SOURCE: "The Poetry of Ben Jonson" in Essays in Criticism, Vol. 18, No. 1, January, 1968, pp. 18-31.

In the following essay, Parfitt interprets Jonson's poems in light of the chief functions of his best verse, "energy, assuredness, and rhythmical alertness, " contrasting their tendency to simplify and exaggerate.

Although there is enough of it to occupy the bulk of a volume of the Oxford edition of his works, Ben Jonson's poetry does not receive much primarily critical attention. Part of this neglect comes from the fact that the plays are Jonson's main achievement (and even these live in the deep shadow of Shakespeare) but one must also take account of the doubts critics have expressed concerning the intrinsic merits of the poetry. These doubts usually take the form of equating Jonson's 'classicism'—that most protean of qualities—with dulness and alienation from any English tradition of language and thought, or of...