It was a sign of refinement, a polite accomplishment, another arrow in the quiver of courtly excellence. Lyrics were circulated freely – sometimes altered or augmented in the process – and were often recited or sung, with varying degrees of success, to a sophisticated coterie of lords and ladies.Not that poetry was a frivolous exercise. The Court was the heartland of politics and society, and its literature was invariably shaped by that context. Under a dynastic monarchy, especially one in which the King would marry six times, public and private were inextricably linked. Consequently the vocabulary employed to express attachment within both spheres became fused. A suitor would pay court to his mistress, desiring her favour and professing himself her faithful servant, just as he would to his master for patronage. When Cardinal Wolsey petitioned the King for access to the Court in 1527, he expressed himself in terms that would not have seemed overwrought to his contemporaries: ‘There was never lover more desirous of the sight of his lady, than I am of your most noble and royal person.’2 At the Tudor Court, where relationships were governed by ‘the common infection of feigned friendship’ and where increasingly repressive treason laws ensured that ‘for fear no man durst either speak or wink’, decorum and discretion were the rule.3 But courtiers found in this culture of ‘linguistic borrowing’4 a useful way of circumventing, even subverting, the prevailing codes.
