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Summary: In the poem, "Blame not my lute," Wyatt's speaker asks the listener (presumably his lady) not to hold against him what his lute, or his poetry, says. In a mocking manner that criticizes the virtue of the mistress, Wyatt leaves behind Petrarchan idealization of the lover. Wyatt's lover asks his lady not to blame his poetry for speaking ill of her but rather to blame herself. Wyatt is implicitly asserting that his poetry must say what is true about the mistress and the nature of relationship; he is not going to offer "Petrarchan" praise to a woman who fails to live up to the Petrarchan standards (this is a problem of Petrarchan poets that Shakespeare will later point out in his Sonnet 130 poets lie to make their mistresses seem like the ideal Petrarchan mistress even when they are not). Although Wyatt is setting the theme of this poem into a contemporary context, the sentiment resembles that of the Latin elegists (mourns the dead lover), who often criticize their mistresses while always making the reader aware that the fault lies not with the poetlovers, but with their ladies. Such a fault in a mistress results from both physical and emotional betrayals. Wyatt asks the mistress of his poem not to blame his poetry "if perchance this foolish rhyme / Do make thee blush at any time."