To Penshurst

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1616

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

The Abundance of Nature

The poem is a celebration of nature’s abundance. The poem, if it has a narrative, is the story of a meandering stroll about the estate’s 11 acre preserve. Most of the poem takes place outdoors. However, this is no Romantic perception of Nature’s sublime wealth—that would come two centuries later. Nature here is an extension, a manifestation of the social order in which the wealthy live privileged and blessed lives. Miles from the heart of bustling London, the poet embraces a green world of plants, birds, and animals who, unlike the hard-edged denizens of the city, flourish and cooperate within a non-threatening, non-confrontational ecosystem that encourages awe and justifies admiration. The woods, waters, soil, air, and trees as well as a plethora of animals and birds identified by name all come within the purview of the poet. A creature of the court, a lifelong resident of London, Jonson here feels the liberating expanse of nature itself.

However, it is not nature with a lower case “n.” The description of the natural wealth of Penshurst is idealized—after all, the estate presumably has rainy days, the livestock are prone to disease, the trees suffer from blight, its animals attack each other, and, truth be told, the carp in the lake do not jump into nets eager to be served up for dinner—but the poet celebrates not nature as it is but Nature (capitalized) as it should be, nature under the benign auspices of Britain’s landed aristocracy. Nature reflects the privilege of the elite embodied here by the Sydney family itself. The poet offers Nature as a sense of a gorgeous and splendid world apart from the teeming chaos of the city, a world that for the poet reflects England’s elite wealthy class.

The Virtue of Hospitality

Although a contemporary audience might resist the poem’s unironic and very Renaissance celebration of hospitality extended to neighbors and strangers alike, for the poet, the virtue of England’s wealthy class is its willingness to share their abundance. Against other estates where the newer class of wealthy live where steep walls protect the estate from the incursion of others, at Penshurst, where a child can reach above its boundary walls, the Sydney family welcomes everyone, from the poet himself (living at the estate as part of the family’s patronage of the arts) up to the King and the prince. Neighbors, the poet says, always find an open door and a groaning table of plenty. “There’s none that dwell about them wish them down / But all come in, the farmer and the clown / And no one empty-handed, to salute / Thy lord and lady though they have no suit’ (Lines 48-50). Even if neighbors have no petition, no vested interest in securing the influence of the Sydney family, and simply wish to visit with no hidden agenda, these neighbors find a welcome uncomplicated by irony or suspicion within the walls of Penshurst. Jonson, raised in the crime-prone streets of London and himself a creature of the cutthroat world of the London court and the seedy underworld of London’s theater district, underscores how the aristocracy here, or at least the Sydney family, opens its generous heart. The Sydneys welcome visitors by putting out the very best of their meat and drink and ensuring there is plenty of it—even the serving staff enjoys the hospitality of the family, a wide generosity of spirit that, for Jonson, defines the benevolent social order epitomized by the Sydney family. That waiters, kings, neighbors, and strangers alike enjoy the hospitality of the estate reflects the noblest expression of the wealthy class for Jonson, which is its embrace of the noble Christian duty to maintain and share a well-kept, well-stocked home.

Noblesse Oblige of the Aristocracy

Understanding the thematic argument of the poem requires understanding the perception of what it meant to be wealthy in Elizabethan England. The Sydney family traced its wealth back centuries and were, in turn, a critical manifestation of Britain’s landed aristocracy, an alliance of families with wealth, privilege, and titles who were a crucial element of England’s social, economic, and cultural order. Such wealth brought with it the responsibility for moral behavior and the expectation of right conduct. Given their access to education, religion, and their privilege to enjoy the finest things and live in the company of other privileged families, the wealthy were expected to act with generosity of spirit and a certain decorum and dignity. That Jonson finds that noblesse oblige in the Sydney family makes for the joy of the poem; that he does not see it in any of the estates around Penshurst is the source of the poem’s misgivings.

The thematic argument of Penshurst may not play well with a contemporary culture that often celebrates the initiative, diligence, and brash determination of entrepreneurship, the right (and expectation) that every generation boldly and unapologetically pursues the material comfort and ostentatious lifestyle and indulgences of the wealthy. Indeed, the shallow, materialistic, uneducated, uncouth, and pretentious generation of upstart wealthy middle class whose estates surround Penshurst will be within a scant 50 years the class of entrepreneurs and go-getters that will largely finance and in turn develop the New World. In short, the crude and barbaric wealthy who Jonson disparages are embryonic Americans.