“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

“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

“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