The Ecology of Eating in Jonson's “To Penshurst”

Ben Jonson’s “To Penshurst,” a country-house poem frequently taught in the college classroom, exemplifies Renaissance literary digestio of classical forms: of Horace’s celebration of country life; of Virgil’s georgics; and even of Juvenal’s and Martial’s satire. ¹ And we often ask our students to study Jonson in light of his classical forebears, but, as much as Jonson is interested in the digestion of literary forms in this poem, he is also interested in the ingestion of food. Indeed, for Jonson, Penshurst is primarily a place to eat—or even, a place to be eaten. Featured prominently in the poem and on the estate are deer, sheep, bullocks, kine (cows), calves, conies (rabbits), pheasant, partridge, carps, pikes, eels, cherries, plums, figs, grapes, quinces, apricots, peaches, apples, pears, nuts, capons, rural cakes, cheeses, beer, bread, and wine. The sheer number of delectable foods that populate the poem and fill the table invites critical speculation about the significance of such comestible abundance. In his seminal biography of Jonson, David Riggs considers the poem and its emphasis on Robert Sidney, Viscount De L’Isle’s board as part of an elaborate exchange between the poet and the patron (183–6). Other scholars have interpreted Jonson’s indulgent eating in “To Penshurst” as an instance of Rabalaisian carnivalesque: Anne Brumley reads the poem along with Epigram 101 (“Inviting a Friend to Supper”) as “dialogic, participating in the spirit of misrule” (225). Some have considered Jonson’s hyperbole of abundance in light of the fantastic: Bruce Boehrer views the poet’s depiction of the estate as a pastoral fantasy, “a sort of agrarian Disney World: a magic kingdom replete with fauns, satyrs, and enchanted copses” (The Fury 99). Robert Appelbaum interprets the poem as part of the Land of Cockaigne tradition, a utopic “fantasy of feeding and being fed” (Aguecheek’s Beef 119). ² I propose, alternatively, that we take seriously Jonson’s image of abundance as a way of investigating the material realities of food practices of production, of preparation, and consumption at early modern rural estates. Jonson’s hyperbole, however, may help unlock the underside of estate farming of the period. As much as the poem erases labor from its depiction of Penshurst, an incredible amount of labor was required behind the scenes to create just this experience. ³ Jonson’s hyperbolic language sardonically undercuts the idealistic vision it presents, and when read with a clear understanding of actual agricultural practices, Jonson alerts the reader that there is much more going on than a surface reading indicates.