Microhistory and cultural geography: Ben Johnson's "To Sir Robert Wroth" and the absorption of local community in the commonwealth

Ben Jonson's country house poem "To Sir Robert Wroth" is a celebration of the Wroths as exemplars of commonwealth identity within local region. Only when they distanced themselves from local identity did the Wroths become suitable for Jonson as a model of the country ideal. In Jonson's hands, the country house poem becomes the vehicle of multivalent identification with place.