“Homer's poems were writ from a free fury, an absolute and full soul; Virgil's out of a courtly, laborious, and altogether imitatory spirit.”

Contrasting the spontaneous power of Homer with Virgil's artifice · Dedication to Achilles' Shield (1598)

• Genius
• Homer
• Poetry

“Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity but be dense with meaning, something to be chewed and digested.”

On the proper density of poetic language · Preface to Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595)

• Language
• Meaning
• Poetry

“Obscurity in affection of words and indigested conceits is pedantical and childish; but where it shroudeth itself in the heart of his subject, uttered with fitness of figure and expressive epithets, with that darkness will I still labour to be shadowed.”

Distinguishing fruitful obscurity from mere affectation · Preface to Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595)

• Craft
• Obscurity
• Poetry

“That Poesy should be as pervial as oratory, and plainness her special ornament, were the plain way to barbarism.”

Defending density and difficulty in poetry against simple clarity · Preface to Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595)

• Art
• Clarity
• Poetry

“The profane multitude I hate, and only consecrate my strange poems to those searching spirits whom learning hath made noble, and nobility sacred.”

On writing for a learned elite rather than the common reader · Preface to Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595)

• Nobility
• Poetry
• Readers