John Skelton (1464?-1529) is the first great modern English poet. Immensely proud of his poetic calling, he celebrates in his poems the language itself, in all its richness. He wrote in a vigorous vernacular, taking literary English out of the medieval world and enriching it with new forms and tones. Gerald Hammond's notes and glossary illuminate Skelton's works for the modern reader - but Hammond warns readers to keep their wits about them. Skelton is a poet of verbal ambushes, who still has the power to surprise and shock with his formal inventiveness and his indictments of church, scholars and state. His tone can be tender, insinuating, savage and erotic; satire, parody, lyricism and allegory abound.