THIS paper deals with “Epode,” the eleventh poem in The Forrest of Jonson's 1616 Folio. This poem provokes an irritated footnote from Wesley Trimpi, who says that it “tediously works out the old allegorical analogy of the senses” and that it is a “good example of overt didacticism plus ornament, and it fails either to teach or to delight.” Herschel Baker, on the other hand, calls the poem “one of Jonson's noblest ethical pronouncements.” I want to suggest that a part of the poem's effect is the result of Jonson's evoking— unexpectedly, perhaps—of Spenser, specifically of Book Two of The Faerie Queene.

It is important to take note of the overall shape of The Forrest. Jonson himself points out that the title silva implies “workes of divers nature, and matter congested” (H&S 8.126); Sara van den Berg, while admitting the diversity, has argued persuasively for the coherence of the fifteen poems around three organizing principles, Horace, the Sidneys, and the shaping of an ideal poetic voice. In addition, it is easy to see that the collection is symmetrically constructed, bookended by poems about choice of subject matter (Love vs. Heaven); that it contains two balancing sections dealing with the aristocratic and courtly world (nos. 2–4 and 12–14); and that at its center it contains a group of five poems having to do with amorous attraction, the carpe diem stance, and reflections on gender roles (nos. 5–9). The collection as a whole thus places the power of sexual attraction at the center and surrounds it with an ample representation of the features of courtly life, the ceaseless quest for wealth, power, fame, and influence.

To link Jonson with Spenser may seem dubious. In the first decade of James's reign, as David Norbrook reminds us, the “Spenserians” were the aggressively Protestant war-party. Jonson was at odds with this group, and furthermore, Norbrook claims, he had “found the whole cult of the Fairy Queen somewhat absurd.” Jonson, a couplet-man, told Drummond that he did not like Spenser's stanza, and as everyone knows he said in Discoveries that Spenser “writ no language.”