A Strange Fashion of Forsaking in the Poetry of Thomas Wyatt (Part 2)

Wes & Erin discuss Thomas Wyatt’s “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee from Me.” Thanks to our sponsor, the incredible online language school Lingoda. Save up to 50 percent on your language course by going to https://try.lingoda.com/Subtext50 and using code SUBTEXT50 at checkout. When you sing up for the seven day trial, you can attend three small group classes and one private class completely free! Upcoming Episodes: “Beetlejuice,” Conrad Aiken’s “Morning Song of Senlin,” “Sunset Boulevard.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:20 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. Okay, welcome to part two of our discussion of two poems by Thomas Wyatt. Last time we discussed Whoso list to hunt, which got us into kind of a hunting mood, but also kind of put us out of a hunting mood. I think it's, you know, it's difficult to say whether or not this seems like how we're going to be spending our Saturdays from now on, but the next poem we'll talk about is they Flee from Me. I think I mentioned in the last episode that this is written in rhyme royal, which I believe is a form that was invented by Chaucer. This is a rhyme scheme of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. This is a seven line stanza, so sort of like half a sonnet. And the rhyme scheme is A, B, A, B, B, C, C. So there's a kind of button at the end of each stanza with the CC rhymes that kind of come out of nowhere after the five lines of either A or B. Yeah, so there's a. I think there's something kind of similar here to, you know, we talked in the last episode about how Whoso list to hunt, which is a sonnet and mostly a Petrarchan sonnet, ends with that couplet that kind of prefigures the Shakespearean or English sonnet. The button at the end of the sonnet with the seven line stanza and the form of rhyme royal. I think there's something like that going on here too, where we get a little bit of A, but at the end of every stanza. And maybe we'll talk about how that's functioning in terms of the content of the stanza because I think they work together really brilliantly. 2:06 Wes: Yeah. Do you want to read it? 2:08 Erin: Sure. They flee from me that sometime did me seek with naked foot stalking in my chamber. I have seen them gentle, tame and meek, that now are wild and do not remember that sometime they put themself in danger to take bread at my hand. And now they range busily seeking with a continual change. Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise 20 times better, but once in special in thin array after a pleasant guise when her loose gown from her shoulders did fall, and she me caught in her arms long and Small therewithal sweetly did me kiss, and softly said, dear heart, how like you this. It was no dream I lay broad waking. But all is turned through my gentleness into a strange fashion of forsaking. And I have leave to go of her goodness, and she also to use new fangledness. But since that I so kindly am served, I would fain know what she hath deserved. 3:12 Wes: Bit evocative of an aubade. Am I wrong? The parting of lovers. 3:17 Erin: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. 3:20 Wes: So great. First two lines. They flee from me that sometime did me seek with naked foot stalking in my chamber. Is this a. Is this a many they or is this someone with they, them pronouns, or is this a neuter they? 3:38 Erin: Well, it's hard to say because he does, you know, that sometime they put themself in danger. So. So they do have a singular self in that line. But yeah, I think this is a horde of. Of women. You know, he used to really. 3:50 Wes: My notes say it could be birds. Could be women. Or deer. 3:54 Erin: Yeah, I think some people say squirrels as well. 3:59 Wes: Or horde of women. I like the way you put it. 4:01 Erin: Horde of women. Yeah, yeah. 4:04 Wes: The image of a. Of a naked. Naked foot, which works very well with any of these images, including birds, but in human beings it's quite poignant, right, because it's suggestive of someone who's seeking him out and they're in a state of vulnerability. And you know, there might be a beggar or poverty stricken. Right. So there's. Someone who's. Or they might have, you know, just been let out of the madhouse. There's someone who's been depleted by their desire. And in this case, right, he is the hunted. He's the one being stalked in his chamber. 4:41 Erin: That's right. Is there anything here of maybe this is one too far? Because if this were the case, I suppose someone would still have a stockinged foot and not a naked foot. But I thought maybe there was something here too about taking off one's shoes to disguise one's footfall. Like a sneak attack to stalk in that. In the sense. Yeah, I don't know if that quite works. 5:05 Wes: That's probably a more logical reading. 5:08 Erin: No, no, I don't think so, because it is a naked foot. It's not in their stocking feet or something. I like this idea of the. The beggar, because they are taking food from his hand. He has something to offer them. They're in some sort of depleted or lesser position. 5:24 Wes: I was also thinking of someone sticking their foot through his window to touch his face while he was sleeping. Wake up. Wake up. I told you not to do that. Told you not to wake me up that way. So, yeah, this transition from, okay, so he's the hunter, they flee from me. But at one time he was the one being sought out. So we have an interesting reversal. 5:50 Erin: Yeah. And it isn't quite a reversal again. I mean, it's complicated because they flee from me. I mean, that's like Frankenstein's monster would write a poem called they flee from 6:02 Wes: me, 6:05 Erin: you know, so that sometime did 6:08 Wes: never seek me out. More like me. And they were always terrified of me. 6:11 Erin: Exactly. 6:13 Wes: Interesting pump. 6:16 Erin: But. But running from him because. Okay, so the implication is he's fallen out of favor now they don't want to be seen with him. But that's not quite the same as he is at once the hunter and the hunted in his previous state. And now he's just a pariah. That's quite different from being the hunted. He might be hunted by someone not in the poem, which is making him a pariah to everybody. Everybody else. Right. But there's a sort of a third state, I think that that complicates this easy kind of dichotomy a bit. 6:48 Wes: So he could be talking about, you know, it doesn't necessarily need to be about lovers, at least this far into the poem. I mean, the imagery later on is much more obvious. But, you know, it could be a matter of his standing within the court. 7:01 Erin: Yeah. I mean, I think when I was a teenager, I was very confused by this poem because I thought that the first stanza was about him with a bunch of other men. And then I was confused as to why all of a sudden, then he's with a woman in his bedroom. Because not that I thought the first stanza was about anything homoerotic, but just that there was something about the men of power in the court, that these were the people that were seeking him out. I think because of the stalking and the aggressive language. 7:31 Wes: Yeah. The pivot point of the poem means we do have some flexibility in the way we read the first part because it could be about women, or a woman in particular, but it could just as much be about courtly life, because the pivot point is thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise. And then he turns to a thought of love. And there's the contrast there, obviously, but it doesn't need to be about the same person or the same circumstance. The contrast is in the emotion. But we'll get to that. 7:59 Erin: I guess it would have been easier if he just said, these girls flee from me that sometimes I. I would have been. I would have been more satisfied. 8:11 Wes: That's in his original version. Then he crossed down because he'd been cryptic. Was going to be better. 8:17 Erin: I know I like to push the meter, but this is too far. They. 8:21 Wes: Girls flee from me. 8:22 Erin: Yeah, Girls flee from me that sometime. Didn't you see? That's a. 8:26 Wes: That's good. 8:27 Erin: That's a. That's a very different kind of poem. 8:30 Wes: So I have seen them gentle, tame and meek. So we get, we end in the last poem, the concept of tameness in contrast to wildness. And we get it here again. So he's seen them tame, but they now are wild. 8:43 Erin: This is a little, again, a little frightening. I don't know why this tame, wild stuff is frightening to me, but it's also indicative to me if we're following through on the metaphor of learned behavior and memory in animals. I think I read somewhere once that cats have something like a 19 hour memory. It always seemed very unlikely to me because cats can go without seeing you for a day and remember who you are, but anyway, much longer. Yeah, yeah, I didn't believe that at all. But for animals that are less. I mean, cats really aren't domesticated. But for animals that are less domesticated, who knows how long their working memory is. And though they may be, you know, taking food from your hand one day, if you then don't see them for a while or whatever, maybe they wouldn't recognize you. Maybe they would, I don't know. But anyway, one thinks of the fact that this maybe something like an out of sight, out of mind phenomenon in an animal where they don't remember you anymore is implying something rather uncomplimentary about whether this be about like the nature of women themselves. I think there's something obviously of that in there. This idea of newfangledness and changeability and unreliability, but also about the fact that a real lack of gratitude in the Tudor court in which people could so quickly forget, like an animal that owes you nothing or that thinks it owes you nothing because it knows nothing of debt. You know, as soon as they're not getting what they want from you or they've been away from you for a while, they can just entirely write you off, forget whatever they might owe to you and put their allegiance elsewhere. 10:27 Wes: Yeah. So this is evocative of a breakup of some kind, whether it's with a lover or friend or friends or courtly allies, acquaintances. And those things can overlap, of course, and we get the stark Contrast between the gentleness of people when we are on good terms with them and their seemingly civilized nature and even courtly nature being very refined and curtsying and bowing and doing all that stuff. And the next minute they're chopping your head off. 10:59 Erin: Right. 11:00 Wes: They're wild and do not remember. And. And so the memory part seems to have something to do with attachment. Is the attachment feigned in the initial case, or is it just that people can be so fickle, they can put any attachment aside that they can be your friend one moment and not your friend the next? 11:19 Erin: Yeah. And I suppose I'm wondering, you know, I keep wanting to kind of turn this back around on the speaker and wonder, okay, what does the speaker feel he's owed? You know, the quid pro quo nature of this implies that the speaker believes that he's owed something. And, I mean, that seems true. You know, I just. I want to interrogate the speaker's attitude because I wonder to what extent he is depending on the nature of these relationships, he is entitled to the loyalty that he seems to desire. I mean, if we're talking about ratting someone out to their potential death, that's one thing. 11:55 Wes: Yeah. That sometime they put themselves in danger to take bread at my hand, and now they range, busily seeking with a continual change. So he has fed them in the past, and they put themself in danger to be fed by it. You know, it's kind of. It makes you think of the deer, Right. You know, you hold out the bread and the deer will come up to you, and. 12:15 Erin: Mm. 12:15 Wes: It's a dangerous thing for a deer to do. They don't know if you're a hunter or have bad intent. So that was then and now they range. Right. So it's evocative of a. Like a deer ranging as in eating grass. So it's a different. So ranging as in dispersing, but also taking sustenance from elsewhere, taking sustenance from the ground, busily seeking with a continual change. So this suggests inconstancy and maybe moving from relationship to relationship. Again, whether it's lover or benefactor or ally, however you want to see it. But it's evocative of fickleness, faithlessness, and movement outside of a particular dyad. Relationship dyad. 12:59 Erin: You know, if this is a hunter feeding deer, then what is his motivation here? What does this say about the speaker? Why is he giving out this bread? What's he getting from this? You know, it's clear what the deer are getting. What exactly is the speaker doing here? Is he encouraging the deer to. You know, it's a dangerous enterprise on some level. So that means he has to at least theoretically pose a kind of threat to the deer, which means he could kill them if he wanted to. Well, why doesn't he want to? 13:27 Wes: He could kill them or he could take sexual. You know, if it's women, take sexual advantage of them, get them killed by their maniacal husband. 13:39 Erin: Well, the. The murder of them would be the. The metaphor for. For sex. But he's not. Sort of. Not claiming that, but he sort of is implying it at the same time. I don't know. It's just. Yeah, I've never. I've never turned so hard on him. I've never. I've never turned so hard on him as in this moment now. I'm like, hey, what is this? What's this guy doing actually? What's his game? You know, because he's as canny of a courtier as anyone, so he seems now kind of to be bested in the very, very game that he was playing in the first place. I just want to point out here, for the purposes of discussing the rhyme royal, that, you know, danger here rhymes with chamber. It's supposed to be the B rhyme, but then we get kind of a slant rhyme with the C rhymes, right? So there's a twist. And now they range busily seeking with a continual change. So the turn does happen there in that final couplet of the stanza that kind of thematically sets it apart from the rest. So it uses the form to advantage, but it also has that connection back to danger. Now, maybe he's the one in danger, and we're meant to kind of see, see that connection? It almost looks like a CCC rhyme at the end. Anyway, I like the fact that as he's talking about them changing, we go into the C rhyme. So the form of the stanza is kind of performing the content. 15:05 Wes: Okay, so now we get a twist. Now we get a turn. Thanked be fortune. It hath been otherwise. So it hasn't always been this way. This whatever rift or whatever led to the picture we've gotten is of some connection that's been severed. It's not always been this way. And again, like I said before, you can read this as being directly about the same relationship or relationships, or you can think of this as another relationship altogether. So he could be thinking about courtly betrayal and then thinking of another lover, or he could be thinking of the same person. So it could have been otherwise with this particular person or people, or it could have been otherwise in the sense of there was a different person. So it hath been otherwise 20 times better. But once in special, which I take to mean once in particular. 15:55 Erin: Yeah, yeah. 15:57 Wes: So 20 times better. Why use 20 times here? 16:01 Erin: It's a numbers game. 16:03 Wes: Better in 20 cases or write one case that was 20 times as good. 16:10 Erin: Yeah. I read this as he. Thank goodness. I used to have actually a lot of conquests. I was quite the hot commodity, I'd like you to know. And of course, you know, that was wonderful for me. But actually only one, one time in particular is the one that really matters. There's one that really he really remembers that was the one that got away or that was the special case. Right. So I think it kind of immediately comments on the nature of this, you know, this player guy who's like, oh, I used to be able to get all these women really of that doesn't matter. You just need the once in special time that makes all the other ones worth it or something. Right. 16:54 Wes: Yeah. And apparently he's the one getting dipped at the end, right? 16:57 Erin: Yes, yes, we'll find out. 17:00 Wes: So it's an interesting reversal of roles. 17:02 Erin: That's right. 17:03 Wes: Okay, so the one particular case which was the best apparently really interesting way of putting this in thin array after a pleasant guise. So the question is, what does that mean immediately? Thin array makes me think of a nightgown after pleasant guise. Could be nakedness. Or is the pleasant guise clothing and thin array nakedness or nightgown? It's unclear to me. What do you think of that? 17:30 Erin: Well, I look this up and it could be it's after a pleasant party. The guise, they've come home after this evening out and she's just wearing this thin nightgown now. But it's confusing and I think it maybe is meant to double as either they came home after some sort of ball, a masquerade or something like that, perhaps. Or she herself could be dressed up in some Persona, some masquerade clothing or something after coming home from the. Right. 17:57 Wes: Well, I like this way of reading it as, yeah, pleasant guys being, you know, you were dressed up for the ball and now you're in thin array. The nightgown. The pleasant guise is a bit suggestive of duplicity and deception. It's a guise. And of course you're representing yourself maybe as more attractive than you are in general. Not in this case. So we get ourselves made up and dressed up so that we can put on our best face to other people, so to speak. Thin array. We're not in that position if we're unclothed or almost unclothed. So I find that a very interesting way to put this. Right. This sexual, romantic moment. Thin array is conveying a certain vulnerability because it's no longer behind the mask, the social mask. 18:50 Erin: Yes. And then we get really the naked truth here, right? Because then we have the loose gown from the shoulders did fall. So, you know, he thinks he's seeing to the heart of her underneath the trappings. You know, this would be the real woman he's getting underneath that guise. But then maybe not, because maybe that too is a kind of front or falsehood, because it doesn't seem to have lasted. So he sees her in her nakedness in one sense, and in another sense, maybe not. But she catches him in her arms and then says, dear heart, how like you this, which is lovely. And of course, heart, I think this is what you were referring to earlier, is a homonym for Hart H A R T, which makes him like the deer, like the hunted one in the first stanza. And I think it's worth noting that. And this is where I think that Wyatt is connected pretty interestingly to Donne. John Donne was. The speaker doesn't move in the poem. He's passive. People are fleeing from him, or they're taking things from him. He only sees. He sees others. He has an outstretched hand, but he doesn't stretch it out at any point. They just, you know, the deer are more actively taking from him rather than him reaching out to them. And then he's caught in this woman's arms. And then later, he's just laying, broad waking, but he doesn't move at all. Everybody else around him is changing, ranging, moving, and he's passive. It's reminiscent to me, I'm thinking in. There are a couple examples, I think, in Donne. Well, many examples of gender reversal, but a couple of explicit moments of passivity. You know, he's. He's always trying to be the powerful one and the one who convinces the woman to sleep with him, but he's always failing to his mistress going to bed when he's trying to get her to take off her clothes. But I think in the penultimate line, he says something like, you know, to teach thee, I am naked first. So the poem ends with, you know, he's tried to get her to take off his clothes, but in the end, he's the only one who's naked. She's still standing there, presumably fully clothed. So something about that reversal and that passivity or the futility of the man and trying to win over a woman. I like that twist. It's this very vulnerable. She's very vulnerable in this image. But he, I think, is, in truth, in the broader context of the other two stanzas. Right. Is the one who turned out to be the vulnerable one. 21:17 Wes: Yeah. When her loose gown falls from her shoulders, you expect him to catch her in his arms. And then she catches him in her arms. Long and small. 21:28 Erin: Yeah. 21:29 Wes: It's a very interesting contrasting image. Right. I think we can think that long arms are arms that can reach. So they can reach deep within him, for instance, as in the long arm of the law. In this case, the long arm of love. 21:43 Erin: Yeah. Yeah. Good. 21:46 Wes: But also small because she's a woman and really interesting image, but also, if she's catching him. Right. It's long and maybe small, but also strong. And he can be. He can be held strong. Yeah. 22:00 Erin: Which is surprising. 22:01 Wes: So, you know, and on the one hand. Right. It evokes the feminine physically weaker form at a literal level, but at a spiritual or psychological level, it's her strength that overshadows his. 22:17 Erin: Yeah. I never thought about that before. The smallness, too, would imply, you know, they could be, I suppose, long relative to her smallness. But I'm also thinking of, like, thin arms, which would seem to undercut. You know, the smallness is thinness, which would seem to undercut her strength. So the surprising strength is also indicative of a kind of a guise. She doesn't look it, but she's stronger than she. She's different from how she actually looks. So I think there's the betrayal of the nakedness or the seemingly vulnerable moment with him that turns out to be. Well, she leaves him in the end. She might have betrayed him. We don't quite know. But circumstances are quite different now from this intimate moment. So the way she looks, even in nakedness, is not revealing of her interior. 23:01 Wes: And we don't, you know, we don't have to imagine, as I jokingly suggested, that she's dipping him, holding him and then kissing him. 23:10 Erin: I do like that, though. 23:11 Wes: Clark Gable. Wait, who's the character? 23:15 Erin: Rhett Butler and Scarlett o' Hara dipping. 23:19 Wes: She's Rhett Butler in that circumstance. No. So we don't, you know. But she catches him in some way. And of course, we're pointed to the metaphor of catching again, as if he's the hunting one, but catched and presumably held. And then she kisses him. So, again, role reversal. She's the one with the agency here, and she's the one making the romantic comment, how like you this. So then we get. You know, we get, it was no dream. Well, you never said it was a dream. You never said you thought it was a dream. Why is this a twist here that it turns out not to be a dream? 23:58 Erin: Well, he's doubting it. He's doubting its veracity because, well, we get two adverbs. Sweetly did me kiss and softly said. And that second stanza breaks off with Wyatt, or the speaker, I should say, ventriloquizing her. I mean, with her words, which seems to produce such a strong emotion in him and yet also such bitterness, because something must be very different now. So he's having to reaffirm to himself, no, that wasn't a dream. That that really happened. Whatever happened after that must have been such a contrast that he questions. He questions reality. 24:33 Wes: Yeah. I mean, it's. It's almost. Is this the morning after they make love? He wakes up. It was no dream. I lay broad waking. We have him now laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, worrying about all this in the past. But afterwards, we find out that there's some sort of rift. There's a forsaking, and we have to figure out what this means. But all is turned through my gentleness into a strange fashion of forsaken. Sorry. Of forsaking. And I have leave to go of her goodness. And she also, to use newfangledness. All right, so what does that mean? All is turned through. Right. Is it through? 25:18 Erin: Yeah. Tharough 25:21 Wes: thorough. Always turned tharough thorough. Imagine. So what is his gentleness? Right. How does his gentleness lead to forsaking? We get the image of having leave to go of her goodness. Right. As if she is a master or mistress and he's the servant. You have leave to go, but he's being dismissed from goodness. Right. So there's the interesting. Yeah, but go ahead. 25:49 Erin: There's an implication that he's, in this instance, rather than being Mr. Swagger, you know, who has all these conquests, he's allowed himself to be the conquest here, right? So because he's let his guard down and been gentle almost with himself, Right. And with his own emotions, he's had to forsake, what, security in the court, because now something's changed, so that now he's out of favor, so he's allowed his own emotion, perhaps, to get the better of his better judgment, I don't know. And has to give everything up, has to forsake everything else because of this mistake, letting his guard down with this woman who's turned out to be a betrayer, I think. 26:31 Wes: Yeah, I think so. I mean, so gentleness, Right. Could be gentlemanliness and courtliness. It might be evocative of the passivity and gender role reversal he's already mentioned. Right. Being the one who's being kissed and held and caught, all that stuff. That could be what it means for him to be gentle. And then the suggestion is, well, that didn't work. It's turned into a strange fashion of forsaking where she has the power and she's dismissed him, but almost as if, okay, your services are no longer needed. 27:07 Erin: And it's a fashion of forsaking. So she's almost playing the role like she's. So she says, well, I'm going to have to give you up now or something. And, you know, to her this was all some kind of game or some kind of, you know, she was going through the motions or trying to win him through some sort of ruse maybe about the strength of her actual affection for him. Or maybe it had to do with, you know, maybe what he suggests isn't just a fancy he has about himself, but the truth that he's some kind of player and she has hooked. She's tamed the player. And she did this only because it would make some kind of a good story or something. And her rejection of him is either pretending to forsake him, all for a joke so that she could go back and tell her girlfriends what she did. Right. In a further kind of gender role reversal, or he's now, well, strange fashion of forsaking. Yeah, I think that works. But I think it would also work to just say, well, she felt she had to give me up because it was fashionable at the time to now be interested in someone else. So the strength of her affection in the first place is also in doubt. Either way, I think the once in special was special only for him. 28:26 Wes: Yeah. So the fashion of forsaking could be form read as form of forsaking, but could it also be read as a trend? 28:35 Erin: Yeah, this year we're giving up. 28:37 Wes: He started, you know. Yeah, right. Doing a dry January. 28:43 Erin: Yeah. Deer are all the rage this season. 28:46 Wes: So in fashion to come from man to man, but it could be fashion in the sense of something he set the precedent for himself. 28:55 Erin: Possibly that would be Right. I mean, this time is different, but this is a case of reaping what he sows in that instance. 29:02 Wes: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. What's confusing here is just it said it's turned through his gentleness. So, I mean, it would make Sense if it through his caddishness. Right. Became a fashion of forsaking. But why, through his gentleness, as if he's getting punished for being the nice guy, which we know he's not. 29:20 Erin: Right. Oh, well, only in this instance has he ceded the power to allow someone to turn it back on him. 29:26 Wes: Right. 29:26 Erin: So there had to have been. Yeah. There had to be a moment of letting his guard down to allow the real emotion for the real emotion to be played upon. 29:35 Wes: So it's strange in the sense that he's not used to being the one that's getting rejected. He's used to being in the other. The other position. 29:42 Erin: Yeah. 29:43 Wes: And I have leave to go of her goodness. And she also to use newfangledness. All right, what does that mean? She also to use newfangledness. 29:53 Erin: She has leave. Is that the grammatical connection here? She also has leave to use newfangledness. So she can also do what she wants. What do I care? I don't know. 30:09 Wes: So newfangledness is. What is it literally? Newfangledness or its inconstancy or. Yeah, this runs, of course, against the word fashion. Or with maybe, but. 30:20 Erin: Yes. Hold on. I looked this up. I have it in a tab somewhere. I found it in the oed. 30:26 Wes: Yeah, I saw that. 30:28 Erin: And I think Wyatt is. No, never mind. It's Chaucer first. Yes. Chaucer first uses newfangledness. So he invents the word. Chaucer does. 30:37 Wes: Yeah. So how is he using it? They should abstain From All Newfangledness. 1487. The King's subjects inclined to newfangledness have spoken with the Same Elizabeth, Act 25, Henry VIII. Bancroft, you, through your rashness and following of every spirit, are grown to a wonderful newfangledness. This newfangledness proceedeth from an inconstant mind. 31:01 Erin: The etymology is a dead end. It just says newfangle plus ness. Okay, newfangle. Let's see the etymology here. I like it because it's newfangled land. It's from Middle Dutch. Nuvingle. Different stem vowel. Oh. Difficult to relate directly to the English word. Perhaps compare also to Faroese fangla. To try to catch hold of. Aha. To try to catch hold of. 31:28 Wes: Hmm. 31:29 Erin: We know that. But I like it because it's related to fashion. It sounds like something spangled. And we also have the word fang in it, which I think, you know, maybe I'm over reading, but. But I think that's, you know, now. Now it's like newfangled is like, almost has a. Like a down home, you know? Oh, that newfangled Tesla over there. Whatever. Newfangled cyber truck. Yeah. But I. I like that it has almost like a sparkly kind of quality to it. Like spangled. Something being spangled. Something being fashionable and having a shiny ext. Like almost like a mirrored. This is just what I'm thinking in terms of, like, word association games in my own mind. It has nothing to do with anything, you know, but a. But a veneer that. That hides something underneath. We have the word fang in it, which I think is important. And if we say things that are. What did I say? That can't be caught, that you try to catch hold of hold of something and can't catch it, then of course, that's very Wyatt esque. 32:33 Wes: Okay, so he has leave to go of her goodness, and she has leave to use newfangledness. She's being charged with two contradictory crimes. One of being good. And so he gets separated from that goodness. But the suggestion of newfangledness. I mean, newfangledness here suggests that she has leave to be modern and to, you know, go between guys. Right. To be. Is that the implication? To be less constant? Less. 33:00 Erin: I think so, yeah. 33:01 Wes: Okay. 33:02 Erin: And to use it as well. It's a. It's a bit. It's different from saying she has. She also. To even have newfangledness or to be newfangled wouldn't work for the rhyme. But some other verb in front of that would read quite differently. But using it implies that it's yet another guise that she could put on. She's just employing this for whatever end she. She's working for that day. So even her changeability is changeable depending on the circumstances and depending on which mode of attack she wants to use. 33:37 Wes: There's already something newfangled. Right. About their relationship if she's the one. If they're, you know, if we're right about the gender role reversal. 33:45 Erin: That's right. 33:45 Wes: I kind of imagine her wearing a suit, a tuxedo, I think. 33:52 Erin: A viola in my head. 33:54 Wes: Yeah. You know, and then dipping him and kissing him and then going off and with her newfangled ways, dressing like a man. Or maybe she's just a flapper from the 20s or something like that. But since I am so. So since. But since that I so kindly am served, which I take to be sarcastic, I would fain, correct me if I'm wrong, but I would fain know that she hath deserved what she hath deserved. So. Sounds a little bitter. Am I reading that right. What is he saying? 34:30 Erin: Yeah, I think. Well, I think kindly works couple ways, like everything here, because served in kind. 34:38 Wes: Yep. 34:39 Erin: So since she hath done unto me as I have done unto every other woman around, every other deer in the. In the forest, I really don't know what she deserves, you know? Well, there's a reading of that last line, which is, you know, who am I to say? Because maybe I just deserve it too. And then there's a really bitter reading as well. 35:00 Wes: Yeah, we know kindly has several contradictory meanings because he has been kindly served. That's the whole vignette, right? It's about him being kindly served with the kiss and also her goodness. There's plenty to suggest that he really has been kindly served, but there's also plenty to suggest that he's sarcastically talking about his rejection and the strange fashion of forsaken and the newfangledness. So it must be both, I think, to be kindly served. And then again, as you said, it must also refer to the way he has served others. But I find the last line really cryptic, even in light of all that I would fain know what she hath deserved. 35:41 Erin: He really maybe doesn't know, because I think you're right to point out that he was kindly served. And he doesn't seem to have a great track record for treating other people with kindness, as you also said. So, yeah, so this is sarcastic, it's bitter. But I think he's also saying, how should I know what she deserves? Because maybe he still doesn't know her true nature. He still hasn't seen her quote, unquote, naked because there was even a guise in her nakedness. 36:10 Wes: So he may be getting his just desserts for all his caddish behavior, but the question is, you know, if his just desserts involve someone doing to him what he did to hit them or to others, then don't. You know, it's just an endless cycle of people using each other or whatever, or taking advantage of each other, however you want to think of it, right? 36:34 Erin: And what. What she deserves, his inability to know that could be because she's operating on this higher plane that she was able to, you know, to trap him. So who knows the level of comeuppance she deserves? Or he's truly wondering whether or not she is actually good. Or maybe he's even doubting her ultimate complicity in his downfall. So uncertain is he of her true 36:58 Wes: nature, he says instead of saying know what she deserves or whatever form of that, he would put it in, know what she hath deserved. That's a really interesting way to put it because it suggests it's about what she deserved in the past retrospectively, not what she deserves. In light of him being so kindly served. 37:18 Erin: Well, he's so. Perhaps he's so far outside of court happenings now because he's been so ostracized that he doesn't even know if she has received any comeuppance. That could be something I'd fain know 37:31 Wes: what she hath deserved. Yeah, that's an interesting idea. 37:34 Erin: Yeah, I'm in the tower. Maybe she's here in another part of it, but I don't know. 37:39 Wes: Ah, yeah, very interesting. Okay, that makes sense. 37:42 Erin: But I think, you know, I mean, you're right to point out the odd tense there, but. 37:46 Wes: Yeah, well, it suggests what she has deserved since. 37:48 Erin: Yeah, I mean, one envisions the answer to this. I have to put on my historical fiction kind of way of thinking now. But he writes this last line and then he looks out the window and he sees her getting her head chopped off. 38:04 Wes: Right. 38:04 Erin: Oh, that's what she hath deserved. Right. 38:08 Wes: Wow. 38:09 Erin: Maybe all of this is written inside the tower and then he sees her. 38:12 Wes: Okay, yeah, it's a distinct possibility. All right, we're almost out of time, but do we want to just by wrapping up, way of wrapping up, say, anything about the connection between the first and second parts of the poem? It's not entirely clear. Right. There's quite a contrast between the first part and the second part. And the other question is why? The flashback is supposed to be to something comforting. So he's in the situation of having others flee from him that were once friendly with him. The fickleness and faithlessness of those people, presumably. And then, thankfully, it's been otherwise. There have been better times, but the better times turned out not to be so much better, it seems. Or. Yeah, I don't quite know how to join up these two parts. 38:59 Erin: I don't know that I do either. The best I can say is I see this as being just as conversational and performative as Whoso list to hunt. So I envision that he's saying this to an audience, maybe one guy in particular, at the dive bar they're now frequenting after being kicked out of the better bars. He has a little bit of a pose in the first stanza, again, maybe true, maybe oppose, in which he says, you know, they didn't appreciate that they put themselves in danger when they. But overall, the first stanza reflects something a little bit too pathetic about his state. So I see the second stanza as him having to assure the listener. But, you know, by the way, I used to be quite the player, you know, so don't. You know. So he has to kind of restore his ego a little bit and say, hey, you know, it wasn't always like this, and maybe in the future things will be better for me. But just so you don't think I'm this pathetic, I just want you to know it was 20 times better before. And then, interestingly, over the course of the stanza, he gets kind of caught up in the telling of the story and realizing that that too, ultimately, even though he has this kind of, like, fond memory because of this profound erotic experience that he had, that also leaves him the same place as where he started, which is in a degraded position. 40:26 Wes: Yeah. It's like the snake is catching its own tail at the very end. Right. Is this the very circumstance that led to his downfall? Right. So he's flashing back to the very. 40:37 Erin: Yeah, wait till I tell you about this. 40:38 Wes: Yeah, it's been really. It hasn't always been this terrible. It was way better back in the day. And then he recounts the way better that led to this terrible. 40:47 Erin: Yeah, because it was the peak and the immediate downfall. Yeah. So I see it as a little bit of posturing, which then ultimately is as futile in the end, is undercutting the initial intent of telling the conquest story to try and make himself look better. It catches him in the end. Yeah. 41:04 Wes: Right. 41:05 Erin: But, yeah, I mean, the transitions between stanzas here are really sharp. Even between the second and third, you know, it's pretty sharp because as you rightly point out, which I didn't even think of, you know, he's never claimed that this was a dream, you know, so you might say that this turn between second and third stanza, something like, you know, no, this really happened. Assuring the listener that it really wasn't a dream. I mean, the second half of the line doesn't really bear that out, but I think there's something of. Maybe there is no listener. There's just an internal performance, an internal reassurance, kind of bargaining with himself. But, yeah, you have to. The transitions for me are a little papered over. If you think of this as being a real conversation, a real mind animating the twists and turns. You know, the twists and turns. You have to really think about the interiority of the speaker. 41:53 Wes: Okay. All right. Next time we're going to do Beetlejuice. 41:56 Erin: Fun. 41:57 Wes: I don't know what we're doing after that, because I think. Wait. Oh, it might be my turn to pick. 42:01 Erin: It is. Choose wisely. 42:03 Wes: Oh, I had mentioned Conrad Aiken, so that's a. Maybe I'll talk to you about that. But okay, but don't definitely Beetlejuice. All right, thank you, thank you. 42:13 Erin: And thanks to everyone who listened. For an easy way to do that, go to subtextpodcast.com patreon.com subtextpodcast please send your questions, feedback and episode requests to [email protected] if we get enough questions, we'll do some bonus Q and A shows for subscribers. You can also find us on Facebook subtextpodcast, and on Twitter joysubtext.