The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry Before 1600

(coco) #1

est (1550); THOMAS CHURCHYARD’s The Contention...
upon David Dycers Dreame (1551–52); Pyers Plowmans
Exhortation unto the Lordes, Knightes, and Burgoysses of
the Parlyamenthouse (1550), possibly by ROBERT CROW-
LEY; GEORGE GASCOIGNE’s The Steele Glas (1576); Newes
from the North Otherwise called the Conference between
Simon Certain and Pierce Plowman (1579), possibly by
Francis Thynne; and the play A Merry Knack to Know a
Knave (1594), possibly by William Kempe and Edward
Alleyn. There is also I Playne Piers which Cannot Flat-
ter—an amalgam of material from The Plowman’s Tale
and new topical matter added after the 1540s. Unique
among these pro-Protestant texts, The Banquet of John
the Reeve unto Piers Plowman (1532) is an anti-Protes-
tant work in which Piers defends Catholic Eucharistic
doctrine.


FURTHER READING
Aston, Margaret. Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy
in Late Medieval Religion. London: Hambledon Press, 2003.
Barr, Helen, ed. The Piers Plowman Tradition. London:
Everyman’s Library, 1993.
Hudson, Anne. “Epilogue: The Legacy of Piers Plowman.” In
A Companion to Piers Plowman, edited by John A. Alford,
251–266. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
Rydzeski, Justine. Radical Nostalgia in the Age of Piers Plow-
man: Economics, Apocalypticism, and Discontent. New York:
Peter Lang, 1999.
Daniel P. Knauss


“PILLAR PERISHED IS WHERETO I
LEANT, THE” SIR THOMAS WYATT (1557) This
translation of a SONNET by PETRARCH, which is ascribed
to SIR THOMAS WYATT both in its manuscript form (the
Arundel manuscript) and in TOTTEL’S MISCELLANY
(1557), carries with it a certain amount of circumstan-
tial evidence that not only points toward Wyatt’s
authorship but also suggests a possible period of com-
position.
The title which Tottel provides, “The lover lamentes
the death of his love,” is now universally acknowledged
to be an act of misreading, possibly deliberate. In
Petrarch’s original sonnet, the “pillar perished” refers
to the death of the poet’s great friend and patron,
Giovanni Colonna, whose surname is the Italian for
column, or “pillar.” Wyatt, in turn, is thought to have


composed his translation following the death of his
great friend and patron, Thomas Cromwell, who was
executed on July 28, 1540.
Such an autobiographical context loads the sonnet
with implied meanings. The opening declaration
becomes a potentially dangerous admission of depen-
dence on a man executed for treason: “whereto I leant”
(l. 1). This admission extends into the second line’s
“strongest stay of mine unquiet mind,” a possible refer-
ence to Wyatt’s 1527 work The Quiet of Mind, which
was originally commissioned by Queen Catherine of
Aragon as a translation of Petrarch’s Remedies against
Good and Evil Fortune (1358?–60?). Indeed, an empha-
sis on FORTUNE recurs throughout: “hap away hath
rent” (l. 5); “I alas by chance am thus assigned” (l. 7);
“it is by destiny” (l. 9). This recurrent Boethian stress
on providence serves as a safety net: Wyatt could not
very well criticize the king, despite one of the reasons
for Cromwell’s downfall having been arranging the
marriage between Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves,
whom Henry loathed.
Wyatt continues to disassociate himself in the SES-
TET, whereby the sonnet lapses into the kind of
Petrarchan antitheses which we encounter in poems
such as “I FIND NO PEACE, AND ALL MY WAR IS DONE”:
“pen” counters “voice” and “mind” balances “body,”
resulting in the internal division of “I myself always to
hate” (l. 13). The rhetorical question that constitutes
the sestet—if we were to consider the poem without its
political context—effectively adds nothing; the antici-
pation of the “dreadful death” that will “cease my dole-
ful state” simply reiterates the OCTAVE’s closing line,
“Dearly to mourn till death do it relent” (l. 8). Read in
correspondence with events at court, the capitulation
to received poetical formula allows Wyatt to covertly
voice dissent in the octave, as personal unhappiness
extends to unhappiness over its cause, while maintain-
ing what one critic has termed an air of deniability.
The sestet’s rhetorical question thereby achieves a cer-
tain gravitas as it gives voice to a sense of frustration
felt by those who serve a capricious and tyrannical
monarch. By their nature, rhetorical questions expect
no answer; in this instance it is also because the real
question—that of responsibility—has not been, indeed
could not be, asked.

“PILLAR PERISHED IS WHERETO I LEANT, THE” 331
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