John Skelton was an English poet (1460-1529) and was active in the Tudor courts of kings Henry VII and Henry VIII. In fact we first hear of him as a tutor to the young Prince Henry before he was heir to the English throne. He was a forceful personality and made a lasting impression on his generation and subsequently has taken his place in the canon of English poetry. There has been much debate as to whether that place is deserved, with some critics saying it is more his place in history that has warranted his fame rather than the poetry that he wrote. There is no doubt that since the time of Chaucer in the late 14th century and up to the time of the Elizabethan poets and Spenser in the late 16th century Skelton holds a unique place because of the amount of his poetry that has survived.

So what about the poetry. Well first impression are that it is different, wildly uneven, vitriolic and although the later poems have a unique style of their own they did not provide any sort of blueprint that would inspire subsequent poets. In many ways the poems appear as anachronisms rather like Skelton himself. The poems certainly hark back to medieval times with the first of the longer poems "The Bowge of Court" (the mouth of the Tudor Court) being a dream allegory of a nobleman beset by the deadly sins that Skelton perceived that were rife in the court. It is written in iambic pentameters with an ababccdd rhyming scheme. The satire is evident throughout although it is of a more general nature and does concern itself with man's salvation. It does not make for easy reading today and there are many biblical and liturgical references that require detailed notes to gain a more in depth understanding of what is going on here.

The next significant poem is "Phyllyp Sparowe" and suddenly the poet is writing in a wholly new and different style and one that has come to be known as Skeltonics. His lines are contracted into six, five or even four syllables, they are light and airy with rhymes that go on and on and seem sometimes to be taken to their limit. These new short lines have a pungency all of their own and give Skelton added scope for word play, they seem to be flung out onto the page, but to me they also have the feel of rhyming songs, they almost chime out to be sung in a way that Bob Dylan might sing "Its alright ma I'm only bleeding" This is an example from Skelton's Colin Clout:

But now my mynde ye understande,
For they must take in hande
To preche, and withstande
All manner of abjections;
For bysshoppes havr protections
They say, to do corrections
But they have no affections
To take sadde dyrections
In such maner of cases
Men say, they bere no faces
To occupye suche places
To sowe the sede of graces.

Back to Phyllipe Sparowe which is an early example of Skeltonics and tells from the mouth of a certain Jane Scroupe her lamentations for the loss of her pet sparrow that was killed by her cat Gib. Many of her thoughts are concerned with the afterlife of the sparrow which she sees flying in heaven. The poem also contains an imagined requiem mass for Phyllipe Sparrow in which a whole host of birds take part, all of them named and some described; it is like something that could have come from Chaucer's "Parliament of Fowles". However, it would not be a Skelton poem without something else that sets it out of the normal run of things. Suddenly the goodly maid Jane from the nunnery near Norwich takes on an added persona, she becomes almost a sexual object in lines like:

It had a velvet cap
And wold syt upon my lap,
And seke after small wormes,
And sometime white bread crommes;
And many times and ofte
Between my breasts softe
It wolde lye and rest
It was proper and prest
...........
And when I sayd 'Phyp Phyp'
Than he would lepe and skyp
And take me by the lyp
Alas, it wyll me slo,
That Phillyp is gone me fro!

It has been suggested that Skelton was thinking of the Virgin Mary with these lines, but we will never know and it is left to our own interpretation.

Skelton was a master of the political satire and three of his longer poems focused on his arch enemy, Cardinal Wolsey. Speke Parrott is perhaps Skeltons most difficult poem. it reads like an early 'Wasteland' with its sounds its frequent references in other languages and its obscure references. However amongst some invectives against the state that England has fallen into there are frequent references to Cardinal Wolsey. If this satire did not hit its mark then Skelton followed up with Collyn Clout. Here a hard working man from peasant stock rails against the state of the nation and the state of the catholic church and it is Skelton taking us back to the world Langland's "Piers Plowman" He is at pains to make his language plane, but also comments with a large tongue in his cheek on his own style of poetry:

For though my ryme be ragged,
Tattered and jagged,
Rudely rayne-beaten,
Rusty and mothe-eaten,
yf ye take well therwith
It hath in it some pyth

Skelton made Wolsey the subject of a further satire in "Ye come ye nat to Courte" not included in this collection. In this poem Skelton gets more personal still, saying that the country was being run from Wolsey's grand home at Hampton Court rather from the Kings court at Westminster. Wolsey was all powerful at this time and so Skelton was taking something of a risk, and he may or may not have been locked up in the tower of London for his pains. Shortly after the publication of this poem Skelton found his way back into favour with Wolsey as the two clerics found themselves on the same side when it came to fighting against heretics to the Catholic Faith. Skelton was a conservative and some have argued a priest first and foremost.

Perhaps Skelton's most famous poem is "The Tunnying of Elynour Rummyng" This finds Skelton at his most bawdy and it is a wonderfully irreverent piece of social satire as he describes Elynours ale-house and the customers that frequent it. It is Rabelaisian in the extreme and it goes some way to account for Skelton's reputation as a bawdy sort of court jester. The publication a few decades after his death called The "Merie Tales of Skelton" also did not help his reputation. It is a series of sometimes bawdy and always cheeky stories of his exploits when he was a prelate at Diss, none of which have any evidence from other sources, but all point to the larger than life character of John Skelton, self proclaimed poet Laureate.

Skelton was a political, and satirical poet, he was a lampoonist, he wrote religious poetry, meditations, prayers and panegyrics. Not all are included in these selections, but some of the longer poems contain all these elements. Anyone wishing to delve a little deeper into John Skeltons poems would be well advised to pick up this little book. It contains most of the important longer poems (although there are a few cuts made in some), the notes are excellent and essential for a further understanding and it also has and excellent glossary of words. When Skelton gets into his stride with his Skeltonic lines they cry out to be read aloud and I thoroughly enjoyed myself doing so. His language is easier than Chaucers, but his use of Latin and other languages sometimes makes for problems, but he is a word smith and an early English one at that and there are plenty of passages that I found a delight to read. I would rate this book at 4.5 stars, losing half a star for some of the cuts to the longer poems. ( )

John Skelton was the first poet laureate of England, around 1500. He seems to have appointed himself, but he is very clear that he is "Laureate", signing many of his poems with that title. He was a priest who had a role in the court of King Henry VII, and later secured a parish in East Anglia. Much of his poetry is concerned with malpractice by the church hierarchy of the time. Almost all of it is satirical, a running critique of the society of his time, in very down-to-earth language. "Running" is a good description of his verse, because its most typical form is the jingly rhyming pattern named after him, Skeltonic verse or "Skeltonics". This is a long series of short (2 or 3-stress) lines with rhymes repeated anywhere from two to eight or nine times with the same rhyme. It has a rapid, clattery feel, and some dismiss it as doggerel.

Skelton's best-known poems are very long. They include "Phyllyp Sparrowe", a prolonged lament by a young lady, Jane Scrope, for her pet sparrow Phillip, killed by the cat Gyb. She was very fond of her sparrow, and is truly heartbroken, but the total effect of the poem is humorous, as she labors to demonstrate her classical education in the similes and comparisons she uses to express her grief.

"Speke, Parrot" is put in the mouth of a very pampered parrot, who also, this being the Renaissance, has benefited from an exposure to classical learning. The parrot (or "popagay") is highly critical of Cardinal Wolsey, whom he accuses at length in elaborate circumlocutions of wresting control of England from Henry VIII, who has, Skelton claims, become a mere figurehead. Parott is much spoiled by a group of young ladies who delight in his puns and reward him with almonds and dates. "Collyn Clout", an altogether more serious poem, is also long. It berates the English clergy for their manifold misdeeds and negligence, and demonstrates the anger and sense of betrayal that powered the Reformation which was just beginning on the continent.

Skelton writes either in the loose Skeltonics or in the elaborate "rhyme royal" stanza perfected by Chaucer:

"My name is Parott, a byrde of Paradyse,
By Nature devysede of a wonderowus kynde,
Deyntely dyetyde with dyvers delycate spyce,
Tyll Eufrates, that flodde, dryvythe me into Ynde,
Where men of that contre by fortune me fynde,
And sende me to greate ladyes of estate;
Then Parot most have an almon or a date."

The Skeltonics look more like this:

"But as verely as ye be
The naturall sonnes thre
Of Noe the patryarke,
That made that great arke,
Wherein he had apes and owles,
Beestes, byrdes, and foules,
That if ye can fynde
Any of my sparowes kynde,
(God send the soule good rest!)
I wolde have yet a nest
As prety and as prest
As my sparowe was.
But my sparowe dyd pas
All sparowes of the wode
That were syns Noes flode;
Was never none so good."

My edition of Skelton's poems is a volume of the Clarendon Medieval and Tudor Series, from Oxford University Press. The long poems are abridged to some extent, though they still go on for many pages. There are also various short poems and a comic scene from a morality play which wouldn't be out of place in an Elizabethan comedy. The edition contains a helpful introduction and extensive endnotes which are of marginal helpfulness but do translate the Latin, French, Portuguese, etc. that are liberally sprinkled throughout. Parott especially is quite a linguist. Most helpful, in fact necessary, a glossary is included. And here is the problem with reading Skelton. Though he is humorous, engaging, historically interesting, and sometimes lyrical, his language requires a lot of deciphering, in vocabulary, spelling, and grammar. It can be quite an effort to read him at any length. When I started the book I was doing about 2 pages an hour. I got more used to it, especially the spelling, but it was still slow going throughout. I would recommend that if you want to look into the poetry of this period you get a good anthology with short excerpts of various poets. I wouldn't recommend tackling a whole book of Skelton like this one unless you are very interested indeed. ( )

Some of these are wonderfully funny. ( )