The pursued woman however does not wish to be caught. This can be seen as a rejection of the speaker's idea of love. Where it is up to the man to capture the woman. The deer refuses the speaker or hunter's wishes. In the final lines the deer's neck warns that though they seem tame, they are wild.
Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am, And wild for to hold, though I seem tame." -The full warning on the neck of the deer.
However, there are other men hunting the deer. The warning refers Caesar, a famous emperor. This could be suggestive that a more powerful hunter may already possess her. Which would render the woman powerless. The reference to Caesar could possibly be an allusion to Henry VIII.
The poem appears to go back and forth in its representation of gender roles. First, there is the familiar trope of a man pursuing a woman. This is followed by the woman showing resistance to the idea. Only for her to seem possessed by a powerful man at the end of the poem.
'Whoso List to Hunt': context
Francesco Petrach was an Italian poet. He was one of the first poets (post-classical) to write in his own language, as opposed to Latin or Greek. Petrarch turned the sonnet from a bawdy song into a more literary form. Sir Thomas Wyatt's 'Whoso List to Hunt' is an early example of a sonnet written in English.
Wyatt's poem is greatly inspired by Petrarch's 'Sonnet 190'. Both poems speak of unrequited love. In Petrarch's sonnet, there is a dream-like image of a deer wearing a necklace. 'Whoso List to Hunt' concentrates more on the hunt, and its draining effects. While it may seem strange today that poets would imitate each other, it was quite common in Wyatt's time.
The poem was written at the time of the English Reformation. When Henry VIII broke away from the catholic church so he could marry Anne Boleyn. Sir Thomas Wyatt was close to Henry's court and even closer to Anne Boleyn. The two were widely suspected of having an affair and some elements of the poem could be seen as a reference to their relationship.
The speaker of the poem is dejected and exhausted in their pursuit of love. This suggests that the woman he loves is unavailable to him. Which the potential queen certainly would be. There is an allusion to Caesar in the final lines. Caesar, like Henry, is a powerful man to whom the woman in the poem claims to belong.
Fig. 2 - Henry VIII, a potential love rival for Wyatt?
'Whoso List to Hunt': literary devices
Here we will look at some of the literary devices used by Thomas Wyatt, looking at rhyme, meter and the poem's form
Form
The poem is divided into one octave and a sestet. All Petrarchan sonnets contain fourteen lines and are set the same way. The octave is used to introduce an idea, in this case, the hunt and the speaker's desperation. The sestet gives the reader a reason for the speaker's troubles, the deer carrying a warning. The sestet opens in the same way as the octave, the title of the poem. This could be to reassert to speaker's desperation.
Meter
The poem is in iambic pentameter, which later became the most common meter used for sonnets in English. Wyatt most likely used this meter as it is used by Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales (1392). The iambic pentameter is not strictly adhered to in the first line of the octave and sestet. This could be to represent the speaker's desperate exhaustion.
An Octave is a stanza consisting of 8 lines. Can sometimes be known as an Octet.
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