Poetry

One of the central motifs throughout the poem is poetry itself, both its generic and formal qualities. Because the poem is written by one poet in honor of another, this is a natural theme to incorporate. Jonson’s references to elements of poetic style and form are many and complex. Understanding them helps illuminate Jonson’s vision of what it meant to be a poet, as well as his self-conception and his conception of Wroth’s work.

Jonson describes his other poetry self-effacingly as “rithmes not wholly dumb” (2). The world “rithmes” is spelled ambiguously so it can be read as either “rhythms,” referencing the regular sound of poetic meter, or “rhymes,” referring to the matching line endings that serve to signal poetic style and subgenre. There is also a pun embedded in this line on the word “dumb” (2). As it does today, the word “dumb” could...