Laird argues that the speaker in Sir Thomas Wyatt's poem "Unstable Dream" is in a dream state until line ten, contrary to what the anthologer believed. Details about Laird's interpretation of the poem are discussed.

Copyright HELDREF PUBLICATIONS Spring 1999

Unstable dream, according to the place,
Be steadfast once or else at least be true.
By tasted sweetness make me not rue
The sudden loss of thy false feigned grace.
By good respect in such a dangerous case
Thou brought'st not her into this tossing mew
But madest my sprite live my care to renew
My body in tempest her succor to embrace.
The body dead, the sprite had his desire;
Painless was th'one, th'other in delight.
Why then, alas, did it not keep it right,
Returning to leap into the fire,
And where it was at wish it could not remain?
Such mocks of dreams they turn to deadly pain.
- Sir Thomas Wyatt

R. A. Rebholz's commentary and notes in Sir Thomas Wyatt, the Complete Poems offers much aid in interpreting Wyatt's work, but one poem in particular, "Unstable Dream" (85), could be open to a very different interpretation. Rebholz discusses the problem that scholars have had interpreting this sonnet. He points out that this poem is a dream poem and that "the general problem is the meaning of events in the second quatrain and the relationship of those events to the rest of the poem." Rebholz sees the poem as commentary on a dream and believes that its second quatrain refers to the act of waking (354-55). He bases this opinion on several assumptions. His first is that line 7 refers to waking when the speaker says that the dream "madest my sprite live." Rebholz also says that line 6 refers to the disappearance of the lady, like a vanishing dream: "Thou brought'st not her into this tossing mew." Thus, the speaker is only recalling the dream in lines 9-13. Rebholz's assumptions are not convincing; it is much more likely that the speaker is in a dream state throughout the poem until line 10.

Rebholz is correct when he sees the speaker as directly addressing the dream, but the first quatrain is not necessarily a state of wakefulness. In fact, the speaker uses the present tense to command the dream: "Be steadfast once or else at least be true." It seems that he is addressing the dream as it occurs. The second quatrain, which is phrased in the past tense, refers only to how the dream began: "Thou brought'st not her into this tossing mew" could refer not only to the fact that the dream did not bring the speaker's lover to his bed, but also to the possibility that the dream caused his spirit to be transported to the location of his lover when it "madest my sprite live." When the dream does not bring his lover to this tossing mew, it is not caging the lover in his bed, but freeing the speaker himself from his bodily cage.

Thus, the speaker begins a dream journey. This reading could, in fact, be strengthened with an alteration of the editorial punctuation:

But madest my sprite live, my care to renew
My body in tempest, her succor to embrace.

Although punctuation is uncertain in the manuscripts, Wyatt is known to have used such pauses in the middle of his lines. This paused reading is supported when reading the next two lines:

The body dead, the sprite had his desire;
Painless was th'one, th'other in delight.

Note that the same pause occurs in the middle of these following lines as well, and Rebholz punctuates this pause.

Another consideration is the conventions of dream poetry. Dream states in early poetry often evoked images of being able to travel as spirits on important journeys. (Chaucer used this tactic more than once, as in The House of Fame.) Lines 9 and 10 emphasize this separation of mind and body; while the body lies dead and painless, the spirit undergoes a completely separate and euphoric experience with his lover. This separation of the spiritual and corporeal is more emphatic when seen as a separation of distance as well. Lines 11-14 may actually mark the ending of the dream. Line 11 seems to indicate a shift in tone, and the element of hindsight becomes more pronounced in the poem. The tone abruptly changes from blissful in "Painless was th'one, th'other in delight," to sorrowful in "Why then, alas, did it not keep it right." The fire that his spirit leaps into in line 12 could in fact be the fire of his passion, which still remains in his unsatisfied body.

This reading is further enforced by the imagery of a journey at sea. Rebholz points out that Tottel's edition tried to reconcile the potential controversy of the waking/dream status by positioning the speaker at sea. Although this poem was not necessarily meant to be read literally as occurring at sea, there are several passages that reinforce the idea of a rough sea journey: the "tossing mew" (as on the deck of a ship) or the "tempest" (tempest is often used to describe storms at sea). The ship imagery, although very subtle, supports the idea of journeying. The tossing mew, the rough journey, and tempest are not for the lady. Instead, the speaker appropriately journeys to her side. This reading is more consistent with the conventions of dream imagery from Wyatt's medieval inheritance.