BLAME NOT MY LUTE

The song is about a betrayed lover voicing his disappointment and frustration .However, as the verse continues, it is possible to see a deeper angle. Statements are straightforward and emphatic yet all figurative language is derived from the controlling figure of the LUTE. The emblematic use of the LUTE is much more complex than it appears at first glance; it represented a sub-text, depending on the way in which it was employed. Interestingly, the lute is personified where Wyatt constructed the female image cleverly through personification which adds to the thematic meaning. In courtly love poems, a knight idealizes in fact, worships a beautiful woman. He fights his battles as much to win her favor as to serve his king, he sees himself her servant or slave, and he suffers agonies of body and soul (the love sick hero) in his unrequited love for her. BLAME NOT MY LUTE is a brave and impetuous appeal, on one level from a spurned lover, on another from a fearful and challenged courtier. The song is composed of six septets. Each has a rhyme scheme ABABCCD. The final line of each stanza is the refrain the repeated phrase which is the key message of the song BLAME NOT MY LUTE. Wyatt is struggling with the issue of blame where he appeals to the audience not to blame the LUTE because it lacks the wit to express the reason for not playing in harmony. Wyatt excellently constructed his image, at first he refers to the ladys crime as thy change, then a little more strongly but vaguely he refers to some that use to feign then he refers to his rightful spite against

her change, in the fourth verse the accusation is direct and made twice falsed faith fault so great, and in the fifth verse the climax comes with the first words BLAME BUT THYSELF so effective because they say what the refrain has been implying but not stating all along. BLAME BUT THYSELF is thus the positive counterpart of the refrain and the readers minds accept it eagerly when the poet gives it to us. Very wisely, he does not cheapen it by repetition the actual refrain remains unaltered throughout.