Whoso List to Hunt is held to be Wyatt's imitation of Rime 190, written by Petrarch, a fourteenth-century Italian poet and scholar. In Whoso List to Hunt, Wyatt describes a hunt wherein a deer is pursued and ultimately owned by the royal who owns the land. Scholars generally believe that the poem is an allegory referring to Anne Boleyn's courtship by King Henry VIII, such that when Wyatt speaks of the deer as royal property not to be hunted by others, he is acknowledging that Anne has become the property of the King alone. Wyatt was said to have been interested in Anneand may have been her loverbut would have withdrawn as a suitor after the King made clear his wish to claim her.