SOURCE: Wallace, Nathaniel Owen. “The Responsibilities of Madness: John Skelton, ‘Speke, Parrot,’ and Homeopathic Satire.” Studies in Philology 82, No. 1 (Winter 1985): 60-80.

In the following essay, Wallace contends that madness is the “central vice” at which the satire in Speke, Parrot takes aim and attempts to “cure.”

ne taceas neque conpescaris Deus quoniam ecce inimici tui sonaverunt(1) 

Psalm 82 (Vulgate)

I

Skelton's Parrot is mad. His torrential verbiage, obscure digressions, and rapid transitions strongly convey such an impression. The bird himself declares that, since “mesure is tresure” (62), one should be “ne tropo sanno, ne tropo mato” (63), “neither too sane, nor too mad.”² Parrot is thus partially out of his senses, but he asserts that madness possesses the world he mimics and denounces. Critics of the poem have on several occasions commented in passing upon the confusion and disorder from which Parrot is protected by his cage. I maintain, however, that...