Blame Not My Lute By Sir Thomas Wyatt

Sir Thomas Wyatt was born in the year 1503. The son of Sir Henry Wyatt and Anne Skinner, he went on to attend St. John’s College in Cambridge. He first took a place at the court of King Henry VIII in 1516. In the year 1520 he was married to Elizabeth Brooke at the age of seventeen. His son, of the same name, was born in the year 1521. Wyatt’s marriage to Elizabeth was miserable and the couple is believed to have been “estranged by the second half of the 1520s” (Burrows). Thomas Wyatt and Elizabeth Brooke were separated in 1525 when Wyatt accused his wife of adultery. At this time Wyatt took an interest in Anne Boleyn, the future queen. Much of Sir Thomas Wyatt’s poetry is seen as being reflective of his love life. His personal relationships

The content of the poem strongly suggests that Wyatt himself is the speaker and the poem was written for his adulterous wife, Elizabeth Brooke. The lute player, the speaker of the poem, has changed the tune of his melody in response to the changes in his lover’s behaviour which have resulted in her unfaithfulness. The music no longer pleases her, but instead it aggravates her. The lute player’s melody makes her feel uneasy because it reminds her of her own unfaithfulness. The song that the speaker has written for his disloyal lover is actually the poem itself. The poem is written in iambic tetrameter with a rhyme scheme of ababccd. This gives the poem a very melodious rhythm when recited. Also, all of the rhyming lines in the poem are assonant, further enhancing the song-like quality of the poem. Taking into consideration that the poem is in fact the song it refers to, it is clear why the woman it is intended for would find it so distasteful. The lyrics of the song address her infidelity and place the blame for her current predicament entirely upon her

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Knowles, Jo. “Wyatt, Thomas, Sir, 1503?-1542.” Literature Online. Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 2000. Web. 7 June 2011. <http://lion.chadwyck.com.ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca/searchFullt ext.do?id=BIO002332&divLevel=0&trailId=12FD3590280&area=ref&forward=critref_ft>.

Wyatt, Thomas. "Blame Not My Lute." The Norton Anthology of English Literature the Sixteenth Century / the Early Seventeenth Century. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt and M.H. Abrams. 8th ed. Vol. B. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. 602-03. Print.

Wyatt, Thomas. "Whoso list to hunt." The Norton Anthology of English Literature the Sixteenth Century / the Early Seventeenth Century. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt and M.H. Abrams. 8th ed. Vol. B. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. 595.