Shakespeare in focus: the art of small things

In the poem he addressed to Shakespeare for the posthumous publication of the First Folio, Ben Jonson evokes the poet’s greatness, resorting to hyperbole when he declares that Shakespeare was “a monument without a tomb,” or expressing his admiration through metonymy: “He was not of an age but for all time!” Yet this witty tribute did not rest solely on images of majesty and vastness that cast the poet in an epic or heroic mode, but rather on a very delicate balance between the very large and...