Some Answer Poems and their Manuscript History: Jonson, Herrick, and the Circulation of Verse

This article uses manuscript sources and stemmatics to illuminate the history of the three answer poems that are discussed. The first example from Ben Jonson shows how he repeatedly tinkered with the text of a poem he wrote in answer to Sir William Burlase. The second example demonstrates that “Of Inconstancy” is an exchange between Jonson and Sir Edward Herbert, thereby adding a new poem to Jonson’s canon. The third example illustrates how Robert Herrick took a poem by another and then altered it to write a polemic against it. In both the last two cases, the article resolves issues of uncertain authorship.