Renaissance Studies Commons^™

Robert Herrick's "His Grange, Or Private Wealth": A Gentleman Farmer's Ledger, Clara E. Fendley

Quidditas

In The Arte of English Poesie (1589), George Puttenham describes certain "Geometricall figures," i.e., shaped poems, written in the "Courts of the great Princes of China and Tartarie." Puttenham argues that the concise verse forms

insinuat some secret, wittie, morall and brave purpose presented to the beholder, either to recreate his eye, or please his phantasie, or examine his iudgement, or occupie his braine or to manage his will either by hope or by dread, every of which respects be of no little moment to the interest and ornament of the civill life: and therefore give them no litle commendation. …