Epigrams

Epigrams (published in the 1616 folio) is an entry in a genre that was popular among late-Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences, although Jonson was perhaps the only poet of his time to work in its full classical range. The epigrams explore various attitudes, most from the satiric stock of the day: complaints against women, courtiers, and spies abound. The condemnatory poems are short and anonymous; Jonson’s epigrams of praise, including a famous poem to Camden and lines to Lucy Harington, are longer and are mostly addressed to specific individuals. Although it is included among the epigrams, On My First Sonne is neither satirical nor very short; the poem, intensely personal and deeply felt, typifies a genre that would come to be called lyric poetry. It is possible that the spelling of ‘son’ as ‘Sonne’ is meant to allude to the sonnet form, with which it shares some features. A few other so-called epigrams share this quality. Jonson’s poems of The Forest also appeared in the first folio. Most of the fifteen poems are addressed to Jonson’s aristocratic supporters, but the most famous are his country-house poem To Penshurst and the poem To Celia ( Come, my Celia, let us prove ) that appears also in Volpone.