SOURCE: Heale, Elizabeth. “‘An owl in a sack troubles no man’: proverbs, plainness, and Wyatt.” Renaissance Studies 11, No. 4 (December 1997): 420-33.

In the following essay, Heale explores how proverbs influenced Wyatt's verse, particularly the poem “A spending hand.”

Wyatt's third satire, ‘A spending hand’, addressed to Sir Francis Bryan, begins and ends with a proverb and uses proverbs throughout. Appropriately, for such a discourse of wise saws, the speaking voice identifies itself as a giver of counsel, ‘I thowght forthwith to write, / Brian, to the, who knows how great a grace / In writing is to cownsell man the right’.¹ The poem is usually dated to the late 1530s, a time when proverbs and proverbial discourse were enjoying something of a vogue at court. In the following discussion, I shall explore some of the connotations of that fashion, and suggest ways in which the third satire interacts with it.²

The...