As court pet, Parott is enclosed in“A cage curyowsly carven”( 8 ), which
serves him as a“coverture”( 9 )–a tent, but also a defense. An exotic fetish
object found in the parrot’s legendary habitat of“Ynde”( 4 ), near the earthly
paradise, he has been sent to“greate ladyes of estate”( 6 ), who bedeck his
“bowur”( 12 ) with (perhaps rhetorical)flowers. Its centerpiece is“A myrrour
of glasse, that I may tote [peek] therin”( 10 ). This might appear to be just
another amatory adornment, but it comes to acquire some remarkably far-
reaching properties:
The myrrour that I tote in,quasi diaphonum,
Vel quasi speculum, in enigmate,
Elencticum,or ellsenthimematicum,
For logicions to loke on... ( 190 – 93 )The clear allusion to the Paulinespeculumpoints to the kinds of parallelism
that Parott is able to“speak”across sacred history in order to address the
inconvenient historical fact of Wolsey; the cage’s“coverture”becomes“meta-
phora, alegoricawithall...his protectyon, his pavys and his wall”( 202 – 03 ).
This direction is visible at Parott’sfirst allusion to Wolsey. Parrott is
equipped with an impressively mobile and accommodating tongue (“With
Dowche, with Spaynyshe, my tonge can agree,” 32 ). His preening multi-
lingualism easily falls into the courtly verbal“play”that is conspicuous
consumption, the entertainment of ladies. To be sure, Parrott’s own verbal
expense is often remarkably regulated. If he seems ready to expend language
in the right circumstances, he also hints warily at retention in a storehouse
of memory, or more accurately at a kind of recycling in which he gathers the
“shredis of sentence, strowed in the shop”( 92 ) of old philosophers and
passes them through the“crop” of his“wanton conseyt” ( 94 – 95 ), an
erotically restless cluster of parrot-faculties. Nevertheless, the apt speech
derived from Dame Philology may sometimes beflung away in a dismissal
that overthrows“aptness”in homage to a world and time out of joint.
Linguistic expansionism points to postlapsarian signs that have lost their
originary points of reference. The surplus of carnival (“InSalva festa dies,
totoys the beste”[“On holiday, to have everything is best”], 49 ) gives place
to the reestablishment of law:“Moderata juvant,buttotodothe exede”
“Moderation gratifies, but everything is too much”. It is in this
more sober frame that Wolsey makes hisfirst appearance:
But reason and wytte wantythe theyr provynciall,
When wylfulnes ys vicar generall. ( 53 – 54 )In the face of such aptness, there is applause (“Hec res acu tangitur, Parrott,
par ma foye”[“You have hit the nail on the head, Parrott, truly”]) followed
150 Court Poetry in Late Medieval England and Scotland