piece with his
hermeneutic activities.
Mapping Skelton:“Esebon, Marybon, Wheston next Barnet” 149