And what you end up with, of course, is various permutations of intrigue and courtship and romance and betrayal. The court was a little bit like a Renaissance version of Celebrity love Island, which I understand is a TV game show where well known and attractive and single and successful people are put together in an enclosed space in a high stakes game of love. It was populated by the crème de la crème of English society: lords and ladies, their sons and daughters, senior members of the Church, as well as ambitious and upwardly mobile people such as Thomas Cromwell – who ended up being a key figure in the fate of Thomas Wyatt, in a way that is possibly relevant to this poem. The court of Henry VIII, as I’m sure you can imagine, was a very glamorous, a very exciting, potentially a very rewarding, but also a very dangerous and uncertain place to find yourself. But he was certainly a very accomplished poet, and also an influential figure in the development of English poetry. Although to be honest, that’s not the biggest compliment, it wasn’t exactly a golden age of poetry. He was also the leading light among the poets of Henry VIII’s court. Sir Thomas Wyatt was a courtier and diplomat during the reign of Henry VIII in 16th century England. But before I try and persuade you of that, let me give you a bit of background about it. I reckon this is the first modern love poem in English.
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