any money to cover the expenses of her own burial,
but she observes that her body, if left above ground,
will be an “annoyance” (l. 264). Even in matters such
as the burial of a body, convenience and fi nances are
considered before morals and ethics. Finally, Whitney
asks to be commended to her friends, and she says that
if those friends miss her, then they should have worked
harder to help her when she was alive.
Whitney’s “Will” is a witty condemnation of a city
that places greater value on economic status than on a
person’s character. According to this economic value
system, Whitney, being poor, is worthless. But her
poem also gives her the opportunity to reverse this
power dynamic. In willing away the contents of the
city she cannot afford to live in, she imaginatively
makes herself the owner of the entire city. Though she
emphasizes her lack of material possessions, she takes
possession of London and situates herself in a position
of power from which she generously bestows gifts. At
the same time, by using the form of a mock testament,
Whitney defl ects some of the criticism she might have
received as a woman daring to publish her poems in
print, an act that might have been seen as improper. A
will was one moment in which a woman was empow-
ered and able to speak without fear of censure, since it
was her last chance to do so. By writing her poem in
the form of a will, Whitney both escapes the criticism
that might have been aimed at a woman writer and
cleverly uses a legal document designed to distribute
wealth as a means to comment on the unfair distribu-
tion of wealth in 16th-century London.
See also “I. W. TO HER UNCONSTANT LOVER.”
FURTHER READING
Travitsky, Betty. “The ‘Wyll and Testament’ of Isabella
Whitney.” ELR 10 (1980): 76–94.
Wall, Wendy. “Isabella Whitney and the Female Legacy.”
ELH 58, no. 1 (1991): 35–62.
Donna C. Woodford
“WILY CLERK, THE” ANONYMOUS (15th cen-
tury) This short, secular lyric survives in a single
manuscript, and although the author is unknown,
scholars believe he or she hails from Norfolk.
There is some controversy in interpreting this poem.
Traditionally, it has been viewed as a woman’s lament
over abandonment and pregnancy, but recent scholar-
ship sees the speaker as a resourceful female pleased
with her own cunning. The lyric begins with a COUPLET
that repeats after each verse, and ends in the manner of
a REFRAIN: “A, dere God, what I am fayn, / For I am
madyn now gane!” (ll. 1–2). This has been translated
as either “Ah, dear God, I am without worth, for I am
no longer virgin” or “Ah, dear God, how well-pleased I
am, for I am a maiden again!” In each verse, the speaker
tells more of her tale: First, she meets a clever clergy-
man who tells her to listen to him but to also conceal
his counsel. Next, she says he “had learning” (probably
meaning he knew Latin), and that his knowledge gave
him magical power, for she could not resist his will. In
the third verse, she acknowledges he has seduced her,
and now “will not my girdil met—” (l. 17), suggesting
she is pregnant. In the fi nal verse, she says she has
been on pilgrimage and is now resolved not to allow
any clergymen to toy with her. This can be read as a
traditional repentance motif, but the alternative read-
ing suggests the pilgrimage was a ploy to conceal the
pregnancy and childbirth, allowing the speaker to
return to life as though still a maiden—which is why
she is “well-pleased.”
In the poetic tradition, this poem is unusual because
of its secularity (most Middle English lyrics are reli-
gious in nature) and because the female speaker marks
it as a relatively rare “woman’s song,” similar to poems
such as “The WIFE’S LAMENT.”
Though the speaker is obviously female, many schol-
ars believe this poem was written by a man—perhaps,
like many Middle English lyrics, by a cleric. The wry,
dramatic tone fi ts with known male authors, and the
poem lacks the private, personal nature found in poems
we can defi nitively attribute to female authors. The wil-
iness of the poem’s clerk, attributed to his scholarly
training, could suggest a clerical author engaged in both
self-fl attery and self-deprecation, especially since the
poem plays on the popular motif of abuses within the
church.
Regardless of which reading one chooses, it is
important to note that women’s virginity was highly
prized in the Middle Ages, so much so that the woman
in this poem either considers herself worthless for hav-
ing given hers up before marriage or triumphant for472 “WILY CLERK, THE”