lifetime, Jonson's contemporary literary reputation rivalled, and perhaps surpassed, that of Shakespeare. Among his completed surviving works are seventeen plays, more than thirty court masques and entertainments, an English Grammar, a commonplace book (Discoveries), and a large and varied corpus of poetry. His character is seemingly present in much of his poetry, and yet his literary persona is carefully constructed, and carefully layered--a product of subtlety and art. This collection includes many of Jonson's best-known poems such as "To Penshurst" and "A Speech According to Horace," as well as various epigrams and poems from "The Forest" and "The Underwood."

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