Eliot called the art of the Elizabethans "an impure
art,"17 in which complexity and ambiguity are exploited:
"in a play of Shakespeare," he said, "you get several levels
of significance" l8 where, quoting Samuel Johnson, "the most
heterogeneous ideas are yoked together by violence." ln And
elsewhere he wrote: "The case of John Webster . . . will
provide an interesting example of a very great literary and
dramatic genius directed towards chaos." 20 Other critics,
for example, Kenneth Burke, who refers to "plural interpretation"
and "planned incongruity," have analyzed elements
of paradox and ambiguity in the structure and meaning of
other poetry besides that of the seventeenth century metaphysical
poets and those modern poets who have been influenced
by them.