Summary
In “To Penshurst,” Ben Jonson praises the estate of his patron, Robert Sidney. The poem begins by favorably contrasting Penshurst with the flashier houses of Sidney’s peers. These men build houses of polished pillars and roofs of gold, with grand staircases and expansive courts. Penshurst, in contrast, is an ancient home whose nobility shows forth not in the architecture, but in the quality of the land itself.
At first, Jonson characterizes that land as a kind of classical paradise. Figures from Greek myth populate the landscape, and satyrs and fauns play amidst the trees. From here, Jonson shifts to emphasizing the land’s fertility, which will be a central theme of much of the poem. He writes that the “copse,” or small group of trees, gives forth deer willingly. The low lands tend Sidney’s sheep and cows, the middle lands form a home for his horses and mares, the banks of the streams yield rabbits, and the wooded tops of the hills are home to pheasants and partridges, willing to be killed to fill Sidney’s table.
The waters are just as fertile, populated by carp, pike, and eel which readily give themselves up to the fisherman. So too the orchards, which provide delicious produce throughout the spring and summer months, each fruit coming in its own proper time.
Yet the Sidneys’ wealth doesn’t provoke envy from the neighbors. Rather, all come and visit, bringing gifts (which the wealthy hosts, of course, do not need). The hospitality of Penshurst feeds these visitors, including the poet himself, who is made to feel as though the house is as much his as the lord’s. No one resents the poet’s gluttony, because they know they will be given the same bounty of food and drink. When King James himself encountered Penshurst while out hunting, he saw the fires and arrived without warning. The lord and lady quickly made good cheer, and the lady’s fine housekeeping paid off when the whole house was already appropriately decorated for their esteemed guest.
All this proves what a fine estate Penshurst is. Yet more than that, Jonson concludes, the inhabitants of the house prove the lord’s worth. The lady is “noble, fruitful, chaste.” The children are truly the descendants of their lordly father, and they have been taught religion and how to pray. From their virtuous parents they also learn “manners, arms, and arts.” The poem ends by again comparing Penshurst with flashier estates. He writes that if a visitor from such an estate saw only Sidney’s children, they would conclude that “their lords have built, but thy lord dwells.” In other words, their lords have built estates which are only externally beautiful, while the fertility and virtue of Penshurst reflect Sidney’s true character.
Analysis
With “To Penshurst,” Ben Jonson established the genre of the country-house poem, or poems describing a fine house and its surroundings. One important tenant of the genre was that these poems were usually written for a patron, or a wealthy aristocrat who commissioned work from the poet. Jonson’s patron was Robert Sidney, himself an established member of English literary culture. His older brother was Philip Sidney, one of the most famous early modern poets.
Of course, writing for a patron required the poet to depict their subject in a positive light. Yet the success of “To Penshurst” likely derives from Jonson’s real respect for Sidney, and his appreciation for both their working and personal relationships. Rather than issuing a generic compliment, Jonson uses the estate poem as an opportunity to distinguish those aspects of Sidney’s estate he saw as desirable, and to contrast them with the flashier and less grounded estates of Sidney’s aristocratic peers.
In fact, in some of his writings, Jonson describes the ideal poet as a “priest-poet” whose verse instructs its audience on serious philosophical issues. Rather than being limited to realistic descriptions of the world, the poet should have license to invent content in order to get at broader “Truths.” This context helps us get a better understanding of what Jonson’s after in “To Penshurst.” The obvious hyperbole of Jonson’s descriptions of the estate enable him to convey what he believes it takes to be truly noble. He’s praising Sidney, but he’s also encouraging him to keep it up, and advising other aristocrats to work towards a similarly genuine nobility.
In Jonson’s time, many wealthy landowners were building massive new houses intended more for show than habitation. These men might visit these homes only occasionally, enlisting them when they wanted to impress guests. In contrast, Penshurst was less visually impressive. The house had first been erected in the fourteenth century, and by the time Jonson was writing was more than three hundred years old. In the many years following its construction, successive generations of inhabitants had added new wings to the house, meaning it was a little bit of a hodge-podge. In contrast, the show-houses erected by Sidney’s contemporaries were often meticulously planned (one contemporary gave his house an astronomical theme, and included 365 rooms, 52 staircases, and 7 courts).
Penshurst was thus somewhat out of fashion. Rather than attempting to conceal that fact, Jonson argues that it’s not a bad thing. The poem begins on a surprisingly negative note. The poet contrasts Penshurst with other, flashier estates, identifying all the features Sidney’s house lacks, from grand staircases to gilded roofs. As well as the features popular among Sidney’s contemporaries, Jonson is likely alluding here to the Biblical account of the Temple of Solomon, the epitome of architectural excess.
The opening lines repeatedly use negation words and phrases, “Thou art not, Penshurst…Thou hast no lantern…or stair, or courts.” All that negation makes the poem’s first positive phrase, “Thou joy’st in better marks,” stand out even more strongly. Penshurst doesn’t have “polished pillars, or a roof of gold” but it does have “better marks, of soil, of air, / Of wood, of water; therein thou art fair.” Rather than the superficial ornaments of other estates, Penshurst is good in its essence, in the basic elements that make up the land. This theme of fundamental rather than superficial good is one of the most important ideas in the poem, and it’s something Jonson returns to in the last line, where he writes that inhabitants of other estates, when they see Penshurst, will “say their lords have built, but thy lord dwells.” Their lords try to prove how great they are by artificially constructing grand edifices, but Sidney truly belongs in his estate, and its goodness authentically speaks to his own goodness.
The poem, then, ultimately returns to where it began, with a more positive twist. In between, Jonson goes into more detail about the estate. Having said what the estate does not have, he goes on to write at much more length about what it does have: natural bounty. The list praises Sidney on a few levels. First, by methodically moving through all the animals and plants supported by Penshurst, Jonson emphasizes how diverse and extensive his patron’s landholdings are. Second, the poem plays up the bounty of the land, writing, for example, that “each bank doth yield thee conies.” Yes, Sidney’s holdings are vast, but the goods they produce are also disproportionate to their size. That bounty speaks to the quality of the estate's soil, air, wood, and water—and, as Jonson writes earlier in the poem, that quality proves that the lord himself is “fair.”
Finally, Jonson repeatedly emphasizes that all Penshurst’s creatures give themselves up to Sidney willingly, as when he writes, “The painted partridge lies in every field, / And for thy mess is willing to be killed.” The bizarre image alludes to the idea of the “Great Chain of Being,” a popular way of making sense of the world in Renaissance England. Basically, the idea was that all living things existed in a hierarchy. God was at the top, and humble creatures like worms and plants were at the bottom. Lords naturally commanded peasants; husbands naturally ruled their wives; human beings naturally lived by killing lesser animals.
However, the Great Chain of Being only worked if everyone played their proper role. For human beings to profit from their place towards the top of the chain, they needed to be in a proper relationship to God. Early modern writers increasingly emphasized love’s place in this ideal relationship. If a person loved submitting to God, then the animals would also love submitting to that human being. So when Jonson stresses that the animals of Penshurst willingly give themselves up to Sidney, he’s also emphasizing Sidney’s own ability to live up to his place in the order of things.
The social dimension of the Great Chain of Being comes to the fore in the second half of the poem, where Jonson emphasizes Sidney’s hospitality. On the one hand, his many neighbors bring him tribute. Sidney doesn’t need the gifts, but they express that his less wealthy neighbors “love” him, reinforcing that at Penshurst, social order thrives. On the other hand, towards the end of the poem, Sidney himself must act as host to King James, his own social better.
The arrival of the king gives us one of the frankest moments in the poem. Sidney remarks that, having learned of the unexpected visit, “What (great I will not say, but) sudden cheer / Didst thou then make ‘em!” The parenthetical acknowledges that the lord and lady were taken by surprise and unable to foster the “great” celebration they might have made had they had advance notice. It perhaps even records their frustration at having to suddenly entertain an expensive and influential guest. Nevertheless, they do their duty, which reasserts the praiseworthiness of their estate.
The end of the poem similarly emphasizes the social role of the estate. Sidney praises the faithfulness of Sidney’s wife, and the good rearing of their children, who will inherit both strong religious values, and the knowledge of how to be good aristocrats. The children’s strength of character is the ultimate testament to the poem’s conclusion:
Now, Penshurst, they that will proportion thee
With other edifices, when they see
Those proud, ambitious heaps, and nothing else,
May say their lords have built, but thy lord dwells.
Ultimately, for Jonson, the essence of Penshurst isn’t its architecture, but the social world it nourishes. That world includes the animals, whose relationship to Sidney is one of willing submission. It includes the neighbors, who love their lord, and the King, who can trust Sidney to do his duty as a host. It even implicitly includes God, who rewards Sidney’s piety with unusually fertile land. And finally, it includes Sidney’s descendants, whose place in the world of Penshurst ensures that they will maintain what makes the estate so good into the future.
Jonson, then, is making an argument about the correct role of the nobility, and even reminding Sidney to do his part. The show houses critiqued at the beginning of the poem are disconnected from social relationships. For Jonson, they fail to do the vital work of maintaining the correct social hierarchy. He praises Sidney for not falling into this trap, but he also implicitly warns him to avoid doing so in the future.
