SOURCE: “Carew's Monarchy of Wit,” in “The Muses Common-Weale”: Poetry and Politics in the Seventeenth Century, edited by Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth, University of Missouri Press, 1988, pp. 80-91.

In the following essay, Benet contends that Carew appropriated the absolutist rhetoric of Kings Charles and James in envisioning himself as sole arbiter of aesthetic judgment.

Nothing seems further from reality than poetic compliments whose extravagance time has exposed as pure friendship. Beyond the poet's affability, however, some of Thomas Carew's poems to or about fellow authors disclose important aspects of his cultural perspective. Reading these poems in the context of the writings and speeches of Kings James and Charles, one has the sense of witnessing a new social phenomenon resulting from the convergence of political and cultural currents. These currents are complex, but the immediate effect of their confluence seems startlingly simple: the populace has discovered its...