While beasts talk in many early modern stories, “Speak, Parrot” is one of the few in which this Aesopian fantasy has a shred of credibility. Henry VIII reportedly owned an African grey parrot (some of which possess thousand-word vocabularies), although Skelton's poem describes the rose-ringed parakeet – a species now naturalized in and around London. Besides taking satiric pecks at the greed, vanity, and political squabbling of Henry's courtiers, the bird also lampoons Renaissance humanists and their educational reforms, including education for women. Humanist pedagogues expected their pupils to learn several languages by rote (Skelton's parrot speaks no fewer than nine). In other words, students would often have to parrot back, as it were, the words of their lesson without comprehending them. While some critics suspect the text to be corrupt, the apparent non sequiturs may be Skelton's attempt to mimic the bird's squawking out phrases at random. However, the poet also identifies with the bird in demanding liberty to speak freely, and the poem's levity belies the profundity of the questions it raises about animal intelligence (Boehrer 2002, 99–132). The same can be said of Skelton's “Philip Sparrow,” which both commemorates and spoofs the emotional bond between a young woman and her avian companion, and even features a mock-requiem mass for the dead bird. How does the parrot challenge not only the human monopoly on reason and language but also the exclusive claim to an immortal soul? The beautiful, rational, musical, over-educated, polyglot parrot seems a parodic embodiment of Renaissance humanism's exalted view of humanity.

Source: Certain Books Compiled by Master Skelton (1545), A2r–A2v, A5v.