ABSTRACT
There is no extended comparison of Skelton and Dunbar, particularly in their roles as court poets. Superficially they are poets who seem to have a lot in common: they were contemporaries, both clerics, both with a predisposition to modes of satire and invective which may even have established direct intertextual connections between the two. Skelton was, in his first incarnation in court, tutor to the future Henry VIII and, at a later stage claimed the title orator regius. If there is anything in this line of argument it suggests that we may need to reconsider both the nature of the court and of Skelton's relationship to it. Skelton's poetic activities problematize the assumption that it is useful to talk as if there was ever a single, consistent attitude that constituted the court. But in his central focus on the identity of the king's court Skelton is perhaps in the end closer to Dunbar that might appear to be the case.
