Reading Notes

Renaissance Courtship Rhetoric

Thomas Wyatt pioneered the sonnet in English, importing Italian courtly love traditions. This poem demonstrates the negotiated romance typical of Renaissance poetry—where love is a strategic conversation, not just emotion.

The poem's structure mimics a legal contract: clear terms, no excess language. 'Withouten many words' signals direct communication, rejecting medieval romantic obfuscation.

Emotional Pragmatism

Wyatt presents an unusually rational approach to romantic rejection. The speaker offers the woman complete agency: she can accept, reject, or defer.

Key linguistic move: 'friends as before' suggests emotional maturity. If rejected, he'll preserve social dignity—a sophisticated emotional strategy rare in love poetry of this era.

Thomas Wyatt

Madam, withouten many words

Withouten: archaic language

Medieval English for 'without'. Wyatt deliberately uses old-fashioned diction to sound more formal and poetic.

Madam, withouten many words,

Once, I am sure, ye will or no.

And if ye will, then leave your bordes,

Courtly love negotiation

The speaker is proposing a direct romantic transaction: acceptance or rejection, with clear terms.

And use your wit and show it so.

And with a beck ye shall me call.

And if of one that burneth alway

Ye have any pity at all,

Answer him fair with yea or nay.

If it be yea, I shall be fain.

Emotional stakes

Poem presents a calm ultimatum: either reciprocate love or definitively end the pursuit.

If it be nay, friends as before.

Ye shall another man obtain,

And I mine own and yours no more.