Point of View

"Inviting a Friend to Supper" is told from the first-person perspective of the host who is writing to a prospective guest. He ingratiates himself to the guest in much the same fashion as poets did to their patrons, suggesting Jonson's self-awareness of the relationship between literary production and patronage. As the poem more explicitly becomes an invitation to a safe political space, the first person perspective is significant because it highlights Jonson's own political critiques of the monarchy's consolidation of power. While readers are typically discouraged from equating a poem's speaker with its author, Jonson's background in political commentary and the autobiographical aspect of his patronage from William Herbert suggest that in the case of this poem they are one and the same.

Language and Meaning

The language in "Inviting a Friend to Supper" is a balance of the dramatic and excessive with the moderate...