Volpone; Or, The Fox
by Ben Jonson · English · Gutenberg #4039 · 330,823 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Volpone; Or, The Fox
Author: Ben Jonson
Release date: May 1, 2003 [eBook #4039]
Most recently updated: February 16, 2010
Language: English
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Produced by Amy E Zelmer, Robert Prince, Sue Asscher
VOLPONE; OR, THE FOX
By Ben Jonson
INTRODUCTION
The greatest of English dramatists except Shakespeare, the first
literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire,
and criticism who most potently of all the men of his time affected the
subsequent course of English letters: such was Ben Jonson, and as such
his strong personality assumes an interest to us almost unparalleled, at
least in his age.
Ben Jonson came of the stock that was centuries after to give to the
world Thomas Carlyle; for Jonson's grandfather was of Annandale, over
the Solway, whence he migrated to England. Jonson's father lost his
estate under Queen Mary, "having been cast into prison and forfeited."
He entered the church, but died a month before his illustrious son was
born, leaving his widow and child in poverty. Jonson's birthplace was
Westminster, and the time of his birth early in 1573. He was thus nearly
ten years Shakespeare's junior, and less well off, if a trifle better
born. But Jonson did not profit even by this slight advantage. His
mother married beneath her, a wright or bricklayer, and Jonson was for a
time apprenticed to the trade. As a youth he attracted the attention of
the famous antiquary, William Camden, then usher at Westminster School,
and there the poet laid the solid foundations of his classical learning.
Jonson always held Camden in veneration, acknowledging that to him he
owed,
"All that I am in arts, all that I know;"
and dedicating his first dramatic success, "Every Man in His Humour,"
to him. It is doubtful whether Jonson ever went to either university,
though Fuller says that he was "statutably admitted into St. John's
College, Cambridge." He tells us that he took no degree, but was later
"Master of Arts in both the universities, by their favour, not his
study." When a mere youth Jonson enlisted as a soldier, trailing his
pike in Flanders in the protracted wars of William the Silent against
the Spanish. Jonson was a large and raw-boned lad; he became by his
own account in time exceedingly bulky. In chat with his friend William
Drummond of Hawthornden, Jonson told how "in his service in the Low
Countries he had, in the face of both the camps, killed an enemy, and
taken opima spolia from him;" and how "since his coming to England,
being appealed to the fields, he had killed his adversary which had hurt
him in the arm and whose sword was ten inches longer than his." Jonson's
reach may have made up for the lack of his sword; certainly his prowess
lost nothing in the telling. Obviously Jonson was brave, combative, and
not averse to talking of himself and his doings.
In 1592, Jonson returned from abroad penniless. Soon after he married,
almost as early and quite as imprudently as Shakespeare. He told
Drummond curtly that "his wife was a shrew, yet honest"; for some
years he lived apart from her in the household of Lord Albany. Yet two
touching epitaphs among Jonson's "Epigrams," "On my first daughter," and
"On my first son," attest the warmth of the poet's family affections.
The daughter died in infancy, the son of the plague; another son grew up
to manhood little credit to his father whom he survived. We know nothing
beyond this of Jonson's domestic life.
How soon Jonson drifted into what we now call grandly "the theatrical
profession" we do not know. In 1593, Marlowe made his tragic exit from
life, and Greene, Shakespeare's other rival on the popular stage,
had preceded Marlowe in an equally miserable death the year before.
Shakespeare already had the running to himself. Jonson appears first in
the employment of Philip Henslowe, the exploiter of several troupes of
players, manager, and father-in-law of the famous actor, Edward Alleyn.
From entries in "Henslowe's Diary," a species of theatrical account book
which has been handed down to us, we know that Jonson was connected with
the Admiral's men; for he borrowed 4 pounds of Henslowe, July 28, 1597,
paying back 3s. 9d. on the same day on account of his "share" (in what
is not altogether clear); while later, on December 3, of the same year,
Henslowe advanced 20s. to him "upon a book which he showed the plot unto
the company which he promised to deliver unto the company at Christmas
next." In the next August Jonson was in collaboration with Chettle and
Porter in a play called "Hot Anger Soon Cold." All this points to an
association with Henslowe of some duration, as no mere tyro would be
thus paid in advance upon mere promise. From allusions in Dekker's play,
"Satiromastix," it appears that Jonson, like Shakespeare, began life as
an actor, and that he "ambled in a leather pitch by a play-wagon" taking
at one time the part of Hieronimo in Kyd's famous play, "The Spanish
Tragedy." By the beginning of 1598, Jonson, though still in needy
circumstances, had begun to receive recognition. Francis Meres--well
known for his "Comparative Discourse of our English Poets with the
Greek, Latin, and Italian Poets," printed in 1598, and for his mention
therein of a dozen plays of Shakespeare by title--accords to Ben Jonson
a place as one of "our best in tragedy," a matter of some surprise, as
no known tragedy of Jonson from so early a date has come down to us.
That Jonson was at work on tragedy, however, is proved by the entries in
Henslowe of at least three tragedies, now lost, in which he had a
hand. These are "Page of Plymouth," "King Robert II. of Scotland,"
and "Richard Crookback." But all of these came later, on his return to
Henslowe, and range from August 1599 to June 1602.
Returning to the autumn of 1598, an event now happened to sever for
a time Jonson's relations with Henslowe. In a letter to Alleyn, dated
September 26 of that year, Henslowe writes: "I have lost one of my
company that hurteth me greatly; that is Gabriel [Spencer], for he is
slain in Hogsden fields by the hands of Benjamin Jonson, bricklayer."
The last word is perhaps Henslowe's thrust at Jonson in his displeasure
rather than a designation of his actual continuance at his trade up to
this time. It is fair to Jonson to remark however, that his adversary
appears to have been a notorious fire-eater who had shortly before
killed one Feeke in a similar squabble. Duelling was a frequent
occurrence of the time among gentlemen and the nobility; it was an
impudent breach of the peace on the part of a player. This duel is the
one which Jonson described years after to Drummond, and for it Jonson
was duly arraigned at Old Bailey, tried, and convicted. He was sent to
prison and such goods and chattels as he had "were forfeited." It is
a thought to give one pause that, but for the ancient law permitting
convicted felons to plead, as it was called, the benefit of clergy,
Jonson might have been hanged for this deed. The circumstance that the
poet could read and write saved him; and he received only a brand of the
letter "T," for Tyburn, on his left thumb. While in jail Jonson became a
Roman Catholic; but he returned to the faith of the Church of England a
dozen years later.
On his release, in disgrace with Henslowe and his former associates,
Jonson offered his services as a playwright to Henslowe's rivals,
the Lord Chamberlain's company, in which Shakespeare was a prominent
shareholder. A tradition of long standing, though not susceptible
of proof in a court of law, narrates that Jonson had submitted the
manuscript of "Every Man in His Humour" to the Chamberlain's men and had
received from the company a refusal; that Shakespeare called him back,
read the play himself, and at once accepted it. Whether this story is
true or not, certain it is that "Every Man in His Humour" was accepted
by Shakespeare's company and acted for the first time in 1598, with
Shakespeare taking a part. The evidence of this is contained in the list
of actors prefixed to the comedy in the folio of Jonson's works, 1616.
But it is a mistake to infer, because Shakespeare's name stands first
in the list of actors and the elder Kno'well first in the dramatis
personae, that Shakespeare took that particular part. The order of a
list of Elizabethan players was generally that of their importance or
priority as shareholders in the company and seldom if ever corresponded
to the list of characters.
"Every Man in His Humour" was an immediate success, and with it Jonson's
reputation as one of the leading dramatists of his time was established
once and for all. This could have been by no means Jonson's earliest
comedy, and we have just learned that he was already reputed one of "our
best in tragedy." Indeed, one of Jonson's extant comedies, "The Case
is Altered," but one never claimed by him or published as his, must
certainly have preceded "Every Man in His Humour" on the stage. The
former play may be described as a comedy modelled on the Latin plays of
Plautus. (It combines, in fact, situations derived from the "Captivi"
and the "Aulularia" of that dramatist). But the pretty story of the
beggar-maiden, Rachel, and her suitors, Jonson found, not among the
classics, but in the ideals of romantic love which Shakespeare had
already popularised on the stage. Jonson never again produced so fresh
and lovable a feminine personage as Rachel, although in other respects
"The Case is Altered" is not a conspicuous play, and, save for the
satirising of Antony Munday in the person of Antonio Balladino and
Gabriel Harvey as well, is perhaps the least characteristic of the
comedies of Jonson.
"Every Man in His Humour," probably first acted late in the summer of
1598 and at the Curtain, is commonly regarded as an epoch-making play;
and this view is not unjustified. As to plot, it tells little more than
how an intercepted letter enabled a father to follow his supposedly
studious son to London, and there observe his life with the gallants of
the time. The real quality of this comedy is in its personages and in
the theory upon which they are conceived. Ben Jonson had theories about
poetry and the drama, and he was neither chary in talking of them nor in
experimenting with them in his plays. This makes Jonson, like Dryden
in his time, and Wordsworth much later, an author to reckon with;
particularly when we remember that many of Jonson's notions came for
a time definitely to prevail and to modify the whole trend of English
poetry. First of all Jonson was a classicist, that is, he believed in
restraint and precedent in art in opposition to the prevalent ungoverned
and irresponsible Renaissance spirit. Jonson believed that there was a
professional way of doing things which might be reached by a study of
the best examples, and he found these examples for the most part among
the ancients. To confine our attention to the drama, Jonson objected to
the amateurishness and haphazard nature of many contemporary plays, and
set himself to do something different; and the first and most striking
thing that he evolved was his conception and practice of the comedy of
humours.
As Jonson has been much misrepresented in this matter, let us quote his
own words as to "humour." A humour, according to Jonson, was a bias of
disposition, a warp, so to speak, in character by which
"Some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his affects, his spirits, and his powers,
In their confluctions, all to run one way."
But continuing, Jonson is careful to add:
"But that a rook by wearing a pied feather,
The cable hat-band, or the three-piled ruff,
A yard of shoe-tie, or the Switzers knot
On his French garters, should affect a humour!
O, it is more than most ridiculous."
Jonson's comedy of humours, in a word, conceived of stage personages
on the basis of a ruling trait or passion (a notable simplification
of actual life be it observed in passing); and, placing these typified
traits in juxtaposition in their conflict and contrast, struck the
spark of comedy. Downright, as his name indicates, is "a plain squire";
Bobadill's humour is that of the braggart who is incidentally, and with
delightfully comic effect, a coward; Brainworm's humour is the finding
out of things to the end of fooling everybody: of course he is fooled
in the end himself. But it was not Jonson's theories alone that made the
success of "Every Man in His Humour." The play is admirably written
and each character is vividly conceived, and with a firm touch based on
observation of the men of the London of the day. Jonson was neither in
this, his first great comedy (nor in any other play that he wrote),
a supine classicist, urging that English drama return to a slavish
adherence to classical conditions. He says as to the laws of the old
comedy (meaning by "laws," such matters as the unities of time and place
and the use of chorus): "I see not then, but we should enjoy the same
licence, or free power to illustrate and heighten our invention as they
[the ancients] did; and not be tied to those strict and regular forms
which the niceness of a few, who are nothing but form, would thrust upon
us." "Every Man in His Humour" is written in prose, a novel practice
which Jonson had of his predecessor in comedy, John Lyly. Even the word
"humour" seems to have been employed in the Jonsonian sense by Chapman
before Jonson's use of it. Indeed, the comedy of humours itself is only
a heightened variety of the comedy of manners which represents life,
viewed at a satirical angle, and is the oldest and most persistent
species of comedy in the language. None the less, Jonson's comedy
merited its immediate success and marked out a definite course in which
comedy long continued to run. To mention only Shakespeare's Falstaff
and his rout, Bardolph, Pistol, Dame Quickly, and the rest, whether in
"Henry IV." or in "The Merry Wives of Windsor," all are conceived in
the spirit of humours. So are the captains, Welsh, Scotch, and Irish
of "Henry V.," and Malvolio especially later; though Shakespeare never
employed the method of humours for an important personage. It was not
Jonson's fault that many of his successors did precisely the thing
that he had reprobated, that is, degrade "the humour: into an oddity of
speech, an eccentricity of manner, of dress, or cut of beard. There was
an anonymous play called "Every Woman in Her Humour." Chapman wrote "A
Humourous Day's Mirth," Day, "Humour Out of Breath," Fletcher later,
"The Humourous Lieutenant," and Jonson, besides "Every Man Out of His
Humour," returned to the title in closing the cycle of his comedies in
"The Magnetic Lady or Humours Reconciled."
With the performance of "Every Man Out of His Humour" in 1599, by
Shakespeare's company once more at the Globe, we turn a new page in
Jonson's career. Despite his many real virtues, if there is one feature
more than any other that distinguishes Jonson, it is his arrogance; and
to this may be added his self-righteousness, especially under criticism
or satire. "Every Man Out of His Humour" is the first of three "comical
satires" which Jonson contributed to what Dekker called the poetomachia
or war of the theatres as recent critics have named it. This play as a
fabric of plot is a very slight affair; but as a satirical picture
of the manners of the time, proceeding by means of vivid caricature,
couched in witty and brilliant dialogue and sustained by that righteous
indignation which must lie at the heart of all true satire--as a
realisation, in short, of the classical ideal of comedy--there had been
nothing like Jonson's comedy since the days of Aristophanes. "Every Man
in His Humour," like the two plays that follow it, contains two kinds
of attack, the critical or generally satiric, levelled at abuses
and corruptions in the abstract; and the personal, in which specific
application is made of all this in the lampooning of poets and others,
Jonson's contemporaries. The method of personal attack by actual
caricature of a person on the stage is almost as old as the drama.
Aristophanes so lampooned Euripides in "The Acharnians" and Socrates in
"The Clouds," to mention no other examples; and in English drama this
kind of thing is alluded to again and again. What Jonson really did,
was to raise the dramatic lampoon to an art, and make out of a casual
burlesque and bit of mimicry a dramatic satire of literary pretensions
and permanency. With the arrogant attitude mentioned above and his
uncommon eloquence in scorn, vituperation, and invective, it is no
wonder that Jonson soon involved himself in literary and even personal
quarrels with his fellow-authors. The circumstances of the origin of
this 'poetomachia' are far from clear, and those who have written on the
topic, except of late, have not helped to make them clearer. The origin
of the "war" has been referred to satirical references, apparently to
Jonson, contained in "The Scourge of Villainy," a satire in regular form
after the manner of the ancients by John Marston, a fellow playwright,
subsequent friend and collaborator of Jonson's. On the other hand,
epigrams of Jonson have been discovered (49, 68, and 100) variously
charging "playwright" (reasonably identified with Marston) with
scurrility, cowardice, and plagiarism; though the dates of the epigrams
cannot be ascertained with certainty. Jonson's own statement of the
matter to Drummond runs: "He had many quarrels with Marston, beat
him, and took his pistol from him, wrote his "Poetaster" on him; the
beginning[s] of them were that Marston represented him on the stage."*
* The best account of this whole subject is to be
found in the edition of "Poetaster" and "Satiromastrix" by
J. H. Penniman in "Belles Lettres Series" shortly to appear.
See also his earlier work, "The War of the Theatres," 1892,
and the excellent contributions to the subject by H. C. Hart
in "Notes and Queries," and in his edition of Jonson, 1906.
Here at least we are on certain ground; and the principals of the
quarrel are known. "Histriomastix," a play revised by Marston in 1598,
has been regarded as the one in which Jonson was thus "represented on
the stage"; although the personage in question, Chrisogonus, a poet,
satirist, and translator, poor but proud, and contemptuous of the common
herd, seems rather a complimentary portrait of Jonson than a caricature.
As to the personages actually ridiculed in "Every Man Out of His
Humour," Carlo Buffone was formerly thought certainly to be Marston,
as he was described as "a public, scurrilous, and profane jester," and
elsewhere as the "grand scourge or second untruss [that is, satirist], of
the time" (Joseph Hall being by his own boast the first, and Marston's
work being entitled "The Scourge of Villainy"). Apparently we must now
prefer for Carlo a notorious character named Charles Chester, of whom
gossipy and inaccurate Aubrey relates that he was "a bold impertinent
fellow... a perpetual talker and made a noise like a drum in a room. So
one time at a tavern Sir Walter Raleigh beats him and seals up his mouth
(that is his upper and nether beard) with hard wax. From him Ben Jonson
takes his Carlo Buffone ['i.e.', jester] in "Every Man in His Humour"
['sic']." Is it conceivable that after all Jonson was ridiculing
Marston, and that the point of the satire consisted in an intentional
confusion of "the grand scourge or second untruss" with "the scurrilous
and profane" Chester?
We have digressed into detail in this particular case to exemplify the
difficulties of criticism in its attempts to identify the allusions in
these forgotten quarrels. We are on sounder ground of fact in recording
other manifestations of Jonson's enmity. In "The Case is Altered" there
is clear ridicule in the character Antonio Balladino of Anthony Munday,
pageant-poet of the city, translator of romances and playwright as well.
In "Every Man in His Humour" there is certainly a caricature of Samuel
Daniel, accepted poet of the court, sonneteer, and companion of men of
fashion. These men held recognised positions to which Jonson felt his
talents better entitled him; they were hence to him his natural enemies.
It seems almost certain that he pursued both in the personages of his
satire through "Every Man Out of His Humour," and "Cynthia's Revels,"
Daniel under the characters Fastidious Brisk and Hedon, Munday as
Puntarvolo and Amorphus; but in these last we venture on quagmire once
more. Jonson's literary rivalry of Daniel is traceable again and again,
in the entertainments that welcomed King James on his way to London, in
the masques at court, and in the pastoral drama. As to Jonson's personal
ambitions with respect to these two men, it is notable that he became,
not pageant-poet, but chronologer to the City of London; and that, on
the accession of the new king, he came soon to triumph over Daniel as
the accepted entertainer of royalty.
"Cynthia's Revels," the second "comical satire," was acted in 1600, and,
as a play, is even more lengthy, elaborate, and impossible than "Every
Man Out of His Humour." Here personal satire seems to have absorbed
everything, and while much of the caricature is admirable, especially in
the detail of witty and trenchantly satirical dialogue, the central idea
of a fountain of self-love is not very well carried out, and the persons
revert at times to abstractions, the action to allegory. It adds to our
wonder that this difficult drama should have been acted by the Children
of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel, among them Nathaniel Field with whom Jonson
read Horace and Martial, and whom he taught later how to make plays.
Another of these precocious little actors was Salathiel Pavy, who died
before he was thirteen, already famed for taking the parts of old men.
Him Jonson immortalised in one of the sweetest of his epitaphs. An
interesting sidelight is this on the character of this redoubtable
and rugged satirist, that he should thus have befriended and tenderly
remembered these little theatrical waifs, some of whom (as we know) had
been literally kidnapped to be pressed into the service of the theatre
and whipped to the conning of their difficult parts. To the caricature
of Daniel and Munday in "Cynthia's Revels" must be added Anaides
(impudence), here assuredly Marston, and Asotus (the prodigal),
interpreted as Lodge or, more perilously, Raleigh. Crites, like
Asper-Macilente in "Every Man Out of His Humour," is Jonson's
self-complaisant portrait of himself, the just, wholly admirable, and
judicious scholar, holding his head high above the pack of the yelping
curs of envy and detraction, but careless of their puny attacks on his
perfections with only too mindful a neglect.
The third and last of the "comical satires" is "Poetaster," acted, once
more, by the Children of the Chapel in 1601, and Jonson's only avowed
contribution to the fray. According to the author's own account, this
play was written in fifteen weeks on a report that his enemies had
entrusted to Dekker the preparation of "Satiromastix, the Untrussing of
the Humorous Poet," a dramatic attack upon himself. In this attempt to
forestall his enemies Jonson succeeded, and "Poetaster" was an immediate
and deserved success. While hardly more closely knit in structure than
its earlier companion pieces, "Poetaster" is planned to lead up to
the ludicrous final scene in which, after a device borrowed from the
"Lexiphanes" of Lucian, the offending poetaster, Marston-Crispinus, is
made to throw up the difficult words with which he had overburdened his
stomach as well as overlarded his vocabulary. In the end Crispinus with
his fellow, Dekker-Demetrius, is bound over to keep the peace and never
thenceforward "malign, traduce, or detract the person or writings of
Quintus Horatius Flaccus [Jonson] or any other eminent man transcending
you in merit." One of the most diverting personages in Jonson's comedy
is Captain Tucca. "His peculiarity" has been well described by Ward as
"a buoyant blackguardism which recovers itself instantaneously from the
most complete exposure, and a picturesqueness of speech like that of a
walking dictionary of slang."
It was this character, Captain Tucca, that Dekker hit upon in his reply,
"Satiromastix," and he amplified him, turning his abusive vocabulary
back upon Jonson and adding "an immodesty to his dialogue that did not
enter into Jonson's conception." It has been held, altogether plausibly,
that when Dekker was engaged professionally, so to speak, to write
a dramatic reply to Jonson, he was at work on a species of chronicle
history, dealing with the story of Walter Terill in the reign of William
Rufus. This he hurriedly adapted to include the satirical characters
suggested by "Poetaster," and fashioned to convey the satire of his
reply. The absurdity of placing Horace in the court of a Norman king is
the result. But Dekker's play is not without its palpable hits at the
arrogance, the literary pride, and self-righteousness of Jonson-Horace,
whose "ningle" or pal, the absurd Asinius Bubo, has recently been shown
to figure forth, in all likelihood, Jonson's friend, the poet Drayton.
Slight and hastily adapted as is "Satiromastix," especially in a
comparison with the better wrought and more significant satire of
"Poetaster," the town awarded the palm to Dekker, not to Jonson; and
Jonson gave over in consequence his practice of "comical satire." Though
Jonson was cited to appear before the Lord Chief Justice to answer
certain charges to the effect that he had attacked lawyers and soldiers
in "Poetaster," nothing came of this complaint. It may be suspected that
much of this furious clatter and give-and-take was pure playing to the
gallery. The town was agog with the strife, and on no less an authority
than Shakespeare ("Hamlet," ii. 2), we learn that the children's company
(acting the plays of Jonson) did "so berattle the common stages... that
many, wearing rapiers, are afraid of goose-quills, and dare scarce come
thither."
Several other plays have been thought to bear a greater or less part
in the war of the theatres. Among them the most important is a college
play, entitled "The Return from Parnassus," dating 1601-02. In it a
much-quoted passage makes Burbage, as a character, declare: "Why here's
our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down; aye and Ben Jonson, too. O
that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow; he brought up Horace, giving the
poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that
made him bewray his credit." Was Shakespeare then concerned in this
war of the stages? And what could have been the nature of this "purge"?
Among several suggestions, "Troilus and Cressida" has been thought by
some to be the play in which Shakespeare thus "put down" his friend,
Jonson. A wiser interpretation finds the "purge" in "Satiromastix,"
which, though not written by Shakespeare, was staged by his company,
and therefore with his approval and under his direction as one of the
leaders of that company.
The last years of the reign of Elizabeth thus saw Jonson recognised as
a dramatist second only to Shakespeare, and not second even to him as
a dramatic satirist. But Jonson now turned his talents to new fields.
Plays on subjects derived from classical story and myth had held the
stage from the beginning of the drama, so that Shakespeare was making
no new departure when he wrote his "Julius Caesar" about 1600. Therefore
when Jonson staged "Sejanus," three years later and with Shakespeare's
company once more, he was only following in the elder dramatist's
footsteps. But Jonson's idea of a play on classical history, on the one
hand, and Shakespeare's and the elder popular dramatists, on the other,
were very different. Heywood some years before had put five straggling
plays on the stage in quick succession, all derived from stories in Ovid
and dramatised with little taste or discrimination. Shakespeare had
a finer conception of form, but even he was contented to take all his
ancient history from North's translation of Plutarch and dramatise his
subject without further inquiry. Jonson was a scholar and a classical
antiquarian. He reprobated this slipshod amateurishness, and wrote
his "Sejanus" like a scholar, reading Tacitus, Suetonius, and
other authorities, to be certain of his facts, his setting, and his
atmosphere, and somewhat pedantically noting his authorities in the
margin when he came to print. "Sejanus" is a tragedy of genuine dramatic
power in which is told with discriminating taste the story of the
haughty favourite of Tiberius with his tragical overthrow. Our drama
presents no truer nor more painstaking representation of ancient
Roman life than may be found in Jonson's "Sejanus" and "Catiline his
Conspiracy," which followed in 1611. A passage in the address of the
former play to the reader, in which Jonson refers to a collaboration
in an earlier version, has led to the surmise that Shakespeare may have
been that "worthier pen." There is no evidence to determine the matter.
In 1605, we find Jonson in active collaboration with Chapman and Marston
in the admirable comedy of London life entitled "Eastward Hoe." In
the previous year, Marston had dedicated his "Malcontent," in terms
of fervid admiration, to Jonson; so that the wounds of the war of the
theatres must have been long since healed. Between Jonson and Chapman
there was the kinship of similar scholarly ideals. The two continued
friends throughout life. "Eastward Hoe" achieved the extraordinary
popularity represented in a demand for three issues in one year. But
this was not due entirely to the merits of the play. In its earliest
version a passage which an irritable courtier conceived to be derogatory
to his nation, the Scots, sent both Chapman and Jonson to jail; but the
matter was soon patched up, for by this time Jonson had influence at
court.
With the accession of King James, Jonson began his long and successful
career as a writer of masques. He wrote more masques than all his
competitors together, and they are of an extraordinary variety
and poetic excellence. Jonson did not invent the masque; for such
premeditated devices to set and frame, so to speak, a court ball had
been known and practised in varying degrees of elaboration long before
his time. But Jonson gave dramatic value to the masque, especially in
his invention of the antimasque, a comedy or farcical element of relief,
entrusted to professional players or dancers. He enhanced, as well, the
beauty and dignity of those portions of the masque in which noble lords
and ladies took their parts to create, by their gorgeous costumes and
artistic grouping and evolutions, a sumptuous show. On the mechanical
and scenic side Jonson had an inventive and ingenious partner in
Inigo Jones, the royal architect, who more than any one man raised
the standard of stage representation in the England of his day. Jonson
continued active in the service of the court in the writing of masques
and other entertainments far into the reign of King Charles; but,
towards the end, a quarrel with Jones embittered his life, and the two
testy old men appear to have become not only a constant irritation to
each other, but intolerable bores at court. In "Hymenaei," "The Masque
of Queens," "Love Freed from Ignorance," "Lovers made Men," "Pleasure
Reconciled to Virtue," and many more will be found Jonson's aptitude,
his taste, his poetry and inventiveness in these by-forms of the drama;
while in "The Masque of Christmas," and "The Gipsies Metamorphosed"
especially, is discoverable that power of broad comedy which, at
court as well as in the city, was not the least element of Jonson's
contemporary popularity.
But Jonson had by no means given up the popular stage when he turned to
the amusement of King James. In 1605 "Volpone" was produced, "The Silent
Woman" in 1609, "The Alchemist" in the following year. These comedies,
with "Bartholomew Fair," 1614, represent Jonson at his height, and for
constructive cleverness, character successfully conceived in the manner
of caricature, wit and brilliancy of dialogue, they stand alone in
English drama. "Volpone, or the Fox," is, in a sense, a transition play
from the dramatic satires of the war of the theatres to the purer comedy
represented in the plays named above. Its subject is a struggle of
wit applied to chicanery; for among its dramatis personae, from the
villainous Fox himself, his rascally servant Mosca, Voltore (the
vulture), Corbaccio and Corvino (the big and the little raven), to Sir
Politic Would-be and the rest, there is scarcely a virtuous character in
the play. Question has been raised as to whether a story so forbidding
can be considered a comedy, for, although the plot ends in the
discomfiture and imprisonment of the most vicious, it involves no mortal
catastrophe. But Jonson was on sound historical ground, for "Volpone"
is conceived far more logically on the lines of the ancients' theory
of comedy than was ever the romantic drama of Shakespeare, however
repulsive we may find a philosophy of life that facilely divides the
world into the rogues and their dupes, and, identifying brains
with roguery and innocence with folly, admires the former while
inconsistently punishing them.
"The Silent Woman" is a gigantic farce of the most ingenious
construction. The whole comedy hinges on a huge joke, played by a
heartless nephew on his misanthropic uncle, who is induced to take to
himself a wife, young, fair, and warranted silent, but who, in the end,
turns out neither silent nor a woman at all. In "The Alchemist," again,
we have the utmost cleverness in construction, the whole fabric building
climax on climax, witty, ingenious, and so plausibly presented that we
forget its departures from the possibilities of life. In "The Alchemist"
Jonson represented, none the less to the life, certain sharpers of
the metropolis, revelling in their shrewdness and rascality and in the
variety of the stupidity and wickedness of their victims. We may object
to the fact that the only person in the play possessed of a scruple
of honesty is discomfited, and that the greatest scoundrel of all is
approved in the end and rewarded. The comedy is so admirably written and
contrived, the personages stand out with such lifelike distinctness
in their several kinds, and the whole is animated with such verve and
resourcefulness that "The Alchemist" is a new marvel every time it is
read. Lastly of this group comes the tremendous comedy, "Bartholomew
Fair," less clear cut, less definite, and less structurally worthy
of praise than its three predecessors, but full of the keenest and
cleverest of satire and inventive to a degree beyond any English comedy
save some other of Jonson's own. It is in "Bartholomew Fair" that we are
presented to the immortal caricature of the Puritan, Zeal-in-the-Land
Busy, and the Littlewits that group about him, and it is in this
extraordinary comedy that the humour of Jonson, always open to this
danger, loosens into the Rabelaisian mode that so delighted King James
in "The Gipsies Metamorphosed." Another comedy of less merit is "The
Devil is an Ass," acted in 1616. It was the failure of this play that
caused Jonson to give over writing for the public stage for a period of
nearly ten years.
"Volpone" was laid as to scene in Venice. Whether because of the success
of "Eastward Hoe" or for other reasons, the other three comedies declare
in the words of the prologue to "The Alchemist":
"Our scene is London, 'cause we would make known
No country's mirth is better than our own."
Indeed Jonson went further when he came to revise his plays for
collected publication in his folio of 1616, he transferred the scene
of "Every Man in His Humour" from Florence to London also, converting
Signior Lorenzo di Pazzi to Old Kno'well, Prospero to Master Welborn,
and Hesperida to Dame Kitely "dwelling i' the Old Jewry."
In his comedies of London life, despite his trend towards caricature,
Jonson has shown himself a genuine realist, drawing from the life about
him with an experience and insight rare in any generation. A happy
comparison has been suggested between Ben Jonson and Charles Dickens.
Both were men of the people, lowly born and hardly bred. Each knew
the London of his time as few men knew it; and each represented it
intimately and in elaborate detail. Both men were at heart moralists,
seeking the truth by the exaggerated methods of humour and caricature;
perverse, even wrong-headed at times, but possessed of a true pathos and
largeness of heart, and when all has been said--though the Elizabethan
ran to satire, the Victorian to sentimentality--leaving the world better
for the art that they practised in it.
In 1616, the year of the death of Shakespeare, Jonson collected his
plays, his poetry, and his masques for publication in a collective
edition. This was an unusual thing at the time and had been attempted
by no dramatist before Jonson. This volume published, in a carefully
revised text, all the plays thus far mentioned, excepting "The Case is
Altered," which Jonson did not acknowledge, "Bartholomew Fair," and "The
Devil is an Ass," which was written too late. It included likewise a
book of some hundred and thirty odd "Epigrams," in which form of brief
and pungent writing Jonson was an acknowledged master; "The Forest," a
smaller collection of lyric and occasional verse and some ten "Masques"
and "Entertainments." In this same year Jonson was made poet laureate
with a pension of one hundred marks a year. This, with his fees and
returns from several noblemen, and the small earnings of his plays
must have formed the bulk of his income. The poet appears to have done
certain literary hack-work for others, as, for example, parts of the
Punic Wars contributed to Raleigh's "History of the World." We know
from a story, little to the credit of either, that Jonson accompanied
Raleigh's son abroad in the capacity of a tutor. In 1618 Jonson was
granted the reversion of the office of Master of the Revels, a post
for which he was peculiarly fitted; but he did not live to enjoy its
perquisites. Jonson was honoured with degrees by both universities,
though when and under what circumstances is not known. It has been said
that he narrowly escaped the honour of knighthood, which the satirists
of the day averred King James was wont to lavish with an indiscriminate
hand. Worse men were made knights in his day than worthy Ben Jonson.
From 1616 to the close of the reign of King James, Jonson produced
nothing for the stage. But he "prosecuted" what he calls "his wonted
studies" with such assiduity that he became in reality, as by report,
one of the most learned men of his time. Jonson's theory of authorship
involved a wide acquaintance with books and "an ability," as he put it,
"to convert the substance or riches of another poet to his own use."
Accordingly Jonson read not only the Greek and Latin classics down to
the lesser writers, but he acquainted himself especially with the Latin
writings of his learned contemporaries, their prose as well as their
poetry, their antiquities and curious lore as well as their more solid
learning. Though a poor man, Jonson was an indefatigable collector of
books. He told Drummond that "the Earl of Pembroke sent him 20 pounds
every first day of the new year to buy new books." Unhappily, in 1623,
his library was destroyed by fire, an accident serio-comically described
in his witty poem, "An Execration upon Vulcan." Yet even now a book
turns up from time to time in which is inscribed, in fair large Italian
lettering, the name, Ben Jonson. With respect to Jonson's use of his
material, Dryden said memorably of him: "[He] was not only a professed
imitator of Horace, but a learned plagiary of all the others; you track
him everywhere in their snow.... But he has done his robberies so openly
that one sees he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors
like a monarch, and what would be theft in other poets is only victory
in him." And yet it is but fair to say that Jonson prided himself, and
justly, on his originality. In "Catiline," he not only uses Sallust's
account of the conspiracy, but he models some of the speeches of Cicero
on the Roman orator's actual words. In "Poetaster," he lifts a whole
satire out of Horace and dramatises it effectively for his purposes. The
sophist Libanius suggests the situation of "The Silent Woman"; a Latin
comedy of Giordano Bruno, "Il Candelaio," the relation of the dupes
and the sharpers in "The Alchemist," the "Mostellaria" of Plautus, its
admirable opening scene. But Jonson commonly bettered his sources, and
putting the stamp of his sovereignty on whatever bullion he borrowed
made it thenceforward to all time current and his own.
The lyric and especially the occasional poetry of Jonson has a peculiar
merit. His theory demanded design and the perfection of literary finish.
He was furthest from the rhapsodist and the careless singer of an
idle day; and he believed that Apollo could only be worthily served in
singing robes and laurel crowned. And yet many of Jonson's lyrics will
live as long as the language. Who does not know "Queen and huntress,
chaste and fair." "Drink to me only with thine eyes," or "Still to be
neat, still to be dressed"? Beautiful in form, deft and graceful in
expression, with not a word too much or one that bears not its part
in the total effect, there is yet about the lyrics of Jonson a
certain stiffness and formality, a suspicion that they were not quite
spontaneous and unbidden, but that they were carved, so to speak,
with disproportionate labour by a potent man of letters whose habitual
thought is on greater things. It is for these reasons that Jonson is
even better in the epigram and in occasional verse where rhetorical
finish and pointed wit less interfere with the spontaneity and emotion
which we usually associate with lyrical poetry. There are no such
epitaphs as Ben Jonson's, witness the charming ones on his own children,
on Salathiel Pavy, the child-actor, and many more; and this even though
the rigid law of mine and thine must now restore to William Browne of
Tavistock the famous lines beginning: "Underneath this sable hearse."
Jonson is unsurpassed, too, in the difficult poetry of compliment,
seldom falling into fulsome praise and disproportionate similitude, yet
showing again and again a generous appreciation of worth in others, a
discriminating taste and a generous personal regard. There was no man in
England of his rank so well known and universally beloved as Ben Jonson.
The list of his friends, of those to whom he had written verses, and
those who had written verses to him, includes the name of every man of
prominence in the England of King James. And the tone of many of these
productions discloses an affectionate familiarity that speaks for the
amiable personality and sound worth of the laureate. In 1619, growing
unwieldy through inactivity, Jonson hit upon the heroic remedy of a
journey afoot to Scotland. On his way thither and back he was hospitably
received at the houses of many friends and by those to whom his friends
had recommended him. When he arrived in Edinburgh, the burgesses met to
grant him the freedom of the city, and Drummond, foremost of Scottish
poets, was proud to entertain him for weeks as his guest at Hawthornden.
Some of the noblest of Jonson's poems were inspired by friendship.
Such is the fine "Ode to the memory of Sir Lucius Cary and Sir Henry
Moryson," and that admirable piece of critical insight and filial
affection, prefixed to the first Shakespeare folio, "To the memory of
my beloved master, William Shakespeare, and what he hath left us," to
mention only these. Nor can the earlier "Epode," beginning "Not to know
vice at all," be matched in stately gravity and gnomic wisdom in its own
wise and stately age.
But if Jonson had deserted the stage after the publication of his folio
and up to the end of the reign of King James, he was far from inactive;
for year after year his inexhaustible inventiveness continued to
contribute to the masquing and entertainment at court. In "The Golden
Age Restored," Pallas turns the Iron Age with its attendant evils into
statues which sink out of sight; in "Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue,"
Atlas figures represented as an old man, his shoulders covered with
snow, and Comus, "the god of cheer or the belly," is one of the
characters, a circumstance which an imaginative boy of ten, named John
Milton, was not to forget. "Pan's Anniversary," late in the reign
of James, proclaimed that Jonson had not yet forgotten how to write
exquisite lyrics, and "The Gipsies Metamorphosed" displayed the old
drollery and broad humorous stroke still unimpaired and unmatchable.
These, too, and the earlier years of Charles were the days of the Apollo
Room of the Devil Tavern where Jonson presided, the absolute monarch of
English literary Bohemia. We hear of a room blazoned about with Jonson's
own judicious "Leges Convivales" in letters of gold, of a company made
up of the choicest spirits of the time, devotedly attached to their
veteran dictator, his reminiscences, opinions, affections, and enmities.
And we hear, too, of valorous potations; but in the words of Herrick
addressed to his master, Jonson, at the Devil Tavern, as at the Dog, the
Triple Tun, and at the Mermaid,
"We such clusters had
As made us nobly wild, not mad,
And yet each verse of thine
Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine."
But the patronage of the court failed in the days of King Charles,
though Jonson was not without royal favours; and the old poet returned
to the stage, producing, between 1625 and 1633, "The Staple of News,"
"The New Inn," "The Magnetic Lady," and "The Tale of a Tub," the last
doubtless revised from a much earlier comedy. None of these plays met
with any marked success, although the scathing generalisation of Dryden
that designated them "Jonson's dotages" is unfair to their genuine
merits. Thus the idea of an office for the gathering, proper dressing,
and promulgation of news (wild flight of the fancy in its time) was
an excellent subject for satire on the existing absurdities among
newsmongers; although as much can hardly be said for "The Magnetic
Lady," who, in her bounty, draws to her personages of differing humours
to reconcile them in the end according to the alternative title, or
"Humours Reconciled." These last plays of the old dramatist revert to
caricature and the hard lines of allegory; the moralist is more than
ever present, the satire degenerates into personal lampoon, especially
of his sometime friend, Inigo Jones, who appears unworthily to have used
his influence at court against the broken-down old poet. And now disease
claimed Jonson, and he was bedridden for months. He had succeeded
Middleton in 1628 as Chronologer to the City of London, but lost the
post for not fulfilling its duties. King Charles befriended him, and
even commissioned him to write still for the entertainment of the court;
and he was not without the sustaining hand of noble patrons and devoted
friends among the younger poets who were proud to be "sealed of the
tribe of Ben."
Jonson died, August 6, 1637, and a second folio of his works, which
he had been some time gathering, was printed in 1640, bearing in its
various parts dates ranging from 1630 to 1642. It included all the plays
mentioned in the foregoing paragraphs, excepting "The Case is Altered;"
the masques, some fifteen, that date between 1617 and 1630; another
collection of lyrics and occasional poetry called "Underwoods", including
some further entertainments; a translation of "Horace's Art of Poetry"
(also published in a vicesimo quarto in 1640), and certain fragments and
ingatherings which the poet would hardly have included himself. These
last comprise the fragment (less than seventy lines) of a tragedy called
"Mortimer his Fall," and three acts of a pastoral drama of much beauty
and poetic spirit, "The Sad Shepherd." There is also the exceedingly
interesting "English Grammar" "made by Ben Jonson for the benefit of all
strangers out of his observation of the English language now spoken and
in use," in Latin and English; and "Timber, or Discoveries" "made upon
men and matter as they have flowed out of his daily reading, or had
their reflux to his peculiar notion of the times." The "Discoveries,"
as it is usually called, is a commonplace book such as many literary
men have kept, in which their reading was chronicled, passages that took
their fancy translated or transcribed, and their passing opinions noted.
Many passages of Jonson's "Discoveries" are literal translations from
the authors he chanced to be reading, with the reference, noted or not,
as the accident of the moment prescribed. At times he follows the line
of Macchiavelli's argument as to the nature and conduct of princes; at
others he clarifies his own conception of poetry and poets by recourse
to Aristotle. He finds a choice paragraph on eloquence in Seneca the
elder and applies it to his own recollection of Bacon's power as an
orator; and another on facile and ready genius, and translates it,
adapting it to his recollection of his fellow-playwright,
Shakespeare. To call such passages--which Jonson never intended for
publication--plagiarism, is to obscure the significance of words.
To disparage his memory by citing them is a preposterous use of
scholarship. Jonson's prose, both in his dramas, in the descriptive
comments of his masques, and in the "Discoveries," is characterised by
clarity and vigorous directness, nor is it wanting in a fine sense of
form or in the subtler graces of diction.
When Jonson died there was a project for a handsome monument to his
memory. But the Civil War was at hand, and the project failed. A
memorial, not insufficient, was carved on the stone covering his grave
in one of the aisles of Westminster Abbey:
"O rare Ben Jonson."
FELIX E. SCHELLING.
THE COLLEGE,
PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A.
The following is a complete list of his published works:--
DRAMAS:
Every Man in his Humour, 4to, 1601;
The Case is Altered, 4to, 1609;
Every Man out of his Humour, 4to, 1600;
Cynthia's Revels, 4to, 1601;
Poetaster, 4to, 1602;
Sejanus, 4to, 1605;
Eastward Ho (with Chapman and Marston), 4to, 1605;
Volpone, 4to, 1607;
Epicoene, or the Silent Woman, 4to, 1609 (?), fol., 1616;
The Alchemist, 4to, 1612;
Catiline, his Conspiracy, 4to, 1611;
Bartholomew Fayre, 4to, 1614 (?), fol., 1631;
The Divell is an Asse, fol., 1631;
The Staple of Newes, fol., 1631;
The New Sun, 8vo, 1631, fol., 1692;
The Magnetic Lady, or Humours Reconcild, fol., 1640;
A Tale of a Tub, fol., 1640;
The Sad Shepherd, or a Tale of Robin Hood, fol., 1641;
Mortimer his Fall (fragment), fol., 1640.
To Jonson have also been attributed additions to Kyd's Jeronymo,
and collaboration in The Widow with Fletcher and Middleton, and
in the Bloody Brother with Fletcher.
POEMS:
Epigrams, The Forrest, Underwoods, published in fols., 1616, 1640;
Selections: Execration against Vulcan, and Epigrams, 1640;
G. Hor. Flaccus his art of Poetry, Englished by Ben Jonson, 1640;
Leges Convivialis, fol., 1692.
Other minor poems first appeared in Gifford's edition of Works.
PROSE:
Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter, fol., 1641;
The English Grammar, made by Ben Jonson for the benefit of
Strangers, fol., 1640.
Masques and Entertainments were published in the early folios.
WORKS:
Fol., 1616, volume. 2, 1640 (1631-41);
fol., 1692, 1716-19, 1729;
edited by P. Whalley, 7 volumes., 1756;
by Gifford (with Memoir), 9 volumes., 1816, 1846;
re-edited by F. Cunningham, 3 volumes., 1871;
in 9 volumes., 1875;
by Barry Cornwall (with Memoir), 1838;
by B. Nicholson (Mermaid Series), with Introduction by
C. H. Herford, 1893, etc.;
Nine Plays, 1904;
ed. H. C. Hart (Standard Library), 1906, etc;
Plays and Poems, with Introduction by H. Morley (Universal
Library), 1885;
Plays (7) and Poems (Newnes), 1905;
Poems, with Memoir by H. Bennett (Carlton Classics), 1907;
Masques and Entertainments, ed. by H. Morley, 1890.
SELECTIONS:
J. A. Symonds, with Biographical and Critical Essay,
(Canterbury Poets), 1886;
Grosart, Brave Translunary Things, 1895;
Arber, Jonson Anthology, 1901;
Underwoods, Cambridge University Press, 1905;
Lyrics (Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher), the Chap Books,
No. 4, 1906;
Songs (from Plays, Masques, etc.), with earliest known
setting, Eragny Press, 1906.
LIFE:
See Memoirs affixed to Works;
J. A. Symonds (English Worthies), 1886;
Notes of Ben Jonson Conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden;
Shakespeare Society, 1842;
ed. with Introduction and Notes by P. Sidney, 1906;
Swinburne, A Study of Ben Jonson, 1889.
VOLPONE; OR, THE FOX
By Ben Jonson
TO THE MOST NOBLE AND MOST EQUAL SISTERS,
THE TWO FAMOUS UNIVERSITIES,
FOR THEIR LOVE AND ACCEPTANCE SHEWN TO HIS POEM IN THE PRESENTATION,
BEN JONSON,
THE GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGER,
DEDICATES BOTH IT AND HIMSELF.
Never, most equal Sisters, had any man a wit so presently excellent, as
that it could raise itself; but there must come both matter, occasion,
commenders, and favourers to it. If this be true, and that the fortune
of all writers doth daily prove it, it behoves the careful to provide
well towards these accidents; and, having acquired them, to preserve
that part of reputation most tenderly, wherein the benefit of a friend
is also defended. Hence is it, that I now render myself grateful, and am
studious to justify the bounty of your act; to which, though your mere
authority were satisfying, yet it being an age wherein poetry and the
professors of it hear so ill on all sides, there will a reason be looked
for in the subject. It is certain, nor can it with any forehead be
opposed, that the too much license of poetasters in this time, hath much
deformed their mistress; that, every day, their manifold and manifest
ignorance doth stick unnatural reproaches upon her: but for their
petulancy, it were an act of the greatest injustice, either to let
the learned suffer, or so divine a skill (which indeed should not be
attempted with unclean hands) to fall under the least contempt. For,
if men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices
and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the
impossibility of any man's being the good poet, without first being a
good man. He that is said to be able to inform young men to all good
disciplines, inflame grown men to all great virtues, keep old men in
their best and supreme state, or, as they decline to childhood, recover
them to their first strength; that comes forth the interpreter and
arbiter of nature, a teacher of things divine no less than human, a
master in manners; and can alone, or with a few, effect the business
of mankind: this, I take him, is no subject for pride and ignorance
to exercise their railing rhetoric upon. But it will here be hastily
answered, that the writers of these days are other things; that not only
their manners, but their natures, are inverted, and nothing remaining
with them of the dignity of poet, but the abused name, which every
scribe usurps; that now, especially in dramatic, or, as they term it,
stage-poetry, nothing but ribaldry, profanation, blasphemy, all license
of offence to God and man is practised. I dare not deny a great part of
this, and am sorry I dare not, because in some men's abortive features
(and would they had never boasted the light) it is over-true; but that
all are embarked in this bold adventure for hell, is a most uncharitable
thought, and, uttered, a more malicious slander. For my particular, I
can, and from a most clear conscience, affirm, that I have ever trembled
to think toward the least profaneness; have loathed the use of such
foul and unwashed bawdry, as is now made the food of the scene: and,
howsoever I cannot escape from some, the imputation of sharpness, but
that they will say, I have taken a pride, or lust, to be bitter, and not
my youngest infant but hath come into the world with all his teeth;
I would ask of these supercilious politics, what nation, society, or
general order or state, I have provoked? What public person? Whether I
have not in all these preserved their dignity, as mine own person, safe?
My works are read, allowed, (I speak of those that are intirely mine,)
look into them, what broad reproofs have I used? where have I been
particular? where personal? except to a mimic, cheater, bawd, or
buffoon, creatures, for their insolencies, worthy to be taxed? yet to
which of these so pointingly, as he might not either ingenuously have
confest, or wisely dissembled his disease? But it is not rumour can make
men guilty, much less entitle me to other men's crimes. I know, that
nothing can be so innocently writ or carried, but may be made obnoxious
to construction; marry, whilst I bear mine innocence about me, I fear
it not. Application is now grown a trade with many; and there are that
profess to have a key for the decyphering of every thing: but let wise
and noble persons take heed how they be too credulous, or give leave to
these invading interpreters to be over-familiar with their fames, who
cunningly, and often, utter their own virulent malice, under other men's
simplest meanings. As for those that will (by faults which charity hath
raked up, or common honesty concealed) make themselves a name with the
multitude, or, to draw their rude and beastly claps, care not whose
living faces they intrench with their petulant styles, may they do it
without a rival, for me! I choose rather to live graved in obscurity,
than share with them in so preposterous a fame. Nor can I blame the
wishes of those severe and wise patriots, who providing the hurts these
licentious spirits may do in a state, desire rather to see fools and
devils, and those antique relics of barbarism retrieved, with all other
ridiculous and exploded follies, than behold the wounds of private
men, of princes and nations: for, as Horace makes Trebatius speak among
these,
"Sibi quisque timet, quanquam est intactus, et odit."
And men may justly impute such rages, if continued, to the writer, as
his sports. The increase of which lust in liberty, together with the
present trade of the stage, in all their miscelline interludes, what
learned or liberal soul doth not already abhor? where nothing but the
filth of the time is uttered, and with such impropriety of phrase, such
plenty of solecisms, such dearth of sense, so bold prolepses, so racked
metaphors, with brothelry, able to violate the ear of a pagan, and
blasphemy, to turn the blood of a Christian to water. I cannot but be
serious in a cause of this nature, wherein my fame, and the reputation
of divers honest and learned are the question; when a name so full of
authority, antiquity, and all great mark, is, through their insolence,
become the lowest scorn of the age; and those men subject to the
petulancy of every vernaculous orator, that were wont to be the care of
kings and happiest monarchs. This it is that hath not only rapt me to
present indignation, but made me studious heretofore, and by all my
actions, to stand off from them; which may most appear in this my latest
work, which you, most learned Arbitresses, have seen, judged, and to
my crown, approved; wherein I have laboured for their instruction and
amendment, to reduce not only the ancient forms, but manners of the
scene, the easiness, the propriety, the innocence, and last, the
doctrine, which is the principal end of poesie, to inform men in the
best reason of living. And though my catastrophe may, in the strict
rigour of comic law, meet with censure, as turning back to my promise;
I desire the learned and charitable critic, to have so much faith in
me, to think it was done of industry: for, with what ease I could have
varied it nearer his scale (but that I fear to boast my own faculty) I
could here insert. But my special aim being to put the snaffle in their
mouths, that cry out, We never punish vice in our interludes, etc., I
took the more liberty; though not without some lines of example, drawn
even in the ancients themselves, the goings out of whose comedies are
not always joyful, but oft times the bawds, the servants, the rivals,
yea, and the masters are mulcted; and fitly, it being the office of a
comic poet to imitate justice, and instruct to life, as well as purity
of language, or stir up gentle affections; to which I shall take the
occasion elsewhere to speak.
For the present, most reverenced Sisters, as I have cared to be thankful
for your affections past, and here made the understanding acquainted
with some ground of your favours; let me not despair their continuance,
to the maturing of some worthier fruits; wherein, if my muses be true to
me, I shall raise the despised head of poetry again, and stripping her
out of those rotten and base rags wherewith the times have adulterated
her form, restore her to her primitive habit, feature, and majesty,
and render her worthy to be embraced and kist of all the great and
master-spirits of our world. As for the vile and slothful, who never
affected an act worthy of celebration, or are so inward with their own
vicious natures, as they worthily fear her, and think it an high point
of policy to keep her in contempt, with their declamatory and windy
invectives; she shall out of just rage incite her servants (who are
genus irritabile) to spout ink in their faces, that shall eat farther
than their marrow into their fames; and not Cinnamus the barber, with
his art, shall be able to take out the brands; but they shall live, and
be read, till the wretches die, as things worst deserving of themselves
in chief, and then of all mankind.
From my House in the Black-Friars,
this 11th day of February, 1607.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
VOLPONE, a Magnifico.
MOSCA, his Parasite.
VOLTORE, an Advocate.
CORBACCIO, an old Gentleman.
CORVINO, a Merchant.
BONARIO, son to Corbaccio.
SIR POLITICK WOULD-BE, a Knight.
PEREGRINE, a Gentleman Traveller.
NANO, a Dwarf.
CASTRONE, an Eunuch.
ANDROGYNO, an Hermaphrodite.
GREGE (or Mob).
COMMANDADORI, Officers of Justice.
MERCATORI, three Merchants.
AVOCATORI, four Magistrates.
NOTARIO, the Register.
LADY WOULD-BE, Sir Politick's Wife.
CELIA, Corvino's Wife.
SERVITORI, Servants, two Waiting-women, etc.
SCENE: VENICE.
THE ARGUMENT.
V olpone, childless, rich, feigns sick, despairs,
O ffers his state to hopes of several heirs,
L ies languishing: his parasite receives
P resents of all, assures, deludes; then weaves
O ther cross plots, which ope themselves, are told.
N ew tricks for safety are sought; they thrive: when bold,
E ach tempts the other again, and all are sold.
PROLOGUE.
Now, luck yet sends us, and a little wit
Will serve to make our play hit;
(According to the palates of the season)
Here is rhime, not empty of reason.
This we were bid to credit from our poet,
Whose true scope, if you would know it,
In all his poems still hath been this measure,
To mix profit with your pleasure;
And not as some, whose throats their envy failing,
Cry hoarsely, All he writes is railing:
And when his plays come forth, think they can flout them,
With saying, he was a year about them.
To this there needs no lie, but this his creature,
Which was two months since no feature;
And though he dares give them five lives to mend it,
'Tis known, five weeks fully penn'd it,
From his own hand, without a co-adjutor,
Novice, journey-man, or tutor.
Yet thus much I can give you as a token
Of his play's worth, no eggs are broken,
Nor quaking custards with fierce teeth affrighted,
Wherewith your rout are so delighted;
Nor hales he in a gull old ends reciting,
To stop gaps in his loose writing;
With such a deal of monstrous and forced action,
As might make Bethlem a faction:
Nor made he his play for jests stolen from each table,
But makes jests to fit his fable;
And so presents quick comedy refined,
As best critics have designed;
The laws of time, place, persons he observeth,
From no needful rule he swerveth.
All gall and copperas from his ink he draineth,
Only a little salt remaineth,
Wherewith he'll rub your cheeks, till red, with laughter,
They shall look fresh a week after.
ACT 1. SCENE 1.1.
A ROOM IN VOLPONE'S HOUSE.
ENTER VOLPONE AND MOSCA.
VOLP: Good morning to the day; and next, my gold:
Open the shrine, that I may see my Saint.
[MOSCA WITHDRAWS THE CURTAIN, AND DISCOVERS PILES OF GOLD,
PLATE, JEWELS, ETC.]
Hail the world's soul, and mine! more glad than is
The teeming earth to see the long'd-for sun
Peep through the horns of the celestial Ram,
Am I, to view thy splendour darkening his;
That lying here, amongst my other hoards,
Shew'st like a flame by night; or like the day
Struck out of chaos, when all darkness fled
Unto the centre. O thou son of Sol,
But brighter than thy father, let me kiss,
With adoration, thee, and every relick
Of sacred treasure, in this blessed room.
Well did wise poets, by thy glorious name,
Title that age which they would have the best;
Thou being the best of things: and far transcending
All style of joy, in children, parents, friends,
Or any other waking dream on earth:
Thy looks when they to Venus did ascribe,
They should have given her twenty thousand Cupids;
Such are thy beauties and our loves! Dear saint,
Riches, the dumb God, that giv'st all men tongues;
That canst do nought, and yet mak'st men do all things;
The price of souls; even hell, with thee to boot,
Is made worth heaven. Thou art virtue, fame,
Honour, and all things else. Who can get thee,
He shall be noble, valiant, honest, wise,--
MOS: And what he will, sir. Riches are in fortune
A greater good than wisdom is in nature.
VOLP: True, my beloved Mosca. Yet I glory
More in the cunning purchase of my wealth,
Than in the glad possession; since I gain
No common way; I use no trade, no venture;
I wound no earth with plough-shares; fat no beasts,
To feed the shambles; have no mills for iron,
Oil, corn, or men, to grind them into powder:
I blow no subtle glass; expose no ships
To threat'nings of the furrow-faced sea;
I turn no monies in the public bank,
Nor usure private.
MOS: No sir, nor devour
Soft prodigals. You shall have some will swallow
A melting heir as glibly as your Dutch
Will pills of butter, and ne'er purge for it;
Tear forth the fathers of poor families
Out of their beds, and coffin them alive
In some kind clasping prison, where their bones
May be forth-coming, when the flesh is rotten:
But your sweet nature doth abhor these courses;
You lothe the widdow's or the orphan's tears
Should wash your pavements, or their piteous cries
Ring in your roofs, and beat the air for vengeance.
VOLP: Right, Mosca; I do lothe it.
MOS: And besides, sir,
You are not like a thresher that doth stand
With a huge flail, watching a heap of corn,
And, hungry, dares not taste the smallest grain,
But feeds on mallows, and such bitter herbs;
Nor like the merchant, who hath fill'd his vaults
With Romagnia, and rich Candian wines,
Yet drinks the lees of Lombard's vinegar:
You will not lie in straw, whilst moths and worms
Feed on your sumptuous hangings and soft beds;
You know the use of riches, and dare give now
From that bright heap, to me, your poor observer,
Or to your dwarf, or your hermaphrodite,
Your eunuch, or what other household-trifle
Your pleasure allows maintenance.
VOLP: Hold thee, Mosca,
[GIVES HIM MONEY.]
Take of my hand; thou strik'st on truth in all,
And they are envious term thee parasite.
Call forth my dwarf, my eunuch, and my fool,
And let them make me sport.
[EXIT MOS.]
What should I do,
But cocker up my genius, and live free
To all delights my fortune calls me to?
I have no wife, no parent, child, ally,
To give my substance to; but whom I make
Must be my heir: and this makes men observe me:
This draws new clients daily, to my house,
Women and men of every sex and age,
That bring me presents, send me plate, coin, jewels,
With hope that when I die (which they expect
Each greedy minute) it shall then return
Ten-fold upon them; whilst some, covetous
Above the rest, seek to engross me whole,
And counter-work the one unto the other,
Contend in gifts, as they would seem in love:
All which I suffer, playing with their hopes,
And am content to coin them into profit,
To look upon their kindness, and take more,
And look on that; still bearing them in hand,
Letting the cherry knock against their lips,
And draw it by their mouths, and back again.--
How now!
[RE-ENTER MOSCA WITH NANO, ANDROGYNO, AND CASTRONE.]
NAN: Now, room for fresh gamesters, who do will you to know,
They do bring you neither play, nor university show;
And therefore do entreat you, that whatsoever they rehearse,
May not fare a whit the worse, for the false pace of the verse.
If you wonder at this, you will wonder more ere we pass,
For know, here is inclosed the soul of Pythagoras,
That juggler divine, as hereafter shall follow;
Which soul, fast and loose, sir, came first from Apollo,
And was breath'd into Aethalides; Mercurius his son,
Where it had the gift to remember all that ever was done.
From thence it fled forth, and made quick transmigration
To goldy-lock'd Euphorbus, who was killed in good fashion,
At the siege of old Troy, by the cuckold of Sparta.
Hermotimus was next (I find it in my charta)
To whom it did pass, where no sooner it was missing
But with one Pyrrhus of Delos it learn'd to go a fishing;
And thence did it enter the sophist of Greece.
From Pythagore, she went into a beautiful piece,
Hight Aspasia, the meretrix; and the next toss of her
Was again of a whore, she became a philosopher,
Crates the cynick, as it self doth relate it:
Since kings, knights, and beggars, knaves, lords and fools gat it,
Besides, ox and ass, camel, mule, goat, and brock,
In all which it hath spoke, as in the cobler's cock.
But I come not here to discourse of that matter,
Or his one, two, or three, or his greath oath, BY QUATER!
His musics, his trigon, his golden thigh,
Or his telling how elements shift, but I
Would ask, how of late thou best suffered translation,
And shifted thy coat in these days of reformation.
AND: Like one of the reformed, a fool, as you see,
Counting all old doctrine heresy.
NAN: But not on thine own forbid meats hast thou ventured?
AND: On fish, when first a Carthusian I enter'd.
NAN: Why, then thy dogmatical silence hath left thee?
AND: Of that an obstreperous lawyer bereft me.
NAN: O wonderful change, when sir lawyer forsook thee!
For Pythagore's sake, what body then took thee?
AND: A good dull mule.
NAN: And how! by that means
Thou wert brought to allow of the eating of beans?
AND: Yes.
NAN: But from the mule into whom didst thou pass?
AND: Into a very strange beast, by some writers call'd an ass;
By others, a precise, pure, illuminate brother,
Of those devour flesh, and sometimes one another;
And will drop you forth a libel, or a sanctified lie,
Betwixt every spoonful of a nativity pie.
NAN: Now quit thee, for heaven, of that profane nation;
And gently report thy next transmigration.
AND: To the same that I am.
NAN: A creature of delight,
And, what is more than a fool, an hermaphrodite!
Now, prithee, sweet soul, in all thy variation,
Which body would'st thou choose, to keep up thy station?
AND: Troth, this I am in: even here would I tarry.
NAN: 'Cause here the delight of each sex thou canst vary?
AND: Alas, those pleasures be stale and forsaken;
No, 'tis your fool wherewith I am so taken,
The only one creature that I can call blessed:
For all other forms I have proved most distressed.
NAN: Spoke true, as thou wert in Pythagoras still.
This learned opinion we celebrate will,
Fellow eunuch, as behoves us, with all our wit and art,
To dignify that whereof ourselves are so great and special a part.
VOLP: Now, very, very pretty! Mosca, this
Was thy invention?
MOS: If it please my patron,
Not else.
VOLP: It doth, good Mosca.
MOS: Then it was, sir.
NANO AND CASTRONE [SING.]: Fools, they are the only nation
Worth men's envy, or admiration:
Free from care or sorrow-taking,
Selves and others merry making:
All they speak or do is sterling.
Your fool he is your great man's darling,
And your ladies' sport and pleasure;
Tongue and bauble are his treasure.
E'en his face begetteth laughter,
And he speaks truth free from slaughter;
He's the grace of every feast,
And sometimes the chiefest guest;
Hath his trencher and his stool,
When wit waits upon the fool:
O, who would not be
He, he, he?
[KNOCKING WITHOUT.]
VOLP: Who's that? Away!
[EXEUNT NANO AND CASTRONE.]
Look, Mosca. Fool, begone!
[EXIT ANDROGYNO.]
MOS: 'Tis Signior Voltore, the advocate;
I know him by his knock.
VOLP: Fetch me my gown,
My furs and night-caps; say, my couch is changing,
And let him entertain himself awhile
Without i' the gallery.
[EXIT MOSCA.]
Now, now, my clients
Begin their visitation! Vulture, kite,
Raven, and gorcrow, all my birds of prey,
That think me turning carcase, now they come;
I am not for them yet--
[RE-ENTER MOSCA, WITH THE GOWN, ETC.]
How now! the news?
MOS: A piece of plate, sir.
VOLP: Of what bigness?
MOS: Huge,
Massy, and antique, with your name inscribed,
And arms engraven.
VOLP: Good! and not a fox
Stretch'd on the earth, with fine delusive sleights,
Mocking a gaping crow? ha, Mosca?
MOS: Sharp, sir.
VOLP: Give me my furs.
[PUTS ON HIS SICK DRESS.]
Why dost thou laugh so, man?
MOS: I cannot choose, sir, when I apprehend
What thoughts he has without now, as he walks:
That this might be the last gift he should give;
That this would fetch you; if you died to-day,
And gave him all, what he should be to-morrow;
What large return would come of all his ventures;
How he should worship'd be, and reverenced;
Ride with his furs, and foot-cloths; waited on
By herds of fools, and clients; have clear way
Made for his mule, as letter'd as himself;
Be call'd the great and learned advocate:
And then concludes, there's nought impossible.
VOLP: Yes, to be learned, Mosca.
MOS: O no: rich
Implies it. Hood an ass with reverend purple,
So you can hide his two ambitious ears,
And he shall pass for a cathedral doctor.
VOLP: My caps, my caps, good Mosca. Fetch him in.
MOS: Stay, sir, your ointment for your eyes.
VOLP: That's true;
Dispatch, dispatch: I long to have possession
Of my new present.
MOS: That, and thousands more,
I hope, to see you lord of.
VOLP: Thanks, kind Mosca.
MOS: And that, when I am lost in blended dust,
And hundred such as I am, in succession--
VOLP: Nay, that were too much, Mosca.
MOS: You shall live,
Still, to delude these harpies.
VOLP: Loving Mosca!
'Tis well: my pillow now, and let him enter.
[EXIT MOSCA.]
Now, my fain'd cough, my pthisic, and my gout,
My apoplexy, palsy, and catarrhs,
Help, with your forced functions, this my posture,
Wherein, this three year, I have milk'd their hopes.
He comes; I hear him--Uh! [COUGHING.] uh! uh! uh! O--
[RE-ENTER MOSCA, INTRODUCING VOLTORE, WITH A PIECE OF PLATE.]
MOS: You still are what you were, sir. Only you,
Of all the rest, are he commands his love,
And you do wisely to preserve it thus,
With early visitation, and kind notes
Of your good meaning to him, which, I know,
Cannot but come most grateful. Patron! sir!
Here's signior Voltore is come--
VOLP [FAINTLY.]: What say you?
MOS: Sir, signior Voltore is come this morning
To visit you.
VOLP: I thank him.
MOS: And hath brought
A piece of antique plate, bought of St Mark,
With which he here presents you.
VOLP: He is welcome.
Pray him to come more often.
MOS: Yes.
VOLT: What says he?
MOS: He thanks you, and desires you see him often.
VOLP: Mosca.
MOS: My patron!
VOLP: Bring him near, where is he?
I long to feel his hand.
MOS: The plate is here, sir.
VOLT: How fare you, sir?
VOLP: I thank you, signior Voltore;
Where is the plate? mine eyes are bad.
VOLT [PUTTING IT INTO HIS HANDS.]: I'm sorry,
To see you still thus weak.
MOS [ASIDE.]: That he's not weaker.
VOLP: You are too munificent.
VOLT: No sir; would to heaven,
I could as well give health to you, as that plate!
VOLP: You give, sir, what you can: I thank you. Your love
Hath taste in this, and shall not be unanswer'd:
I pray you see me often.
VOLT: Yes, I shall sir.
VOLP: Be not far from me.
MOS: Do you observe that, sir?
VOLP: Hearken unto me still; it will concern you.
MOS: You are a happy man, sir; know your good.
VOLP: I cannot now last long--
MOS: You are his heir, sir.
VOLT: Am I?
VOLP: I feel me going; Uh! uh! uh! uh!
I'm sailing to my port, Uh! uh! uh! uh!
And I am glad I am so near my haven.
MOS: Alas, kind gentleman! Well, we must all go--
VOLT: But, Mosca--
MOS: Age will conquer.
VOLT: 'Pray thee hear me:
Am I inscribed his heir for certain?
MOS: Are you!
I do beseech you, sir, you will vouchsafe
To write me in your family. All my hopes
Depend upon your worship: I am lost,
Except the rising sun do shine on me.
VOLT: It shall both shine, and warm thee, Mosca.
MOS: Sir,
I am a man, that hath not done your love
All the worst offices: here I wear your keys,
See all your coffers and your caskets lock'd,
Keep the poor inventory of your jewels,
Your plate and monies; am your steward, sir.
Husband your goods here.
VOLT: But am I sole heir?
MOS: Without a partner, sir; confirm'd this morning:
The wax is warm yet, and the ink scarce dry
Upon the parchment.
VOLT: Happy, happy, me!
By what good chance, sweet Mosca?
MOS: Your desert, sir;
I know no second cause.
VOLT: Thy modesty
Is not to know it; well, we shall requite it.
MOS: He ever liked your course sir; that first took him.
I oft have heard him say, how he admired
Men of your large profession, that could speak
To every cause, and things mere contraries,
Till they were hoarse again, yet all be law;
That, with most quick agility, could turn,
And [re-] return; [could] make knots, and undo them;
Give forked counsel; take provoking gold
On either hand, and put it up: these men,
He knew, would thrive with their humility.
And, for his part, he thought he should be blest
To have his heir of such a suffering spirit,
So wise, so grave, of so perplex'd a tongue,
And loud withal, that would not wag, nor scarce
Lie still, without a fee; when every word
Your worship but lets fall, is a chequin!--
[LOUD KNOCKING WITHOUT.]
Who's that? one knocks; I would not have you seen, sir.
And yet--pretend you came, and went in haste:
I'll fashion an excuse.--and, gentle sir,
When you do come to swim in golden lard,
Up to the arms in honey, that your chin
Is born up stiff, with fatness of the flood,
Think on your vassal; but remember me:
I have not been your worst of clients.
VOLT: Mosca!--
MOS: When will you have your inventory brought, sir?
Or see a coppy of the will?--Anon!--
I will bring them to you, sir. Away, be gone,
Put business in your face.
[EXIT VOLTORE.]
VOLP [SPRINGING UP.]: Excellent Mosca!
Come hither, let me kiss thee.
MOS: Keep you still, sir.
Here is Corbaccio.
VOLP: Set the plate away:
The vulture's gone, and the old raven's come!
MOS: Betake you to your silence, and your sleep:
Stand there and multiply.
[PUTTING THE PLATE TO THE REST.]
Now, shall we see
A wretch who is indeed more impotent
Than this can feign to be; yet hopes to hop
Over his grave.--
[ENTER CORBACCIO.]
Signior Corbaccio!
You're very welcome, sir.
CORB: How does your patron?
MOS: Troth, as he did, sir; no amends.
CORB: What! mends he?
MOS: No, sir: he's rather worse.
CORB: That's well. Where is he?
MOS: Upon his couch sir, newly fall'n asleep.
CORB: Does he sleep well?
MOS: No wink, sir, all this night.
Nor yesterday; but slumbers.
CORB: Good! he should take
Some counsel of physicians: I have brought him
An opiate here, from mine own doctor.
MOS: He will not hear of drugs.
CORB: Why? I myself
Stood by while it was made; saw all the ingredients:
And know, it cannot but most gently work:
My life for his, 'tis but to make him sleep.
VOLP [ASIDE.]: Ay, his last sleep, if he would take it.
MOS: Sir,
He has no faith in physic.
CORB: 'Say you? 'say you?
MOS: He has no faith in physic: he does think
Most of your doctors are the greater danger,
And worse disease, to escape. I often have
Heard him protest, that your physician
Should never be his heir.
CORB: Not I his heir?
MOS: Not your physician, sir.
CORB: O, no, no, no,
I do not mean it.
MOS: No, sir, nor their fees
He cannot brook: he says, they flay a man,
Before they kill him.
CORB: Right, I do conceive you.
MOS: And then they do it by experiment;
For which the law not only doth absolve them,
But gives them great reward: and he is loth
To hire his death, so.
CORB: It is true, they kill,
With as much license as a judge.
MOS: Nay, more;
For he but kills, sir, where the law condemns,
And these can kill him too.
CORB: Ay, or me;
Or any man. How does his apoplex?
Is that strong on him still?
MOS: Most violent.
His speech is broken, and his eyes are set,
His face drawn longer than 'twas wont--
CORB: How! how!
Stronger then he was wont?
MOS: No, sir: his face
Drawn longer than 'twas wont.
CORB: O, good!
MOS: His mouth
Is ever gaping, and his eyelids hang.
CORB: Good.
MOS: A freezing numbness stiffens all his joints,
And makes the colour of his flesh like lead.
CORB: 'Tis good.
MOS: His pulse beats slow, and dull.
CORB: Good symptoms, still.
MOS: And from his brain--
CORB: I conceive you; good.
MOS: Flows a cold sweat, with a continual rheum,
Forth the resolved corners of his eyes.
CORB: Is't possible? yet I am better, ha!
How does he, with the swimming of his head?
B: O, sir, 'tis past the scotomy; he now
Hath lost his feeling, and hath left to snort:
You hardly can perceive him, that he breathes.
CORB: Excellent, excellent! sure I shall outlast him:
This makes me young again, a score of years.
MOS: I was a coming for you, sir.
CORB: Has he made his will?
What has he given me?
MOS: No, sir.
CORB: Nothing! ha?
MOS: He has not made his will, sir.
CORB: Oh, oh, oh!
But what did Voltore, the Lawyer, here?
MOS: He smelt a carcase, sir, when he but heard
My master was about his testament;
As I did urge him to it for your good--
CORB: He came unto him, did he? I thought so.
MOS: Yes, and presented him this piece of plate.
CORB: To be his heir?
MOS: I do not know, sir.
CORB: True:
I know it too.
MOS [ASIDE.]: By your own scale, sir.
CORB: Well,
I shall prevent him, yet. See, Mosca, look,
Here, I have brought a bag of bright chequines,
Will quite weigh down his plate.
MOS [TAKING THE BAG.]: Yea, marry, sir.
This is true physic, this your sacred medicine,
No talk of opiates, to this great elixir!
CORB: 'Tis aurum palpabile, if not potabile.
MOS: It shall be minister'd to him, in his bowl.
CORB: Ay, do, do, do.
MOS: Most blessed cordial!
This will recover him.
CORB: Yes, do, do, do.
MOS: I think it were not best, sir.
CORB: What?
MOS: To recover him.
CORB: O, no, no, no; by no means.
MOS: Why, sir, this
Will work some strange effect, if he but feel it.
CORB: 'Tis true, therefore forbear; I'll take my venture:
Give me it again.
MOS: At no hand; pardon me:
You shall not do yourself that wrong, sir. I
Will so advise you, you shall have it all.
CORB: How?
MOS: All, sir; 'tis your right, your own; no man
Can claim a part: 'tis yours, without a rival,
Decreed by destiny.
CORB: How, how, good Mosca?
MOS: I'll tell you sir. This fit he shall recover.
CORB: I do conceive you.
MOS: And, on first advantage
Of his gain'd sense, will I re-importune him
Unto the making of his testament:
And shew him this.
[POINTING TO THE MONEY.]
CORB: Good, good.
MOS: 'Tis better yet,
If you will hear, sir.
CORB: Yes, with all my heart.
MOS: Now, would I counsel you, make home with speed;
There, frame a will; whereto you shall inscribe
My master your sole heir.
CORB: And disinherit
My son!
MOS: O, sir, the better: for that colour
Shall make it much more taking.
CORB: O, but colour?
MOS: This will sir, you shall send it unto me.
Now, when I come to inforce, as I will do,
Your cares, your watchings, and your many prayers,
Your more than many gifts, your this day's present,
And last, produce your will; where, without thought,
Or least regard, unto your proper issue,
A son so brave, and highly meriting,
The stream of your diverted love hath thrown you
Upon my master, and made him your heir:
He cannot be so stupid, or stone-dead,
But out of conscience, and mere gratitude--
CORB: He must pronounce me his?
MOS: 'Tis true.
CORB: This plot
Did I think on before.
MOS: I do believe it.
CORB: Do you not believe it?
MOS: Yes, sir.
CORB: Mine own project.
MOS: Which, when he hath done, sir.
CORB: Publish'd me his heir?
MOS: And you so certain to survive him--
CORB: Ay.
MOS: Being so lusty a man--
CORB: 'Tis true.
MOS: Yes, sir--
CORB: I thought on that too. See, how he should be
The very organ to express my thoughts!
MOS: You have not only done yourself a good--
CORB: But multiplied it on my son.
MOS: 'Tis right, sir.
CORB: Still, my invention.
MOS: 'Las, sir! heaven knows,
It hath been all my study, all my care,
(I e'en grow gray withal,) how to work things--
CORB: I do conceive, sweet Mosca.
MOS: You are he,
For whom I labour here.
CORB: Ay, do, do, do:
I'll straight about it.
[GOING.]
MOS: Rook go with you, raven!
CORB: I know thee honest.
MOS [ASIDE.]: You do lie, sir!
CORB: And--
MOS: Your knowledge is no better than your ears, sir.
CORB: I do not doubt, to be a father to thee.
MOS: Nor I to gull my brother of his blessing.
CORB: I may have my youth restored to me, why not?
MOS: Your worship is a precious ass!
CORB: What say'st thou?
MOS: I do desire your worship to make haste, sir.
CORB: 'Tis done, 'tis done, I go.
[EXIT.]
VOLP [LEAPING FROM HIS COUCH.]: O, I shall burst!
Let out my sides, let out my sides--
MOS: Contain
Your flux of laughter, sir: you know this hope
Is such a bait, it covers any hook.
VOLP: O, but thy working, and thy placing it!
I cannot hold; good rascal, let me kiss thee:
I never knew thee in so rare a humour.
MOS: Alas sir, I but do as I am taught;
Follow your grave instructions; give them words;
Pour oil into their ears, and send them hence.
VOLP: 'Tis true, 'tis true. What a rare punishment
Is avarice to itself!
MOS: Ay, with our help, sir.
VOLP: So many cares, so many maladies,
So many fears attending on old age,
Yea, death so often call'd on, as no wish
Can be more frequent with them, their limbs faint,
Their senses dull, their seeing, hearing, going,
All dead before them; yea, their very teeth,
Their instruments of eating, failing them:
Yet this is reckon'd life! nay, here was one;
Is now gone home, that wishes to live longer!
Feels not his gout, nor palsy; feigns himself
Younger by scores of years, flatters his age
With confident belying it, hopes he may,
With charms, like Aeson, have his youth restored:
And with these thoughts so battens, as if fate
Would be as easily cheated on, as he,
And all turns air!
[KNOCKING WITHIN.]
Who's that there, now? a third?
MOS: Close, to your couch again; I hear his voice:
It is Corvino, our spruce merchant.
VOLP [LIES DOWN AS BEFORE.]: Dead.
MOS: Another bout, sir, with your eyes.
[ANOINTING THEM.]
--Who's there?
[ENTER CORVINO.]
Signior Corvino! come most wish'd for! O,
How happy were you, if you knew it, now!
CORV: Why? what? wherein?
MOS: The tardy hour is come, sir.
CORV: He is not dead?
MOS: Not dead, sir, but as good;
He knows no man.
CORV: How shall I do then?
MOS: Why, sir?
CORV: I have brought him here a pearl.
MOS: Perhaps he has
So much remembrance left, as to know you, sir:
He still calls on you; nothing but your name
Is in his mouth: Is your pearl orient, sir?
CORV: Venice was never owner of the like.
VOLP [FAINTLY.]: Signior Corvino.
MOS: Hark.
VOLP: Signior Corvino!
MOS: He calls you; step and give it him.--He's here, sir,
And he has brought you a rich pearl.
CORV: How do you, sir?
Tell him, it doubles the twelfth caract.
MOS: Sir,
He cannot understand, his hearing's gone;
And yet it comforts him to see you--
CORV: Say,
I have a diamond for him, too.
MOS: Best shew it, sir;
Put it into his hand; 'tis only there
He apprehends: he has his feeling, yet.
See how he grasps it!
CORV: 'Las, good gentleman!
How pitiful the sight is!
MOS: Tut! forget, sir.
The weeping of an heir should still be laughter
Under a visor.
CORV: Why, am I his heir?
MOS: Sir, I am sworn, I may not shew the will,
Till he be dead; but, here has been Corbaccio,
Here has been Voltore, here were others too,
I cannot number 'em, they were so many;
All gaping here for legacies: but I,
Taking the vantage of his naming you,
"Signior Corvino, Signior Corvino," took
Paper, and pen, and ink, and there I asked him,
Whom he would have his heir? "Corvino." Who
Should be executor? "Corvino." And,
To any question he was silent too,
I still interpreted the nods he made,
Through weakness, for consent: and sent home th' others,
Nothing bequeath'd them, but to cry and curse.
CORV: O, my dear Mosca!
[THEY EMBRACE.]
Does he not perceive us?
MOS: No more than a blind harper. He knows no man,
No face of friend, nor name of any servant,
Who 'twas that fed him last, or gave him drink:
Not those he hath begotten, or brought up,
Can he remember.
CORV: Has he children?
MOS: Bastards,
Some dozen, or more, that he begot on beggars,
Gipsies, and Jews, and black-moors, when he was drunk.
Knew you not that, sir? 'tis the common fable.
The dwarf, the fool, the eunuch, are all his;
He's the true father of his family,
In all, save me:--but he has giv'n them nothing.
CORV: That's well, that's well. Art sure he does not hear us?
MOS: Sure, sir! why, look you, credit your own sense.
[SHOUTS IN VOL.'S EAR.]
The pox approach, and add to your diseases,
If it would send you hence the sooner, sir,
For your incontinence, it hath deserv'd it
Thoroughly, and thoroughly, and the plague to boot!--
You may come near, sir.--Would you would once close
Those filthy eyes of yours, that flow with slime,
Like two frog-pits; and those same hanging cheeks,
Cover'd with hide, instead of skin--Nay help, sir--
That look like frozen dish-clouts, set on end!
CORV [ALOUD.]: Or like an old smoked wall, on which the rain
Ran down in streaks!
MOS: Excellent! sir, speak out:
You may be louder yet: A culverin
Discharged in his ear would hardly bore it.
CORV: His nose is like a common sewer, still running.
MOS: 'Tis good! And what his mouth?
CORV: A very draught.
MOS: O, stop it up--
CORV: By no means.
MOS: 'Pray you, let me.
Faith I could stifle him, rarely with a pillow,
As well as any woman that should keep him.
CORV: Do as you will: but I'll begone.
MOS: Be so:
It is your presence makes him last so long.
CORV: I pray you, use no violence.
MOS: No, sir! why?
Why should you be thus scrupulous, pray you, sir?
CORV: Nay, at your discretion.
MOS: Well, good sir, begone.
CORV: I will not trouble him now, to take my pearl.
MOS: Puh! nor your diamond. What a needless care
Is this afflicts you? Is not all here yours?
Am not I here, whom you have made your creature?
That owe my being to you?
CORV: Grateful Mosca!
Thou art my friend, my fellow, my companion,
My partner, and shalt share in all my fortunes.
MOS: Excepting one.
CORV: What's that?
MOS: Your gallant wife, sir,--
[EXIT CORV.]
Now is he gone: we had no other means
To shoot him hence, but this.
VOLP: My divine Mosca!
Thou hast to-day outgone thyself.
[KNOCKING WITHIN.]
--Who's there?
I will be troubled with no more. Prepare
Me music, dances, banquets, all delights;
The Turk is not more sensual in his pleasures,
Than will Volpone.
[EXIT MOS.]
Let me see; a pearl!
A diamond! plate! chequines! Good morning's purchase,
Why, this is better than rob churches, yet;
Or fat, by eating, once a month, a man.
[RE-ENTER MOSCA.]
Who is't?
MOS: The beauteous lady Would-be, sir.
Wife to the English knight, Sir Politick Would-be,
(This is the style, sir, is directed me,)
Hath sent to know how you have slept to-night,
And if you would be visited?
VOLP: Not now:
Some three hours hence--
MOS: I told the squire so much.
VOLP: When I am high with mirth and wine; then, then:
'Fore heaven, I wonder at the desperate valour
Of the bold English, that they dare let loose
Their wives to all encounters!
MOS: Sir, this knight
Had not his name for nothing, he is politick,
And knows, howe'er his wife affect strange airs,
She hath not yet the face to be dishonest:
But had she signior Corvino's wife's face--
VOLP: Has she so rare a face?
MOS: O, sir, the wonder,
The blazing star of Italy! a wench
Of the first year! a beauty ripe as harvest!
Whose skin is whiter than a swan all over,
Than silver, snow, or lilies! a soft lip,
Would tempt you to eternity of kissing!
And flesh that melteth in the touch to blood!
Bright as your gold, and lovely as your gold!
VOLP: Why had not I known this before?
MOS: Alas, sir,
Myself but yesterday discover'd it.
VOLP: How might I see her?
MOS: O, not possible;
She's kept as warily as is your gold;
Never does come abroad, never takes air,
But at a window. All her looks are sweet,
As the first grapes or cherries, and are watch'd
As near as they are.
VOLP: I must see her.
MOS: Sir,
There is a guard of spies ten thick upon her,
All his whole household; each of which is set
Upon his fellow, and have all their charge,
When he goes out, when he comes in, examined.
VOLP: I will go see her, though but at her window.
MOS: In some disguise, then.
VOLP: That is true; I must
Maintain mine own shape still the same: we'll think.
[EXEUNT.]
ACT 2. SCENE 2.1.
ST. MARK'S PLACE; A RETIRED CORNER BEFORE CORVINO'S HOUSE.
ENTER SIR POLITICK WOULD-BE, AND PEREGRINE.
SIR P: Sir, to a wise man, all the world's his soil:
It is not Italy, nor France, nor Europe,
That must bound me, if my fates call me forth.
Yet, I protest, it is no salt desire
Of seeing countries, shifting a religion,
Nor any disaffection to the state
Where I was bred, and unto which I owe
My dearest plots, hath brought me out; much less,
That idle, antique, stale, gray-headed project
Of knowing men's minds, and manners, with Ulysses!
But a peculiar humour of my wife's
Laid for this height of Venice, to observe,
To quote, to learn the language, and so forth--
I hope you travel, sir, with license?
PER: Yes.
SIR P: I dare the safelier converse--How long, sir,
Since you left England?
PER: Seven weeks.
SIR P: So lately!
You have not been with my lord ambassador?
PER: Not yet, sir.
SIR P: Pray you, what news, sir, vents our climate?
I heard last night a most strange thing reported
By some of my lord's followers, and I long
To hear how 'twill be seconded.
PER: What was't, sir?
SIR P: Marry, sir, of a raven that should build
In a ship royal of the king's.
PER [ASIDE.]: This fellow,
Does he gull me, trow? or is gull'd?
--Your name, sir.
SIR P: My name is Politick Would-be.
PER [ASIDE.]: O, that speaks him.
--A knight, sir?
SIR P: A poor knight, sir.
PER: Your lady
Lies here in Venice, for intelligence
Of tires, and fashions, and behaviour,
Among the courtezans? the fine lady Would-be?
SIR P: Yes, sir; the spider and the bee, ofttimes,
Suck from one flower.
PER: Good Sir Politick,
I cry you mercy; I have heard much of you:
'Tis true, sir, of your raven.
SIR P: On your knowledge?
PER: Yes, and your lion's whelping, in the Tower.
SIR P: Another whelp!
PER: Another, sir.
SIR P: Now heaven!
What prodigies be these? The fires at Berwick!
And the new star! these things concurring, strange,
And full of omen! Saw you those meteors?
PER: I did, sir.
SIR P: Fearful! Pray you, sir, confirm me,
Were there three porpoises seen above the bridge,
As they give out?
PER: Six, and a sturgeon, sir.
SIR P: I am astonish'd.
PER: Nay, sir, be not so;
I'll tell you a greater prodigy than these.
SIR P: What should these things portend?
PER: The very day
(Let me be sure) that I put forth from London,
There was a whale discover'd in the river,
As high as Woolwich, that had waited there,
Few know how many months, for the subversion
Of the Stode fleet.
SIR P: Is't possible? believe it,
'Twas either sent from Spain, or the archdukes:
Spinola's whale, upon my life, my credit!
Will they not leave these projects? Worthy sir,
Some other news.
PER: Faith, Stone the fool is dead;
And they do lack a tavern fool extremely.
SIR P: Is Mass Stone dead?
PER: He's dead sir; why, I hope
You thought him not immortal?
[ASIDE.]
--O, this knight,
Were he well known, would be a precious thing
To fit our English stage: he that should write
But such a fellow, should be thought to feign
Extremely, if not maliciously.
SIR P: Stone dead!
PER: Dead.--Lord! how deeply sir, you apprehend it?
He was no kinsman to you?
SIR P: That I know of.
Well! that same fellow was an unknown fool.
PER: And yet you knew him, it seems?
SIR P: I did so. Sir,
I knew him one of the most dangerous heads
Living within the state, and so I held him.
PER: Indeed, sir?
SIR P: While he lived, in action.
He has received weekly intelligence,
Upon my knowledge, out of the Low Countries,
For all parts of the world, in cabbages;
And those dispensed again to ambassadors,
In oranges, musk-melons, apricocks,
Lemons, pome-citrons, and such-like: sometimes
In Colchester oysters, and your Selsey cockles.
PER: You make me wonder.
SIR P: Sir, upon my knowledge.
Nay, I've observed him, at your public ordinary,
Take his advertisement from a traveller
A conceal'd statesman, in a trencher of meat;
And instantly, before the meal was done,
Convey an answer in a tooth-pick.
PER: Strange!
How could this be, sir?
SIR P: Why, the meat was cut
So like his character, and so laid, as he
Must easily read the cipher.
PER: I have heard,
He could not read, sir.
SIR P: So 'twas given out,
In policy, by those that did employ him:
But he could read, and had your languages,
And to't, as sound a noddle--
PER: I have heard, sir,
That your baboons were spies, and that they were
A kind of subtle nation near to China:
SIR P: Ay, ay, your Mamuluchi. Faith, they had
Their hand in a French plot or two; but they
Were so extremely given to women, as
They made discovery of all: yet I
Had my advices here, on Wednesday last.
From one of their own coat, they were return'd,
Made their relations, as the fashion is,
And now stand fair for fresh employment.
PER: 'Heart!
[ASIDE.]
This sir Pol will be ignorant of nothing.
--It seems, sir, you know all?
SIR P: Not all sir, but
I have some general notions. I do love
To note and to observe: though I live out,
Free from the active torrent, yet I'd mark
The currents and the passages of things,
For mine own private use; and know the ebbs,
And flows of state.
PER: Believe it, sir, I hold
Myself in no small tie unto my fortunes,
For casting me thus luckily upon you,
Whose knowledge, if your bounty equal it,
May do me great assistance, in instruction
For my behaviour, and my bearing, which
Is yet so rude and raw.
SIR P: Why, came you forth
Empty of rules, for travel?
PER: Faith, I had
Some common ones, from out that vulgar grammar,
Which he that cried Italian to me, taught me.
SIR P: Why this it is, that spoils all our brave bloods,
Trusting our hopeful gentry unto pedants,
Fellows of outside, and mere bark. You seem
To be a gentleman, of ingenuous race:--
I not profess it, but my fate hath been
To be, where I have been consulted with,
In this high kind, touching some great men's sons,
Persons of blood, and honour.--
[ENTER MOSCA AND NANO DISGUISED, FOLLOWED BY PERSONS WITH
MATERIALS FOR ERECTING A STAGE.]
PER: Who be these, sir?
MOS: Under that window, there 't must be. The same.
SIR P: Fellows, to mount a bank. Did your instructor
In the dear tongues, never discourse to you
Of the Italian mountebanks?
PER: Yes, sir.
SIR P: Why,
Here shall you see one.
PER: They are quacksalvers;
Fellows, that live by venting oils and drugs.
SIR P: Was that the character he gave you of them?
PER: As I remember.
SIR P: Pity his ignorance.
They are the only knowing men of Europe!
Great general scholars, excellent physicians,
Most admired statesmen, profest favourites,
And cabinet counsellors to the greatest princes;
The only languaged men of all the world!
PER: And, I have heard, they are most lewd impostors;
Made all of terms and shreds; no less beliers
Of great men's favours, than their own vile med'cines;
Which they will utter upon monstrous oaths:
Selling that drug for two-pence, ere they part,
Which they have valued at twelve crowns before.
SIR P: Sir, calumnies are answer'd best with silence.
Yourself shall judge.--Who is it mounts, my friends?
MOS: Scoto of Mantua, sir.
SIR P: Is't he? Nay, then
I'll proudly promise, sir, you shall behold
Another man than has been phant'sied to you.
I wonder yet, that he should mount his bank,
Here in this nook, that has been wont t'appear
In face of the Piazza!--Here, he comes.
[ENTER VOLPONE, DISGUISED AS A MOUNTEBANK DOCTOR, AND
FOLLOWED BY A CROWD OF PEOPLE.]
VOLP [TO NANO.]: Mount zany.
MOB: Follow, follow, follow, follow!
SIR P: See how the people follow him! he's a man
May write ten thousand crowns in bank here. Note,
[VOLPONE MOUNTS THE STAGE.]
Mark but his gesture:--I do use to observe
The state he keeps in getting up.
PER: 'Tis worth it, sir.
VOLP: Most noble gentlemen, and my worthy patrons! It may seem
strange, that I, your Scoto Mantuano, who was ever wont to fix
my bank in face of the public Piazza, near the shelter of the
Portico to the Procuratia, should now, after eight months'
absence from this illustrious city of Venice, humbly retire
myself into an obscure nook of the Piazza.
SIR P: Did not I now object the same?
PER: Peace, sir.
VOLP: Let me tell you: I am not, as your Lombard proverb saith,
cold on my feet; or content to part with my commodities at a
cheaper rate, than I accustomed: look not for it. Nor that the
calumnious reports of that impudent detractor, and shame to our
profession, (Alessandro Buttone, I mean,) who gave out, in
public, I was condemn'd a sforzato to the galleys, for
poisoning the cardinal Bembo's--cook, hath at all attached,
much less dejected me. No, no, worthy gentlemen; to tell you
true, I cannot endure to see the rabble of these ground
ciarlitani, that spread their cloaks on the pavement, as if
they meant to do feats of activity, and then come in lamely,
with their mouldy tales out of Boccacio, like stale Tabarine,
the fabulist: some of them discoursing their travels, and of
their tedious captivity in the Turks' galleys, when, indeed,
were the truth known, they were the Christians' galleys, where
very temperately they eat bread, and drunk water, as a
wholesome penance, enjoined them by their confessors, for base
pilferies.
SIR P: Note but his bearing, and contempt of these.
VOLP: These turdy-facy-nasty-paty-lousy-fartical rogues, with
one poor groat's-worth of unprepared antimony, finely wrapt up
in several scartoccios, are able, very well, to kill their
twenty a week, and play; yet, these meagre, starved spirits,
who have half stopt the organs of their minds with earthy
oppilations, want not their favourers among your shrivell'd
sallad-eating artizans, who are overjoyed that they may have
their half-pe'rth of physic; though it purge them into another
world, it makes no matter.
SIR P: Excellent! have you heard better language, sir?
VOLP: Well, let them go. And, gentlemen, honourable gentlemen,
know, that for this time, our bank, being thus removed from the
clamours of the canaglia, shall be the scene of pleasure and
delight; for I have nothing to sell, little or nothing to sell.
SIR P: I told you, sir, his end.
PER: You did so, sir.
VOLP: I protest, I, and my six servants, are not able to make
of this precious liquor, so fast as it is fetch'd away from my
lodging by gentlemen of your city; strangers of the Terra-firma;
worshipful merchants; ay, and senators too: who, ever since my
arrival, have detained me to their uses, by their splendidous
liberalities. And worthily; for, what avails your rich man to
have his magazines stuft with moscadelli, or of the purest
grape, when his physicians prescribe him, on pain of death,
to drink nothing but water cocted with aniseeds? O health!
health! the blessing of the rich, the riches of the poor! who
can buy thee at too dear a rate, since there is no enjoying
this world without thee? Be not then so sparing of your purses,
honourable gentlemen, as to abridge the natural course of life--
PER: You see his end.
SIR P: Ay, is't not good?
VOLP: For, when a humid flux, or catarrh, by the mutability of
air, falls from your head into an arm or shoulder, or any other
part; take you a ducat, or your chequin of gold, and apply to
the place affected: see what good effect it can work. No, no,
'tis this blessed unguento, this rare extraction, that hath
only power to disperse all malignant humours, that proceed
either of hot, cold, moist, or windy causes--
PER: I would he had put in dry too.
SIR P: 'Pray you, observe.
VOLP: To fortify the most indigest and crude stomach, ay, were
it of one, that, through extreme weakness, vomited blood,
applying only a warm napkin to the place, after the unction
and fricace;--for the vertigine in the head, putting but a drop
into your nostrils, likewise behind the ears; a most sovereign
and approved remedy. The mal caduco, cramps, convulsions,
paralysies, epilepsies, tremor-cordia, retired nerves, ill
vapours of the spleen, stopping of the liver, the stone, the
strangury, hernia ventosa, iliaca passio; stops a disenteria
immediately; easeth the torsion of the small guts: and cures
melancholia hypocondriaca, being taken and applied according to
my printed receipt.
[POINTING TO HIS BILL AND HIS VIAL.]
For, this is the physician, this the medicine; this counsels,
this cures; this gives the direction, this works the effect;
and, in sum, both together may be termed an abstract of the
theorick and practick in the Aesculapian art. 'Twill cost you
eight crowns. And,--Zan Fritada, prithee sing a verse extempore
in honour of it.
SIR P: How do you like him, sir?
PER: Most strangely, I!
SIR P: Is not his language rare?
PER: But alchemy,
I never heard the like: or Broughton's books.
NANO [SINGS.]: Had old Hippocrates, or Galen,
That to their books put med'cines all in,
But known this secret, they had never
(Of which they will be guilty ever)
Been murderers of so much paper,
Or wasted many a hurtless taper;
No Indian drug had e'er been famed,
Tabacco, sassafras not named;
Ne yet, of guacum one small stick, sir,
Nor Raymund Lully's great elixir.
Ne had been known the Danish Gonswart,
Or Paracelsus, with his long-sword.
PER: All this, yet, will not do, eight crowns is high.
VOLP: No more.--Gentlemen, if I had but time to discourse to you
the miraculous effects of this my oil, surnamed Oglio del Scoto;
with the countless catalogue of those I have cured of the
aforesaid, and many more diseases; the pattents and privileges of
all the princes and commonwealths of Christendom; or but the
depositions of those that appeared on my part, before the signiory
of the Sanita and most learned College of Physicians; where I was
authorised, upon notice taken of the admirable virtues of my
medicaments, and mine own excellency in matter of rare and unknown
secrets, not only to disperse them publicly in this famous city,
but in all the territories, that happily joy under the government
of the most pious and magnificent states of Italy. But may some
other gallant fellow say, O, there be divers that make profession
to have as good, and as experimented receipts as yours: indeed,
very many have assayed, like apes, in imitation of that, which is
really and essentially in me, to make of this oil; bestowed great
cost in furnaces, stills, alembecks, continual fires, and
preparation of the ingredients, (as indeed there goes to it six
hundred several simples, besides some quantity of human fat, for
the conglutination, which we buy of the anatomists,) but, when
these practitioners come to the last decoction, blow, blow, puff,
puff, and all flies in fumo: ha, ha, ha! Poor wretches! I rather
pity their folly and indiscretion, than their loss of time and
money; for these may be recovered by industry: but to be a fool
born, is a disease incurable.
For myself, I always from my youth have endeavoured to get the
rarest secrets, and book them, either in exchange, or for money;
I spared nor cost nor labour, where any thing was worthy to be
learned. And gentlemen, honourable gentlemen, I will undertake,
by virtue of chemical art, out of the honourable hat that covers
your head, to extract the four elements; that is to say, the
fire, air, water, and earth, and return you your felt without
burn or stain. For, whilst others have been at the Balloo, I
have been at my book; and am now past the craggy paths of study,
and come to the flowery plains of honour and reputation.
SIR P: I do assure you, sir, that is his aim.
VOLP: But, to our price--
PER: And that withal, sir Pol.
VOLP: You all know, honourable gentlemen, I never valued this
ampulla, or vial, at less than eight crowns, but for this time,
I am content, to be deprived of it for six; six crowns is the
price; and less, in courtesy I know you cannot offer me; take it,
or leave it, howsoever, both it and I am at your service. I ask
you not as the value of the thing, for then I should demand of
you a thousand crowns, so the cardinals Montalto, Fernese, the
great Duke of Tuscany, my gossip, with divers other princes, have
given me; but I despise money. Only to shew my affection to you,
honourable gentlemen, and your illustrious State here, I have
neglected the messages of these princes, mine own offices,
framed my journey hither, only to present you with the fruits of
my travels.--Tune your voices once more to the touch of your
instruments, and give the honourable assembly some delightful
recreation.
PER: What monstrous and most painful circumstance
Is here, to get some three or four gazettes,
Some three-pence in the whole! for that 'twill come to.
NANO [SINGS.]: You that would last long, list to my song,
Make no more coil, but buy of this oil.
Would you be ever fair and young?
Stout of teeth, and strong of tongue?
Tart of palate? quick of ear?
Sharp of sight? of nostril clear?
Moist of hand? and light of foot?
Or, I will come nearer to't,
Would you live free from all diseases?
Do the act your mistress pleases;
Yet fright all aches from your bones?
Here's a med'cine, for the nones.
VOLP: Well, I am in a humour at this time to make a present of
the small quantity my coffer contains; to the rich, in
courtesy, and to the poor for God's sake. Wherefore now mark:
I ask'd you six crowns, and six crowns, at other times, you
have paid me; you shall not give me six crowns, nor five, nor
four, nor three, nor two, nor one; nor half a ducat; no, nor a
moccinigo. Sixpence it will cost you, or six hundred pound--
expect no lower price, for, by the banner of my front, I will
not bate a bagatine, that I will have, only, a pledge of your
loves, to carry something from amongst you, to shew I am not
contemn'd by you. Therefore, now, toss your handkerchiefs,
cheerfully, cheerfully; and be advertised, that the first
heroic spirit that deignes to grace me with a handkerchief, I
will give it a little remembrance of something, beside, shall
please it better, than if I had presented it with a double
pistolet.
PER: Will you be that heroic spark, sir Pol?
[CELIA AT A WINDOW ABOVE, THROWS DOWN HER HANDKERCHIEF.]
O see! the window has prevented you.
VOLP: Lady, I kiss your bounty; and for this timely grace you
have done your poor Scoto of Mantua, I will return you, over and
above my oil, a secret of that high and inestimable nature,
shall make you for ever enamour'd on that minute, wherein your
eye first descended on so mean, yet not altogether to be
despised, an object. Here is a powder conceal'd in this paper,
of which, if I should speak to the worth, nine thousand volumes
were but as one page, that page as a line, that line as a word;
so short is this pilgrimage of man (which some call life) to the
expressing of it. Would I reflect on the price? why, the whole
world is but as an empire, that empire as a province, that
province as a bank, that bank as a private purse to the purchase
of it. I will only tell you; it is the powder that made Venus a
goddess (given her by Apollo,) that kept her perpetually young,
clear'd her wrinkles, firm'd her gums, fill'd her skin, colour'd
her hair; from her deriv'd to Helen, and at the sack of Troy
unfortunately lost: till now, in this our age, it was as happily
recovered, by a studious antiquary, out of some ruins of Asia,
who sent a moiety of it to the court of France, (but much
sophisticated,) wherewith the ladies there, now, colour their
hair. The rest, at this present, remains with me; extracted to a
quintessence: so that, whereever it but touches, in youth it
perpetually preserves, in age restores the complexion; seats your
teeth, did they dance like virginal jacks, firm as a wall; makes
them white as ivory, that were black, as--
[ENTER CORVINO.]
COR: Spight o' the devil, and my shame! come down here;
Come down;--No house but mine to make your scene?
Signior Flaminio, will you down, sir? down?
What, is my wife your Franciscina, sir?
No windows on the whole Piazza, here,
To make your properties, but mine? but mine?
[BEATS AWAY VOLPONE, NANO, ETC.]
Heart! ere to-morrow, I shall be new-christen'd,
And call'd the Pantalone di Besogniosi,
About the town.
PER: What should this mean, sir Pol?
SIR P: Some trick of state, believe it. I will home.
PER: It may be some design on you:
SIR P: I know not.
I'll stand upon my guard.
PER: It is your best, sir.
SIR P: This three weeks, all my advices, all my letters,
They have been intercepted.
PER: Indeed, sir!
Best have a care.
SIR P: Nay, so I will.
PER: This knight,
I may not lose him, for my mirth, till night.
[EXEUNT.]
SCENE 2.2.
A ROOM IN VOLPONE'S HOUSE.
ENTER VOLPONE AND MOSCA.
VOLP: O, I am wounded!
MOS: Where, sir?
VOLP: Not without;
Those blows were nothing: I could bear them ever.
But angry Cupid, bolting from her eyes,
Hath shot himself into me like a flame;
Where, now, he flings about his burning heat,
As in a furnace an ambitious fire,
Whose vent is stopt. The fight is all within me.
I cannot live, except thou help me, Mosca;
My liver melts, and I, without the hope
Of some soft air, from her refreshing breath,
Am but a heap of cinders.
MOS: 'Las, good sir,
Would you had never seen her!
VOLP: Nay, would thou
Had'st never told me of her!
MOS: Sir 'tis true;
I do confess I was unfortunate,
And you unhappy: but I'm bound in conscience,
No less than duty, to effect my best
To your release of torment, and I will, sir.
VOLP: Dear Mosca, shall I hope?
MOS: Sir, more than dear,
I will not bid you to dispair of aught
Within a human compass.
VOLP: O, there spoke
My better angel. Mosca, take my keys,
Gold, plate, and jewels, all's at thy devotion;
Employ them how thou wilt; nay, coin me too:
So thou, in this, but crown my longings, Mosca.
MOS: Use but your patience.
VOLP: So I have.
MOS: I doubt not
To bring success to your desires.
VOLP: Nay, then,
I not repent me of my late disguise.
MOS: If you can horn him, sir, you need not.
VOLP: True:
Besides, I never meant him for my heir.--
Is not the colour of my beard and eyebrows,
To make me known?
MOS: No jot.
VOLP: I did it well.
MOS: So well, would I could follow you in mine,
With half the happiness!
[ASIDE.]
--and yet I would
Escape your Epilogue.
VOLP: But were they gull'd
With a belief that I was Scoto?
MOS: Sir,
Scoto himself could hardly have distinguish'd!
I have not time to flatter you now; we'll part;
And as I prosper, so applaud my art.
[EXEUNT.]
SCENE 2.3.
A ROOM IN CORVINO'S HOUSE.
ENTER CORVINO, WITH HIS SWORD IN HIS HAND, DRAGGING
IN CELIA.
CORV: Death of mine honour, with the city's fool!
A juggling, tooth-drawing, prating mountebank!
And at a public window! where, whilst he,
With his strain'd action, and his dole of faces,
To his drug-lecture draws your itching ears,
A crew of old, unmarried, noted letchers,
Stood leering up like satyrs; and you smile
Most graciously, and fan your favours forth,
To give your hot spectators satisfaction!
What; was your mountebank their call? their whistle?
Or were you enamour'd on his copper rings,
His saffron jewel, with the toad-stone in't,
Or his embroider'd suit, with the cope-stitch,
Made of a herse-cloth? or his old tilt-feather?
Or his starch'd beard? Well; you shall have him, yes!
He shall come home, and minister unto you
The fricace for the mother. Or, let me see,
I think you'd rather mount; would you not mount?
Why, if you'll mount, you may; yes truly, you may:
And so you may be seen, down to the foot.
Get you a cittern, lady Vanity,
And be a dealer with the virtuous man;
Make one: I'll but protest myself a cuckold,
And save your dowry. I'm a Dutchman, I!
For, if you thought me an Italian,
You would be damn'd, ere you did this, you whore!
Thou'dst tremble, to imagine, that the murder
Of father, mother, brother, all thy race,
Should follow, as the subject of my justice.
CEL: Good sir, have pacience.
CORV: What couldst thou propose
Less to thyself, than in this heat of wrath
And stung with my dishonour, I should strike
This steel into thee, with as many stabs,
As thou wert gaz'd upon with goatish eyes?
CEL: Alas, sir, be appeas'd! I could not think
My being at the window should more now
Move your impatience, than at other times.
CORV: No! not to seek and entertain a parley
With a known knave, before a multitude!
You were an actor with your handkerchief;
Which he most sweetly kist in the receipt,
And might, no doubt, return it with a letter,
And point the place where you might meet: your sister's,
Your mother's, or your aunt's might serve the turn.
CEL: Why, dear sir, when do I make these excuses,
Or ever stir abroad, but to the church?
And that so seldom--
CORV: Well, it shall be less;
And thy restraint before was liberty,
To what I now decree: and therefore mark me.
First, I will have this bawdy light damm'd up;
And till't be done, some two or three yards off,
I'll chalk a line: o'er which if thou but chance
To set thy desperate foot; more hell, more horror
More wild remorseless rage shall seize on thee,
Than on a conjurer, that had heedless left
His circle's safety ere his devil was laid.
Then here's a lock which I will hang upon thee;
And, now I think on't, I will keep thee backwards;
Thy lodging shall be backwards; thy walks backwards;
Thy prospect, all be backwards; and no pleasure,
That thou shalt know but backwards: nay, since you force
My honest nature, know, it is your own,
Being too open, makes me use you thus:
Since you will not contain your subtle nostrils
In a sweet room, but they must snuff the air
Of rank and sweaty passengers.
[KNOCKING WITHIN.]
--One knocks.
Away, and be not seen, pain of thy life;
Nor look toward the window: if thou dost--
Nay, stay, hear this--let me not prosper, whore,
But I will make thee an anatomy,
Dissect thee mine own self, and read a lecture
Upon thee to the city, and in public.
Away!
[EXIT CELIA.]
[ENTER SERVANT.]
Who's there?
SERV: 'Tis signior Mosca, sir.
CORV: Let him come in.
[EXIT SERVANT.]
His master's dead: There's yet
Some good to help the bad.--
[ENTER MOSCA.]
My Mosca, welcome!
I guess your news.
MOS: I fear you cannot, sir.
CORV: Is't not his death?
MOS: Rather the contrary.
CORV: Not his recovery?
MOS: Yes, sir,
CORV: I am curs'd,
I am bewitch'd, my crosses meet to vex me.
How? how? how? how?
MOS: Why, sir, with Scoto's oil;
Corbaccio and Voltore brought of it,
Whilst I was busy in an inner room--
CORV: Death! that damn'd mountebank; but for the law
Now, I could kill the rascal: it cannot be,
His oil should have that virtue. Have not I
Known him a common rogue, come fidling in
To the osteria, with a tumbling whore,
And, when he has done all his forced tricks, been glad
Of a poor spoonful of dead wine, with flies in't?
It cannot be. All his ingredients
Are a sheep's gall, a roasted bitch's marrow,
Some few sod earwigs pounded caterpillars,
A little capon's grease, and fasting spittle:
I know them to a dram.
MOS: I know not, sir,
But some on't, there, they pour'd into his ears,
Some in his nostrils, and recover'd him;
Applying but the fricace.
CORV: Pox o' that fricace.
MOS: And since, to seem the more officious
And flatt'ring of his health, there, they have had,
At extreme fees, the college of physicians
Consulting on him, how they might restore him;
Where one would have a cataplasm of spices,
Another a flay'd ape clapp'd to his breast,
A third would have it a dog, a fourth an oil,
With wild cats' skins: at last, they all resolved
That, to preserve him, was no other means,
But some young woman must be straight sought out,
Lusty, and full of juice, to sleep by him;
And to this service, most unhappily,
And most unwillingly, am I now employ'd,
Which here I thought to pre-acquaint you with,
For your advice, since it concerns you most;
Because, I would not do that thing might cross
Your ends, on whom I have my whole dependance, sir:
Yet, if I do it not, they may delate
My slackness to my patron, work me out
Of his opinion; and there all your hopes,
Ventures, or whatsoever, are all frustrate!
I do but tell you, sir. Besides, they are all
Now striving, who shall first present him; therefore--
I could entreat you, briefly conclude somewhat;
Prevent them if you can.
CORV: Death to my hopes,
This is my villainous fortune! Best to hire
Some common courtezan.
MOS: Ay, I thought on that, sir;
But they are all so subtle, full of art--
And age again doting and flexible,
So as--I cannot tell--we may, perchance,
Light on a quean may cheat us all.
CORV: 'Tis true.
MOS: No, no: it must be one that has no tricks, sir,
Some simple thing, a creature made unto it;
Some wench you may command. Have you no kinswoman?
Odso--Think, think, think, think, think, think, think, sir.
One o' the doctors offer'd there his daughter.
CORV: How!
MOS: Yes, signior Lupo, the physician.
CORV: His daughter!
MOS: And a virgin, sir. Why? alas,
He knows the state of's body, what it is;
That nought can warm his blood sir, but a fever;
Nor any incantation raise his spirit:
A long forgetfulness hath seized that part.
Besides sir, who shall know it? some one or two--
CORV: I prithee give me leave.
[WALKS ASIDE.]
If any man
But I had had this luck--The thing in't self,
I know, is nothing--Wherefore should not I
As well command my blood and my affections,
As this dull doctor? In the point of honour,
The cases are all one of wife and daughter.
MOS [ASIDE.]: I hear him coming.
CORV: She shall do't: 'tis done.
Slight! if this doctor, who is not engaged,
Unless 't be for his counsel, which is nothing,
Offer his daughter, what should I, that am
So deeply in? I will prevent him: Wretch!
Covetous wretch!--Mosca, I have determined.
MOS: How, sir?
CORV: We'll make all sure. The party you wot of
Shall be mine own wife, Mosca.
MOS: Sir, the thing,
But that I would not seem to counsel you,
I should have motion'd to you, at the first:
And make your count, you have cut all their throats.
Why! 'tis directly taking a possession!
And in his next fit, we may let him go.
'Tis but to pull the pillow from his head,
And he is throttled: it had been done before,
But for your scrupulous doubts.
CORV: Ay, a plague on't,
My conscience fools my wit! Well, I'll be brief,
And so be thou, lest they should be before us:
Go home, prepare him, tell him with what zeal
And willingness I do it; swear it was
On the first hearing, as thou mayst do, truly,
Mine own free motion.
MOS: Sir, I warrant you,
I'll so possess him with it, that the rest
Of his starv'd clients shall be banish'd all;
And only you received. But come not, sir,
Until I send, for I have something else
To ripen for your good, you must not know't.
CORV: But do not you forget to send now.
MOS: Fear not.
[EXIT.]
CORV: Where are you, wife? my Celia? wife?
[RE-ENTER CELIA.]
--What, blubbering?
Come, dry those tears. I think thou thought'st me in earnest;
Ha! by this light I talk'd so but to try thee:
Methinks the lightness of the occasion
Should have confirm'd thee. Come, I am not jealous.
CEL: No!
CORV: Faith I am not I, nor never was;
It is a poor unprofitable humour.
Do not I know, if women have a will,
They'll do 'gainst all the watches of the world,
And that the feircest spies are tamed with gold?
Tut, I am confident in thee, thou shalt see't;
And see I'll give thee cause too, to believe it.
Come kiss me. Go, and make thee ready, straight,
In all thy best attire, thy choicest jewels,
Put them all on, and, with them, thy best looks:
We are invited to a solemn feast,
At old Volpone's, where it shall appear
How far I am free from jealousy or fear.
[exeunt.]
ACT 3. SCENE 3.1.
A STREET.
ENTER MOSCA.
MOS: I fear, I shall begin to grow in love
With my dear self, and my most prosperous parts,
They do so spring and burgeon; I can feel
A whimsy in my blood: I know not how,
Success hath made me wanton. I could skip
Out of my skin, now, like a subtle snake,
I am so limber. O! your parasite
Is a most precious thing, dropt from above,
Not bred 'mongst clods, and clodpoles, here on earth.
I muse, the mystery was not made a science,
It is so liberally profest! almost
All the wise world is little else, in nature,
But parasites, or sub-parasites.--And yet,
I mean not those that have your bare town-art,
To know who's fit to feed them; have no house,
No family, no care, and therefore mould
Tales for men's ears, to bait that sense; or get
Kitchen-invention, and some stale receipts
To please the belly, and the groin; nor those,
With their court dog-tricks, that can fawn and fleer,
Make their revenue out of legs and faces,
Echo my lord, and lick away a moth:
But your fine elegant rascal, that can rise,
And stoop, almost together, like an arrow;
Shoot through the air as nimbly as a star;
Turn short as doth a swallow; and be here,
And there, and here, and yonder, all at once;
Present to any humour, all occasion;
And change a visor, swifter than a thought!
This is the creature had the art born with him;
Toils not to learn it, but doth practise it
Out of most excellent nature: and such sparks
Are the true parasites, others but their zanis.
[ENTER BONARIO.]
MOS: Who's this? Bonario, old Corbaccio's son?
The person I was bound to seek.--Fair sir,
You are happily met.
BON: That cannot be by thee.
MOS: Why, sir?
BON: Nay, pray thee know thy way, and leave me:
I would be loth to interchange discourse
With such a mate as thou art
MOS: Courteous sir,
Scorn not my poverty.
BON: Not I, by heaven;
But thou shalt give me leave to hate thy baseness.
MOS: Baseness!
BON: Ay; answer me, is not thy sloth
Sufficient argument? thy flattery?
Thy means of feeding?
MOS: Heaven be good to me!
These imputations are too common, sir,
And easily stuck on virtue when she's poor.
You are unequal to me, and however,
Your sentence may be righteous, yet you are not
That, ere you know me, thus proceed in censure:
St. Mark bear witness 'gainst you, 'tis inhuman.
[WEEPS.]
BON [ASIDE.]: What! does he weep? the sign is soft and good;
I do repent me that I was so harsh.
MOS: 'Tis true, that, sway'd by strong necessity,
I am enforced to eat my careful bread
With too much obsequy; 'tis true, beside,
That I am fain to spin mine own poor raiment
Out of my mere observance, being not born
To a free fortune: but that I have done
Base offices, in rending friends asunder,
Dividing families, betraying counsels,
Whispering false lies, or mining men with praises,
Train'd their credulity with perjuries,
Corrupted chastity, or am in love
With mine own tender ease, but would not rather
Prove the most rugged, and laborious course,
That might redeem my present estimation,
Let me here perish, in all hope of goodness.
BON [ASIDE.]: This cannot be a personated passion.--
I was to blame, so to mistake thy nature;
Prithee, forgive me: and speak out thy business.
MOS: Sir, it concerns you; and though I may seem,
At first to make a main offence in manners,
And in my gratitude unto my master;
Yet, for the pure love, which I bear all right,
And hatred of the wrong, I must reveal it.
This very hour your father is in purpose
To disinherit you--
BON: How!
MOS: And thrust you forth,
As a mere stranger to his blood; 'tis true, sir:
The work no way engageth me, but, as
I claim an interest in the general state
Of goodness and true virtue, which I hear
To abound in you: and, for which mere respect,
Without a second aim, sir, I have done it.
BON: This tale hath lost thee much of the late trust
Thou hadst with me; it is impossible:
I know not how to lend it any thought,
My father should be so unnatural.
MOS: It is a confidence that well becomes
Your piety; and form'd, no doubt, it is
From your own simple innocence: which makes
Your wrong more monstrous, and abhorr'd. But, sir,
I now will tell you more. This very minute,
It is, or will be doing; and, if you
Shall be but pleas'd to go with me, I'll bring you,
I dare not say where you shall see, but where
Your ear shall be a witness of the deed;
Hear yourself written bastard; and profest
The common issue of the earth.
BON: I am amazed!
MOS: Sir, if I do it not, draw your just sword,
And score your vengeance on my front and face;
Mark me your villain: you have too much wrong,
And I do suffer for you, sir. My heart
Weeps blood in anguish--
BON: Lead; I follow thee.
[EXEUNT.]
SCENE 3.2.
A ROOM IN VOLPONE'S HOUSE.
ENTER VOLPONE.
VOLP: Mosca stays long, methinks. Bring forth your sports,
And help to make the wretched time more sweet.
[ENTER NANO, ANDROGYNO, AND CASTRONE.]
NAN: Dwarf, fool, and eunuch, well met here we be.
A question it were now, whether of us three,
Being all the known delicates of a rich man,
In pleasing him, claim the precedency can?
CAS: I claim for myself.
AND: And so doth the fool.
NAN: 'Tis foolish indeed: let me set you both to school.
First for your dwarf, he's little and witty,
And every thing, as it is little, is pretty;
Else why do men say to a creature of my shape,
So soon as they see him, It's a pretty little ape?
And why a pretty ape, but for pleasing imitation
Of greater men's actions, in a ridiculous fashion?
Beside, this feat body of mine doth not crave
Half the meat, drink, and cloth, one of your bulks will have.
Admit your fool's face be the mother of laughter,
Yet, for his brain, it must always come after:
And though that do feed him, 'tis a pitiful case,
His body is beholding to such a bad face.
[KNOCKING WITHIN.]
VOLP: Who's there? my couch; away! look! Nano, see:
[EXE. AND. AND CAS.]
Give me my caps, first--go, enquire.
[EXIT NANO.]
--Now, Cupid
Send it be Mosca, and with fair return!
NAN [WITHIN.]: It is the beauteous madam--
VOLP: Would-be?--is it?
NAN: The same.
VOLP: Now torment on me! Squire her in;
For she will enter, or dwell here for ever:
Nay, quickly.
[RETIRES TO HIS COUCH.]
--That my fit were past! I fear
A second hell too, that my lothing this
Will quite expel my appetite to the other:
Would she were taking now her tedious leave.
Lord, how it threats me what I am to suffer!
[RE-ENTER NANO, WITH LADY POLITICK WOULD-BE.]
LADY P: I thank you, good sir. 'Pray you signify
Unto your patron, I am here.--This band
Shews not my neck enough.--I trouble you, sir;
Let me request you, bid one of my women
Come hither to me.--In good faith, I, am drest
Most favorably, to-day! It is no matter:
'Tis well enough.--
[ENTER 1 WAITING-WOMAN.]
Look, see, these petulant things,
How they have done this!
VOLP [ASIDE.]: I do feel the fever
Entering in at mine ears; O, for a charm,
To fright it hence.
LADY P: Come nearer: Is this curl
In his right place, or this? Why is this higher
Then all the rest? You have not wash'd your eyes, yet!
Or do they not stand even in your head?
Where is your fellow? call her.
[EXIT 1 WOMAN.]
NAN: Now, St. Mark
Deliver us! anon, she will beat her women,
Because her nose is red.
[RE-ENTER 1 WITH 2 WOMAN.]
LADY P: I pray you, view
This tire, forsooth; are all things apt, or no?
1 WOM: One hair a little, here, sticks out, forsooth.
LADY P: Does't so, forsooth? and where was your dear sight,
When it did so, forsooth! What now! bird-eyed?
And you too? 'Pray you, both approach and mend it.
Now, by that light, I muse you are not ashamed!
I, that have preach'd these things so oft unto you,
Read you the principles, argued all the grounds,
Disputed every fitness, every grace,
Call'd you to counsel of so frequent dressings--
NAN [ASIDE.]: More carefully than of your fame or honour.
LADY P: Made you acquainted, what an ample dowry
The knowledge of these things would be unto you,
Able, alone, to get you noble husbands
At your return: and you thus to neglect it!
Besides you seeing what a curious nation
The Italians are, what will they say of me?
"The English lady cannot dress herself."
Here's a fine imputation to our country:
Well, go your ways, and stay, in the next room.
This fucus was too course too, it's no matter.--
Good-sir, you will give them entertainment?
[EXEUNT NANO AND WAITING-WOMEN.]
VOLP: The storm comes toward me.
LADY P [GOES TO THE COUCH.]: How does my Volpone?
VOLP: Troubled with noise, I cannot sleep; I dreamt
That a strange fury enter'd, now, my house,
And, with the dreadful tempest of her breath,
Did cleave my roof asunder.
LADY P: Believe me, and I
Had the most fearful dream, could I remember't--
VOLP [ASIDE.]: Out on my fate! I have given her the occasion
How to torment me: she will tell me hers.
LADY P: Me thought, the golden mediocrity,
Polite and delicate--
VOLP: O, if you do love me,
No more; I sweat, and suffer, at the mention
Of any dream: feel, how I tremble yet.
LADY P: Alas, good soul! the passion of the heart.
Seed-pearl were good now, boil'd with syrup of apples,
Tincture of gold, and coral, citron-pills,
Your elicampane root, myrobalanes--
VOLP [ASIDE.]: Ah me, I have ta'en a grass-hopper by the wing!
LADY P: Burnt silk, and amber: you have muscadel
Good in the house--
VOLP: You will not drink, and part?
LADY P: No, fear not that. I doubt, we shall not get
Some English saffron, half a dram would serve;
Your sixteen cloves, a little musk, dried mints,
Bugloss, and barley-meal--
VOLP [ASIDE.]: She's in again!
Before I fain'd diseases, now I have one.
LADY P: And these applied with a right scarlet cloth.
VOLP [ASIDE.]: Another flood of words! a very torrent!
LADY P: Shall I, sir, make you a poultice?
VOLP: No, no, no;
I am very well: you need prescribe no more.
LADY P: I have a little studied physic; but now,
I'm all for music, save, in the forenoons,
An hour or two for painting. I would have
A lady, indeed, to have all, letters, and arts,
Be able to discourse, to write, to paint,
But principal, as Plato holds, your music,
And, so does wise Pythagoras, I take it,
Is your true rapture: when there is concent
In face, in voice, and clothes: and is, indeed,
Our sex's chiefest ornament.
VOLP: The poet
As old in time as Plato, and as knowing,
Says that your highest female grace is silence.
LADY P: Which of your poets? Petrarch, or Tasso, or Dante?
Guarini? Ariosto? Aretine?
Cieco di Hadria? I have read them all.
VOLP [ASIDE.]: Is every thing a cause to my distruction?
LADY P: I think I have two or three of them about me.
VOLP [ASIDE.]: The sun, the sea will sooner both stand still,
Then her eternal tongue; nothing can 'scape it.
LADY P: Here's pastor Fido--
VOLP [ASIDE.]: Profess obstinate silence,
That's now my safest.
LADY P: All our English writers,
I mean such as are happy in the Italian,
Will deign to steal out of this author, mainly:
Almost as much, as from Montagnie;
He has so modern and facile a vein,
Fitting the time, and catching the court-ear!
Your Petrarch is more passionate, yet he,
In days of sonetting, trusted them with much:
Dante is hard, and few can understand him.
But, for a desperate wit, there's Aretine;
Only, his pictures are a little obscene--
You mark me not.
VOLP: Alas, my mind is perturb'd.
LADY P: Why, in such cases, we must cure ourselves,
Make use of our philosophy--
VOLP: Oh me!
LADY P: And as we find our passions do rebel,
Encounter them with reason, or divert them,
By giving scope unto some other humour
Of lesser danger: as, in politic bodies,
There's nothing more doth overwhelm the judgment,
And cloud the understanding, than too much
Settling and fixing, and, as 'twere, subsiding
Upon one object. For the incorporating
Of these same outward things, into that part,
Which we call mental, leaves some certain faeces
That stop the organs, and as Plato says,
Assassinate our Knowledge.
VOLP [ASIDE.]: Now, the spirit
Of patience help me!
LADY P: Come, in faith, I must
Visit you more a days; and make you well:
Laugh and be lusty.
VOLP [ASIDE.]: My good angel save me!
LADY P: There was but one sole man in all the world,
With whom I e'er could sympathise; and he
Would lie you, often, three, four hours together
To hear me speak; and be sometimes so rapt,
As he would answer me quite from the purpose,
Like you, and you are like him, just. I'll discourse,
An't be but only, sir, to bring you asleep,
How we did spend our time and loves together,
For some six years.
VOLP: Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!
LADY P: For we were coaetanei, and brought up--
VOLP: Some power, some fate, some fortune rescue me!
[ENTER MOSCA.]
MOS: God save you, madam!
LADY P: Good sir.
VOLP: Mosca? welcome,
Welcome to my redemption.
MOS: Why, sir?
VOLP: Oh,
Rid me of this my torture, quickly, there;
My madam, with the everlasting voice:
The bells, in time of pestilence, ne'er made
Like noise, or were in that perpetual motion!
The Cock-pit comes not near it. All my house,
But now, steam'd like a bath with her thick breath.
A lawyer could not have been heard; nor scarce
Another woman, such a hail of words
She has let fall. For hell's sake, rid her hence.
MOS: Has she presented?
VOLP: O, I do not care;
I'll take her absence, upon any price,
With any loss.
MOS: Madam--
LADY P: I have brought your patron
A toy, a cap here, of mine own work.
MOS: 'Tis well.
I had forgot to tell you, I saw your knight,
Where you would little think it.--
LADY P: Where?
MOS: Marry,
Where yet, if you make haste, you may apprehend,
Rowing upon the water in a gondole,
With the most cunning courtezan of Venice.
LADY P: Is't true?
MOS: Pursue them, and believe your eyes;
Leave me, to make your gift.
[EXIT LADY P. HASTILY.]
--I knew 'twould take:
For, lightly, they, that use themselves most license,
Are still most jealous.
VOLP: Mosca, hearty thanks,
For thy quick fiction, and delivery of me.
Now to my hopes, what say'st thou?
[RE-ENTER LADY P. WOULD-BE.]
LADY P: But do you hear, sir?--
VOLP: Again! I fear a paroxysm.
LADY P: Which way
Row'd they together?
MOS: Toward the Rialto.
LADY P: I pray you lend me your dwarf.
MOS: I pray you, take him.--
[EXIT LADY P.]
Your hopes, sir, are like happy blossoms, fair,
And promise timely fruit, if you will stay
But the maturing; keep you at your couch,
Corbaccio will arrive straight, with the Will;
When he is gone, I'll tell you more.
[EXIT.]
VOLP: My blood,
My spirits are return'd; I am alive:
And like your wanton gamester, at primero,
Whose thought had whisper'd to him, not go less,
Methinks I lie, and draw--for an encounter.
[THE SCENE CLOSES UPON VOLPONE.]
SCENE 3.3
THE PASSAGE LEADING TO VOLPONE'S CHAMBER.
ENTER MOSCA AND BONARIO.
MOS: Sir, here conceal'd,
[SHEWS HIM A CLOSET.]
you may here all. But, pray you,
Have patience, sir;
[KNOCKING WITHIN.]
--the same's your father knocks:
I am compell'd to leave you.
[EXIT.]
BON: Do so.--Yet,
Cannot my thought imagine this a truth.
[GOES INTO THE CLOSET.]
SCENE 3.4.
ANOTHER PART OF THE SAME.
ENTER MOSCA AND CORVINO, CELIA FOLLOWING.
MOS: Death on me! you are come too soon, what meant you?
Did not I say, I would send?
CORV: Yes, but I fear'd
You might forget it, and then they prevent us.
MOS [ASIDE.]: Prevent! did e'er man haste so, for his horns?
A courtier would not ply it so, for a place.
--Well, now there's no helping it, stay here;
I'll presently return.
[EXIT.]
CORV: Where are you, Celia?
You know not wherefore I have brought you hither?
CEL: Not well, except you told me.
CORV: Now, I will:
Hark hither.
[EXEUNT.]
SCENE 3.5.
A CLOSET OPENING INTO A GALLERY.
ENTER MOSCA AND BONARIO.
MOS: Sir, your father hath sent word,
It will be half an hour ere he come;
And therefore, if you please to walk the while
Into that gallery--at the upper end,
There are some books to entertain the time:
And I'll take care no man shall come unto you, sir.
BON: Yes, I will stay there.
[ASIDE.]--I do doubt this fellow.
[EXIT.]
MOS [LOOKING AFTER HIM.]: There; he is far enough;
he can hear nothing:
And, for his father, I can keep him off.
[EXIT.]
SCENE 3.6.
VOLPONE'S CHAMBER.--VOLPONE ON HIS COUCH.
MOSCA SITTING BY HIM.
ENTER CORVINO, FORCING IN CELIA.
CORV: Nay, now, there is no starting back, and therefore,
Resolve upon it: I have so decreed.
It must be done. Nor would I move't, afore,
Because I would avoid all shifts and tricks,
That might deny me.
CEL: Sir, let me beseech you,
Affect not these strange trials; if you doubt
My chastity, why, lock me up for ever:
Make me the heir of darkness. Let me live,
Where I may please your fears, if not your trust.
CORV: Believe it, I have no such humour, I.
All that I speak I mean; yet I'm not mad;
Nor horn-mad, see you? Go to, shew yourself
Obedient, and a wife.
CEL: O heaven!
CORV: I say it,
Do so.
CEL: Was this the train?
CORV: I've told you reasons;
What the physicians have set down; how much
It may concern me; what my engagements are;
My means; and the necessity of those means,
For my recovery: wherefore, if you be
Loyal, and mine, be won, respect my venture.
CEL: Before your honour?
CORV: Honour! tut, a breath:
There's no such thing, in nature: a mere term
Invented to awe fools. What is my gold
The worse, for touching, clothes for being look'd on?
Why, this is no more. An old decrepit wretch,
That has no sense, no sinew; takes his meat
With others' fingers; only knows to gape,
When you do scald his gums; a voice; a shadow;
And, what can this man hurt you?
CEL [ASIDE.]: Lord! what spirit
Is this hath enter'd him?
CORV: And for your fame,
That's such a jig; as if I would go tell it,
Cry it on the Piazza! who shall know it,
But he that cannot speak it, and this fellow,
Whose lips are in my pocket? save yourself,
(If you'll proclaim't, you may,) I know no other,
Shall come to know it.
CEL: Are heaven and saints then nothing?
Will they be blind or stupid?
CORV: How!
CEL: Good sir,
Be jealous still, emulate them; and think
What hate they burn with toward every sin.
CORV: I grant you: if I thought it were a sin,
I would not urge you. Should I offer this
To some young Frenchman, or hot Tuscan blood
That had read Aretine, conn'd all his prints,
Knew every quirk within lust's labyrinth,
And were professed critic in lechery;
And I would look upon him, and applaud him,
This were a sin: but here, 'tis contrary,
A pious work, mere charity for physic,
And honest polity, to assure mine own.
CEL: O heaven! canst thou suffer such a change?
VOLP: Thou art mine honour, Mosca, and my pride,
My joy, my tickling, my delight! Go bring them.
MOS [ADVANCING.]: Please you draw near, sir.
CORV: Come on, what--
You will not be rebellious? by that light--
MOS: Sir,
Signior Corvino, here, is come to see you.
VOLP: Oh!
MOS: And hearing of the consultation had,
So lately, for your health, is come to offer,
Or rather, sir, to prostitute--
CORV: Thanks, sweet Mosca.
MOS: Freely, unask'd, or unintreated--
CORV: Well.
MOS: As the true fervent instance of his love,
His own most fair and proper wife; the beauty,
Only of price in Venice--
CORV: 'Tis well urged.
MOS: To be your comfortress, and to preserve you.
VOLP: Alas, I am past, already! Pray you, thank him
For his good care and promptness; but for that,
'Tis a vain labour e'en to fight 'gainst heaven;
Applying fire to stone--
[COUGHING.] uh, uh, uh, uh!
Making a dead leaf grow again. I take
His wishes gently, though; and you may tell him,
What I have done for him: marry, my state is hopeless.
Will him to pray for me; and to use his fortune
With reverence, when he comes to't.
MOS: Do you hear, sir?
Go to him with your wife.
CORV: Heart of my father!
Wilt thou persist thus? come, I pray thee, come.
Thou seest 'tis nothing, Celia. By this hand,
I shall grow violent. Come, do't, I say.
CEL: Sir, kill me, rather: I will take down poison,
Eat burning coals, do any thing.--
CORV: Be damn'd!
Heart, I'll drag thee hence, home, by the hair;
Cry thee a strumpet through the streets; rip up
Thy mouth unto thine ears; and slit thy nose,
Like a raw rotchet!--Do not tempt me; come,
Yield, I am loth--Death! I will buy some slave
Whom I will kill, and bind thee to him, alive;
And at my window hang you forth: devising
Some monstrous crime, which I, in capital letters,
Will eat into thy flesh with aquafortis,
And burning corsives, on this stubborn breast.
Now, by the blood thou hast incensed, I'll do it!
CEL: Sir, what you please, you may, I am your martyr.
CORV: Be not thus obstinate, I have not deserved it:
Think who it is intreats you. 'Prithee, sweet;--
Good faith, thou shalt have jewels, gowns, attires,
What thou wilt think, and ask. Do but go kiss him.
Or touch him, but, for my sake.--At my suit.--
This once.--No! not! I shall remember this.
Will you disgrace me thus? Do you thirst my undoing?
MOS: Nay, gentle lady, be advised.
CORV: No, no.
She has watch'd her time. Ods precious, this is scurvy,
'Tis very scurvy: and you are--
MOS: Nay, good, sir.
CORV: An arrant Locust, by heaven, a locust!
Whore, crocodile, that hast thy tears prepared,
Expecting how thou'lt bid them flow--
MOS: Nay, 'Pray you, sir!
She will consider.
CEL: Would my life would serve
To satisfy--
CORV: S'death! if she would but speak to him,
And save my reputation, it were somewhat;
But spightfully to affect my utter ruin!
MOS: Ay, now you have put your fortune in her hands.
Why i'faith, it is her modesty, I must quit her.
If you were absent, she would be more coming;
I know it: and dare undertake for her.
What woman can before her husband? 'pray you,
Let us depart, and leave her here.
CORV: Sweet Celia,
Thou may'st redeem all, yet; I'll say no more:
If not, esteem yourself as lost,--Nay, stay there.
[SHUTS THE DOOR, AND EXIT WITH MOSCA.]
CEL: O God, and his good angels! whither, whither,
Is shame fled human breasts? that with such ease,
Men dare put off your honours, and their own?
Is that, which ever was a cause of life,
Now placed beneath the basest circumstance,
And modesty an exile made, for money?
VOLP: Ay, in Corvino, and such earth-fed minds,
[LEAPING FROM HIS COUCH.]
That never tasted the true heaven of love.
Assure thee, Celia, he that would sell thee,
Only for hope of gain, and that uncertain,
He would have sold his part of Paradise
For ready money, had he met a cope-man.
Why art thou mazed to see me thus revived?
Rather applaud thy beauty's miracle;
'Tis thy great work: that hath, not now alone,
But sundry times raised me, in several shapes,
And, but this morning, like a mountebank;
To see thee at thy window: ay, before
I would have left my practice, for thy love,
In varying figures, I would have contended
With the blue Proteus, or the horned flood.
Now art thou welcome.
CEL: Sir!
VOLP: Nay, fly me not.
Nor let thy false imagination
That I was bed-rid, make thee think I am so:
Thou shalt not find it. I am, now, as fresh,
As hot, as high, and in as jovial plight,
As when, in that so celebrated scene,
At recitation of our comedy,
For entertainment of the great Valois,
I acted young Antinous; and attracted
The eyes and ears of all the ladies present,
To admire each graceful gesture, note, and footing.
[SINGS.]
Come, my Celia, let us prove,
While we can, the sports of love,
Time will not be ours for ever,
He, at length, our good will sever;
Spend not then his gifts in vain;
Suns, that set, may rise again:
But if once we loose this light,
'Tis with us perpetual night.
Why should we defer our joys?
Fame and rumour are but toys.
Cannot we delude the eyes
Of a few poor household spies?
Or his easier ears beguile,
Thus remooved by our wile?--
'Tis no sin love's fruits to steal:
But the sweet thefts to reveal;
To be taken, to be seen,
These have crimes accounted been.
CEL: Some serene blast me, or dire lightning strike
This my offending face!
VOLP: Why droops my Celia?
Thou hast, in place of a base husband, found
A worthy lover: use thy fortune well,
With secrecy and pleasure. See, behold,
What thou art queen of; not in expectation,
As I feed others: but possess'd, and crown'd.
See, here, a rope of pearl; and each, more orient
Than that the brave Egyptian queen caroused:
Dissolve and drink them. See, a carbuncle,
May put out both the eyes of our St Mark;
A diamond, would have bought Lollia Paulina,
When she came in like star-light, hid with jewels,
That were the spoils of provinces; take these,
And wear, and lose them: yet remains an ear-ring
To purchase them again, and this whole state.
A gem but worth a private patrimony,
Is nothing: we will eat such at a meal.
The heads of parrots, tongues of nightingales,
The brains of peacocks, and of estriches,
Shall be our food: and, could we get the phoenix,
Though nature lost her kind, she were our dish.
CEL: Good sir, these things might move a mind affected
With such delights; but I, whose innocence
Is all I can think wealthy, or worth th' enjoying,
And which, once lost, I have nought to lose beyond it,
Cannot be taken with these sensual baits:
If you have conscience--
VOLP: 'Tis the beggar's virtue,
If thou hast wisdom, hear me, Celia.
Thy baths shall be the juice of July-flowers,
Spirit of roses, and of violets,
The milk of unicorns, and panthers' breath
Gather'd in bags, and mixt with Cretan wines.
Our drink shall be prepared gold and amber;
Which we will take, until my roof whirl round
With the vertigo: and my dwarf shall dance,
My eunuch sing, my fool make up the antic.
Whilst we, in changed shapes, act Ovid's tales,
Thou, like Europa now, and I like Jove,
Then I like Mars, and thou like Erycine:
So, of the rest, till we have quite run through,
And wearied all the fables of the gods.
Then will I have thee in more modern forms,
Attired like some sprightly dame of France,
Brave Tuscan lady, or proud Spanish beauty;
Sometimes, unto the Persian sophy's wife;
Or the grand signior's mistress; and, for change,
To one of our most artful courtezans,
Or some quick Negro, or cold Russian;
And I will meet thee in as many shapes:
Where we may so transfuse our wandering souls,
Out at our lips, and score up sums of pleasures,
[SINGS.]
That the curious shall not know
How to tell them as they flow;
And the envious, when they find
What there number is, be pined.
CEL: If you have ears that will be pierc'd--or eyes
That can be open'd--a heart that may be touch'd--
Or any part that yet sounds man about you--
If you have touch of holy saints--or heaven--
Do me the grace to let me 'scape--if not,
Be bountiful and kill me. You do know,
I am a creature, hither ill betray'd,
By one, whose shame I would forget it were:
If you will deign me neither of these graces,
Yet feed your wrath, sir, rather than your lust,
(It is a vice comes nearer manliness,)
And punish that unhappy crime of nature,
Which you miscall my beauty; flay my face,
Or poison it with ointments, for seducing
Your blood to this rebellion. Rub these hands,
With what may cause an eating leprosy,
E'en to my bones and marrow: any thing,
That may disfavour me, save in my honour--
And I will kneel to you, pray for you, pay down
A thousand hourly vows, sir, for your health;
Report, and think you virtuous--
VOLP: Think me cold,
Frosen and impotent, and so report me?
That I had Nestor's hernia, thou wouldst think.
I do degenerate, and abuse my nation,
To play with opportunity thus long;
I should have done the act, and then have parley'd.
Yield, or I'll force thee.
[SEIZES HER.]
CEL: O! just God!
VOLP: In vain--
BON [RUSHING IN]: Forbear, foul ravisher, libidinous swine!
Free the forced lady, or thou diest, impostor.
But that I'm loth to snatch thy punishment
Out of the hand of justice, thou shouldst, yet,
Be made the timely sacrifice of vengeance,
Before this altar, and this dross, thy idol.--
Lady, let's quit the place, it is the den
Of villany; fear nought, you have a guard:
And he, ere long, shall meet his just reward.
[EXEUNT BON. AND CEL.]
VOLP: Fall on me, roof, and bury me in ruin!
Become my grave, that wert my shelter! O!
I am unmask'd, unspirited, undone,
Betray'd to beggary, to infamy--
[ENTER MOSCA, WOUNDED AND BLEEDING.]
MOS: Where shall I run, most wretched shame of men,
To beat out my unlucky brains?
VOLP: Here, here.
What! dost thou bleed?
MOS: O that his well-driv'n sword
Had been so courteous to have cleft me down
Unto the navel; ere I lived to see
My life, my hopes, my spirits, my patron, all
Thus desperately engaged, by my error!
VOLP: Woe on thy fortune!
MOS: And my follies, sir.
VOLP: Thou hast made me miserable.
MOS: And myself, sir.
Who would have thought he would have harken'd, so?
VOLP: What shall we do?
MOS: I know not; if my heart
Could expiate the mischance, I'd pluck it out.
Will you be pleased to hang me? or cut my throat?
And I'll requite you, sir. Let us die like Romans,
Since we have lived like Grecians.
[KNOCKING WITHIN.]
VOLP: Hark! who's there?
I hear some footing; officers, the saffi,
Come to apprehend us! I do feel the brand
Hissing already at my forehead; now,
Mine ears are boring.
MOS: To your couch, sir, you,
Make that place good, however.
[VOLPONE LIES DOWN, AS BEFORE.]
--Guilty men
Suspect what they deserve still.
[ENTER CORBACCIO.]
Signior Corbaccio!
CORB: Why, how now, Mosca?
MOS: O, undone, amazed, sir.
Your son, I know not by what accident,
Acquainted with your purpose to my patron,
Touching your Will, and making him your heir,
Enter'd our house with violence, his sword drawn
Sought for you, call'd you wretch, unnatural,
Vow'd he would kill you.
CORB: Me!
MOS: Yes, and my patron.
CORB: This act shall disinherit him indeed;
Here is the Will.
MOS: 'Tis well, sir.
CORB: Right and well:
Be you as careful now for me.
[ENTER VOLTORE, BEHIND.]
MOS: My life, sir,
Is not more tender'd; I am only yours.
CORB: How does he? will he die shortly, think'st thou?
MOS: I fear
He'll outlast May.
CORB: To-day?
MOS: No, last out May, sir.
CORB: Could'st thou not give him a dram?
MOS: O, by no means, sir.
CORB: Nay, I'll not bid you.
VOLT [COMING FORWARD.]: This is a knave, I see.
MOS [SEEING VOLTORE.]: How! signior Voltore!
[ASIDE.] did he hear me?
VOLT: Parasite!
MOS: Who's that?--O, sir, most timely welcome--
VOLT: Scarce,
To the discovery of your tricks, I fear.
You are his, ONLY? and mine, also? are you not?
MOS: Who? I, sir?
VOLT: You, sir. What device is this
About a Will?
MOS: A plot for you, sir.
VOLT: Come,
Put not your foists upon me; I shall scent them.
MOS: Did you not hear it?
VOLT: Yes, I hear Corbaccio
Hath made your patron there his heir.
MOS: 'Tis true,
By my device, drawn to it by my plot,
With hope--
VOLT: Your patron should reciprocate?
And you have promised?
MOS: For your good, I did, sir.
Nay, more, I told his son, brought, hid him here,
Where he might hear his father pass the deed:
Being persuaded to it by this thought, sir,
That the unnaturalness, first, of the act,
And then his father's oft disclaiming in him,
(Which I did mean t'help on,) would sure enrage him
To do some violence upon his parent,
On which the law should take sufficient hold,
And you be stated in a double hope:
Truth be my comfort, and my conscience,
My only aim was to dig you a fortune
Out of these two old rotten sepulchres--
VOLT: I cry thee mercy, Mosca.
MOS: Worth your patience,
And your great merit, sir. And see the change!
VOLT: Why, what success?
MOS: Most happless! you must help, sir.
Whilst we expected the old raven, in comes
Corvino's wife, sent hither by her husband--
VOLT: What, with a present?
MOS: No, sir, on visitation;
(I'll tell you how anon;) and staying long,
The youth he grows impatient, rushes forth,
Seizeth the lady, wounds me, makes her swear
(Or he would murder her, that was his vow)
To affirm my patron to have done her rape:
Which how unlike it is, you see! and hence,
With that pretext he's gone, to accuse his father,
Defame my patron, defeat you--
VOLT: Where is her husband?
Let him be sent for straight.
MOS: Sir, I'll go fetch him.
VOLT: Bring him to the Scrutineo.
MOS: Sir, I will.
VOLT: This must be stopt.
MOS: O you do nobly, sir.
Alas, 'twas labor'd all, sir, for your good;
Nor was there want of counsel in the plot:
But fortune can, at any time, o'erthrow
The projects of a hundred learned clerks, sir.
CORB [LISTENING]: What's that?
VOLT: Will't please you, sir, to go along?
[EXIT CORBACCIO, FOLLOWED BY VOLTORE.]
MOS: Patron, go in, and pray for our success.
VOLP [RISING FROM HIS COUCH.]: Need makes devotion:
heaven your labour bless!
[EXEUNT.]
ACT 4. SCENE 4.1.
A STREET.
[ENTER SIR POLITICK WOULD-BE AND PEREGRINE.]
SIR P: I told you, sir, it was a plot: you see
What observation is! You mention'd me,
For some instructions: I will tell you, sir,
(Since we are met here in this height of Venice,)
Some few perticulars I have set down,
Only for this meridian, fit to be known
Of your crude traveller, and they are these.
I will not touch, sir, at your phrase, or clothes,
For they are old.
PER: Sir, I have better.
SIR P: Pardon,
I meant, as they are themes.
PER: O, sir, proceed:
I'll slander you no more of wit, good sir.
SIR P: First, for your garb, it must be grave and serious,
Very reserv'd, and lock'd; not tell a secret
On any terms, not to your father; scarce
A fable, but with caution; make sure choice
Both of your company, and discourse; beware
You never speak a truth--
PER: How!
SIR P: Not to strangers,
For those be they you must converse with, most;
Others I would not know, sir, but at distance,
So as I still might be a saver in them:
You shall have tricks else past upon you hourly.
And then, for your religion, profess none,
But wonder at the diversity, of all:
And, for your part, protest, were there no other
But simply the laws o' the land, you could content you,
Nic. Machiavel, and Monsieur Bodin, both
Were of this mind. Then must you learn the use
And handling of your silver fork at meals;
The metal of your glass; (these are main matters
With your Italian;) and to know the hour
When you must eat your melons, and your figs.
PER: Is that a point of state too?
SIR P: Here it is,
For your Venetian, if he see a man
Preposterous in the least, he has him straight;
He has; he strips him. I'll acquaint you, sir,
I now have lived here, 'tis some fourteen months
Within the first week of my landing here,
All took me for a citizen of Venice:
I knew the forms, so well--
PER [ASIDE.]: And nothing else.
SIR P: I had read Contarene, took me a house,
Dealt with my Jews to furnish it with moveables--
Well, if I could but find one man, one man
To mine own heart, whom I durst trust, I would--
PER: What, what, sir?
SIR P: Make him rich; make him a fortune:
He should not think again. I would command it.
PER: As how?
SIR P: With certain projects that I have;
Which I may not discover.
PER [ASIDE.]: If I had
But one to wager with, I would lay odds now,
He tells me instantly.
SIR P: One is, and that
I care not greatly who knows, to serve the state
Of Venice with red herrings for three years,
And at a certain rate, from Rotterdam,
Where I have correspendence. There's a letter,
Sent me from one of the states, and to that purpose:
He cannot write his name, but that's his mark.
PER: He's a chandler?
SIR P: No, a cheesemonger.
There are some others too with whom I treat
About the same negociation;
And I will undertake it: for, 'tis thus.
I'll do't with ease, I have cast it all: Your hoy
Carries but three men in her, and a boy;
And she shall make me three returns a year:
So, if there come but one of three, I save,
If two, I can defalk:--but this is now,
If my main project fail.
PER: Then you have others?
SIR P: I should be loth to draw the subtle air
Of such a place, without my thousand aims.
I'll not dissemble, sir: where'er I come,
I love to be considerative; and 'tis true,
I have at my free hours thought upon
Some certain goods unto the state of Venice,
Which I do call "my Cautions;" and, sir, which
I mean, in hope of pension, to propound
To the Great Council, then unto the Forty,
So to the Ten. My means are made already--
PER: By whom?
SIR P: Sir, one that, though his place be obscure,
Yet he can sway, and they will hear him. He's
A commandador.
PER: What! a common serjeant?
SIR P: Sir, such as they are, put it in their mouths,
What they should say, sometimes; as well as greater:
I think I have my notes to shew you--
[SEARCHING HIS POCKETS.]
PER: Good sir.
SIR P: But you shall swear unto me, on your gentry,
Not to anticipate--
PER: I, sir!
SIR P: Nor reveal
A circumstance--My paper is not with me.
PER: O, but you can remember, sir.
SIR P: My first is
Concerning tinder-boxes. You must know,
No family is here, without its box.
Now, sir, it being so portable a thing,
Put case, that you or I were ill affected
Unto the state, sir; with it in our pockets,
Might not I go into the Arsenal,
Or you, come out again, and none the wiser?
PER: Except yourself, sir.
SIR P: Go to, then. I therefore
Advertise to the state, how fit it were,
That none but such as were known patriots,
Sound lovers of their country, should be suffer'd
To enjoy them in their houses; and even those
Seal'd at some office, and at such a bigness
As might not lurk in pockets.
PER: Admirable!
SIR P: My next is, how to enquire, and be resolv'd,
By present demonstration, whether a ship,
Newly arrived from Soria, or from
Any suspected part of all the Levant,
Be guilty of the plague: and where they use
To lie out forty, fifty days, sometimes,
About the Lazaretto, for their trial;
I'll save that charge and loss unto the merchant,
And in an hour clear the doubt.
PER: Indeed, sir!
SIR P: Or--I will lose my labour.
PER: 'My faith, that's much.
SIR P: Nay, sir, conceive me. It will cost me in onions,
Some thirty livres--
PER: Which is one pound sterling.
SIR P: Beside my water-works: for this I do, sir.
First, I bring in your ship 'twixt two brick walls;
But those the state shall venture: On the one
I strain me a fair tarpauling, and in that
I stick my onions, cut in halves: the other
Is full of loop-holes, out at which I thrust
The noses of my bellows; and those bellows
I keep, with water-works, in perpetual motion,
Which is the easiest matter of a hundred.
Now, sir, your onion, which doth naturally
Attract the infection, and your bellows blowing
The air upon him, will show, instantly,
By his changed colour, if there be contagion;
Or else remain as fair as at the first.
--Now it is known, 'tis nothing.
PER: You are right, sir.
SIR P: I would I had my note.
PER: 'Faith, so would I:
But you have done well for once, sir.
SIR P: Were I false,
Or would be made so, I could shew you reasons
How I could sell this state now, to the Turk;
Spite of their galleys, or their--
[EXAMINING HIS PAPERS.]
PER: Pray you, sir Pol.
SIR P: I have them not about me.
PER: That I fear'd.
They are there, sir.
SIR P: No. This is my diary,
Wherein I note my actions of the day.
PER: Pray you let's see, sir. What is here?
[READS.]
"Notandum,
A rat had gnawn my spur-leathers; notwithstanding,
I put on new, and did go forth: but first
I threw three beans over the threshold. Item,
I went and bought two tooth-picks, whereof one
I burst immediatly, in a discourse
With a Dutch merchant, 'bout ragion del stato.
From him I went and paid a moccinigo,
For piecing my silk stockings; by the way
I cheapen'd sprats; and at St. Mark's I urined."
'Faith, these are politic notes!
SIR P: Sir, I do slip
No action of my life, but thus I quote it.
PER: Believe me, it is wise!
SIR P: Nay, sir, read forth.
[ENTER, AT A DISTANCE, LADY POLITICK-WOULD BE, NANO,
AND TWO WAITING-WOMEN.]
LADY P: Where should this loose knight be, trow?
sure he's housed.
NAN: Why, then he's fast.
LADY P: Ay, he plays both with me.
I pray you, stay. This heat will do more harm
To my complexion, than his heart is worth;
(I do not care to hinder, but to take him.)
[RUBBING HER CHEEKS.]
How it comes off!
1 WOM: My master's yonder.
LADY P: Where?
1 WOM: With a young gentleman.
LADY P: That same's the party;
In man's apparel! 'Pray you, sir, jog my knight:
I'll be tender to his reputation,
However he demerit.
SIR P [SEEING HER]: My lady!
PER: Where?
SIR P: 'Tis she indeed, sir; you shall know her. She is,
Were she not mine, a lady of that merit,
For fashion and behaviour; and, for beauty
I durst compare--
PER: It seems you are not jealous,
That dare commend her.
SIR P: Nay, and for discourse--
PER: Being your wife, she cannot miss that.
SIR P [INTRODUCING PER.]: Madam,
Here is a gentleman, pray you, use him fairly;
He seems a youth, but he is--
LADY P: None.
SIR P: Yes, one
Has put his face as soon into the world--
LADY P: You mean, as early? but to-day?
SIR P: How's this?
LADY P: Why, in this habit, sir; you apprehend me:--
Well, master Would-be, this doth not become you;
I had thought the odour, sir, of your good name,
Had been more precious to you; that you would not
Have done this dire massacre on your honour;
One of your gravity and rank besides!
But knights, I see, care little for the oath
They make to ladies; chiefly, their own ladies.
SIR P: Now by my spurs, the symbol of my knighthood,--
PER [ASIDE.]: Lord, how his brain is humbled for an oath!
SIR P: I reach you not.
LADY P: Right, sir, your policy
May bear it through, thus.
[TO PER.]
sir, a word with you.
I would be loth to contest publicly
With any gentlewoman, or to seem
Froward, or violent, as the courtier says;
It comes too near rusticity in a lady,
Which I would shun by all means: and however
I may deserve from master Would-be, yet
T'have one fair gentlewoman thus be made
The unkind instrument to wrong another,
And one she knows not, ay, and to persever;
In my poor judgment, is not warranted
From being a solecism in our sex,
If not in manners.
PER: How is this!
SIR P: Sweet madam,
Come nearer to your aim.
LADY P: Marry, and will, sir.
Since you provoke me with your impudence,
And laughter of your light land-syren here,
Your Sporus, your hermaphrodite--
PER: What's here?
Poetic fury, and historic storms?
SIR P: The gentleman, believe it, is of worth,
And of our nation.
LADY P: Ay, your White-friars nation.
Come, I blush for you, master Would-be, I;
And am asham'd you should have no more forehead,
Than thus to be the patron, or St. George,
To a lewd harlot, a base fricatrice,
A female devil, in a male outside.
SIR P: Nay,
And you be such a one, I must bid adieu
To your delights. The case appears too liquid.
[EXIT.]
LADY P: Ay, you may carry't clear, with your state-face!--
But for your carnival concupiscence,
Who here is fled for liberty of conscience,
From furious persecution of the marshal,
Her will I dis'ple.
PER: This is fine, i'faith!
And do you use this often? Is this part
Of your wit's exercise, 'gainst you have occasion?
Madam--
LADY P: Go to, sir.
PER: Do you hear me, lady?
Why, if your knight have set you to beg shirts,
Or to invite me home, you might have done it
A nearer way, by far:
LADY P: This cannot work you
Out of my snare.
PER: Why, am I in it, then?
Indeed your husband told me you were fair,
And so you are; only your nose inclines,
That side that's next the sun, to the queen-apple.
LADY P: This cannot be endur'd by any patience.
[ENTER MOSCA.]
MOS: What is the matter, madam?
LADY P: If the Senate
Right not my quest in this; I'll protest them
To all the world, no aristocracy.
MOS: What is the injury, lady?
LADY P: Why, the callet
You told me of, here I have ta'en disguised.
MOS: Who? this! what means your ladyship? the creature
I mention'd to you is apprehended now,
Before the senate; you shall see her--
LADY P: Where?
MOS: I'll bring you to her. This young gentleman,
I saw him land this morning at the port.
LADY P: Is't possible! how has my judgment wander'd?
Sir, I must, blushing, say to you, I have err'd;
And plead your pardon.
PER: What, more changes yet!
LADY P: I hope you have not the malice to remember
A gentlewoman's passion. If you stay
In Venice here, please you to use me, sir--
MOS: Will you go, madam?
LADY P: 'Pray you, sir, use me. In faith,
The more you see me, the more I shall conceive
You have forgot our quarrel.
[EXEUNT LADY WOULD-BE, MOSCA, NANO, AND WAITING-WOMEN.]
PER: This is rare!
Sir Politick Would-be? no; sir Politick Bawd.
To bring me thus acquainted with his wife!
Well, wise sir Pol, since you have practised thus
Upon my freshman-ship, I'll try your salt-head,
What proof it is against a counter-plot.
[EXIT.]
SCENE 4.2.
THE SCRUTINEO, OR SENATE-HOUSE.
ENTER VOLTORE, CORBACCIO, CORVINO, AND MOSCA.
VOLT: Well, now you know the carriage of the business,
Your constancy is all that is required
Unto the safety of it.
MOS: Is the lie
Safely convey'd amongst us? is that sure?
Knows every man his burden?
CORV: Yes.
MOS: Then shrink not.
CORV: But knows the advocate the truth?
MOS: O, sir,
By no means; I devised a formal tale,
That salv'd your reputation. But be valiant, sir.
CORV: I fear no one but him, that this his pleading
Should make him stand for a co-heir--
MOS: Co-halter!
Hang him; we will but use his tongue, his noise,
As we do croakers here.
CORV: Ay, what shall he do?
MOS: When we have done, you mean?
CORV: Yes.
MOS: Why, we'll think:
Sell him for mummia; he's half dust already.
[TO VOLTORE.]
Do not you smile, to see this buffalo,
How he does sport it with his head?
[ASIDE.]
--I should,
If all were well and past.
[TO CORBACCIO.]
--Sir, only you
Are he that shall enjoy the crop of all,
And these not know for whom they toil.
CORB: Ay, peace.
MOS [TURNING TO CORVINO.]: But you shall eat it.
Much! [ASIDE.]
[TO VOLTORE.]
--Worshipful sir,
Mercury sit upon your thundering tongue,
Or the French Hercules, and make your language
As conquering as his club, to beat along,
As with a tempest, flat, our adversaries;
But much more yours, sir.
VOLT: Here they come, have done.
MOS: I have another witness, if you need, sir,
I can produce.
VOLT: Who is it?
MOS: Sir, I have her.
[ENTER AVOCATORI AND TAKE THEIR SEATS,
BONARIO, CELIA, NOTARIO, COMMANDADORI, SAFFI,
AND OTHER OFFICERS OF JUSTICE.]
1 AVOC: The like of this the senate never heard of.
2 AVOC: 'Twill come most strange to them when we report it.
4 AVOC: The gentlewoman has been ever held
Of unreproved name.
3 AVOC: So has the youth.
4 AVOC: The more unnatural part that of his father.
2 AVOC: More of the husband.
1 AVOC: I not know to give
His act a name, it is so monstrous!
4 AVOC: But the impostor, he's a thing created
To exceed example!
1 AVOC: And all after-times!
2 AVOC: I never heard a true voluptuary
Discribed, but him.
3 AVOC: Appear yet those were cited?
NOT: All, but the old magnifico, Volpone.
1 AVOC: Why is not he here?
MOS: Please your fatherhoods,
Here is his advocate: himself's so weak,
So feeble--
4 AVOC: What are you?
BON: His parasite,
His knave, his pandar--I beseech the court,
He may be forced to come, that your grave eyes
May bear strong witness of his strange impostures.
VOLT: Upon my faith and credit with your virtues,
He is not able to endure the air.
2 AVOC: Bring him, however.
3 AVOC: We will see him.
4 AVOC: Fetch him.
VOLT: Your fatherhoods fit pleasures be obey'd;
[EXEUNT OFFICERS.]
But sure, the sight will rather move your pities,
Than indignation. May it please the court,
In the mean time, he may be heard in me;
I know this place most void of prejudice,
And therefore crave it, since we have no reason
To fear our truth should hurt our cause.
3 AVOC: Speak free.
VOLT: Then know, most honour'd fathers, I must now
Discover to your strangely abused ears,
The most prodigious and most frontless piece
Of solid impudence, and treachery,
That ever vicious nature yet brought forth
To shame the state of Venice. This lewd woman,
That wants no artificial looks or tears
To help the vizor she has now put on,
Hath long been known a close adulteress,
To that lascivious youth there; not suspected,
I say, but known, and taken in the act
With him; and by this man, the easy husband,
Pardon'd: whose timeless bounty makes him now
Stand here, the most unhappy, innocent person,
That ever man's own goodness made accused.
For these not knowing how to owe a gift
Of that dear grace, but with their shame; being placed
So above all powers of their gratitude,
Began to hate the benefit; and, in place
Of thanks, devise to extirpe the memory
Of such an act: wherein I pray your fatherhoods
To observe the malice, yea, the rage of creatures
Discover'd in their evils; and what heart
Such take, even from their crimes:--but that anon
Will more appear.--This gentleman, the father,
Hearing of this foul fact, with many others,
Which daily struck at his too tender ears,
And grieved in nothing more than that he could not
Preserve himself a parent, (his son's ills
Growing to that strange flood,) at last decreed
To disinherit him.
1 AVOC: These be strange turns!
2 AVOC: The young man's fame was ever fair and honest.
VOLT: So much more full of danger is his vice,
That can beguile so under shade of virtue.
But, as I said, my honour'd sires, his father
Having this settled purpose, by what means
To him betray'd, we know not, and this day
Appointed for the deed; that parricide,
I cannot style him better, by confederacy
Preparing this his paramour to be there,
Enter'd Volpone's house, (who was the man,
Your fatherhoods must understand, design'd
For the inheritance,) there sought his father:--
But with what purpose sought he him, my lords?
I tremble to pronounce it, that a son
Unto a father, and to such a father,
Should have so foul, felonious intent!
It was to murder him: when being prevented
By his more happy absence, what then did he?
Not check his wicked thoughts; no, now new deeds,
(Mischief doth ever end where it begins)
An act of horror, fathers! he dragg'd forth
The aged gentleman that had there lain bed-rid
Three years and more, out of his innocent couch,
Naked upon the floor, there left him; wounded
His servant in the face: and, with this strumpet
The stale to his forged practice, who was glad
To be so active,--(I shall here desire
Your fatherhoods to note but my collections,
As most remarkable,--) thought at once to stop
His father's ends; discredit his free choice
In the old gentleman, redeem themselves,
By laying infamy upon this man,
To whom, with blushing, they should owe their lives.
1 AVOC: What proofs have you of this?
BON: Most honoured fathers,
I humbly crave there be no credit given
To this man's mercenary tongue.
2 AVOC: Forbear.
BON: His soul moves in his fee.
3 AVOC: O, sir.
BON: This fellow,
For six sols more, would plead against his Maker.
1 AVOC: You do forget yourself.
VOLT: Nay, nay, grave fathers,
Let him have scope: can any man imagine
That he will spare his accuser, that would not
Have spared his parent?
1 AVOC: Well, produce your proofs.
CEL: I would I could forget I were a creature.
VOLT: Signior Corbaccio.
[CORBACCIO COMES FORWARD.]
1 AVOC: What is he?
VOLT: The father.
2 AVOC: Has he had an oath?
NOT: Yes.
CORB: What must I do now?
NOT: Your testimony's craved.
CORB: Speak to the knave?
I'll have my mouth first stopt with earth; my heart
Abhors his knowledge: I disclaim in him.
1 AVOC: But for what cause?
CORB: The mere portent of nature!
He is an utter stranger to my loins.
BON: Have they made you to this?
CORB: I will not hear thee,
Monster of men, swine, goat, wolf, parricide!
Speak not, thou viper.
BON: Sir, I will sit down,
And rather wish my innocence should suffer,
Then I resist the authority of a father.
VOLT: Signior Corvino!
[CORVINO COMES FORWARD.]
2 AVOC: This is strange.
1 AVOC: Who's this?
NOT: The husband.
4 AVOC: Is he sworn?
NOT: He is.
3 AVOC: Speak, then.
CORV: This woman, please your fatherhoods, is a whore,
Of most hot exercise, more than a partrich,
Upon record--
1 AVOC: No more.
CORV: Neighs like a jennet.
NOT: Preserve the honour of the court.
CORV: I shall,
And modesty of your most reverend ears.
And yet I hope that I may say, these eyes
Have seen her glued unto that piece of cedar,
That fine well-timber'd gallant; and that here
The letters may be read, through the horn,
That make the story perfect.
MOS: Excellent! sir.
CORV [ASIDE TO MOSCA.]: There's no shame in this now, is there?
MOS: None.
CORV: Or if I said, I hoped that she were onward
To her damnation, if there be a hell
Greater than whore and woman; a good catholic
May make the doubt.
3 AVOC: His grief hath made him frantic.
1 AVOC: Remove him hence.
2 AVOC: Look to the woman.
[CELIA SWOONS.]
CORV: Rare!
Prettily feign'd, again!
4 AVOC: Stand from about her.
1 AVOC: Give her the air.
3 AVOC [TO MOSCA.]: What can you say?
MOS: My wound,
May it please your wisdoms, speaks for me, received
In aid of my good patron, when he mist
His sought-for father, when that well-taught dame
Had her cue given her, to cry out, A rape!
BON: O most laid impudence! Fathers--
3 AVOC: Sir, be silent;
You had your hearing free, so must they theirs.
2 AVOC: I do begin to doubt the imposture here.
4 AVOC: This woman has too many moods.
VOLT: Grave fathers,
She is a creature of a most profest
And prostituted lewdness.
CORV: Most impetuous,
Unsatisfied, grave fathers!
VOLT: May her feignings
Not take your wisdoms: but this day she baited
A stranger, a grave knight, with her loose eyes,
And more lascivious kisses. This man saw them
Together on the water in a gondola.
MOS: Here is the lady herself, that saw them too;
Without; who then had in the open streets
Pursued them, but for saving her knight's honour.
1 AVOC: Produce that lady.
2 AVOC: Let her come.
[EXIT MOSCA.]
4 AVOC: These things,
They strike with wonder!
3 AVOC: I am turn'd a stone.
[RE-ENTER MOSCA WITH LADY WOULD-BE.]
MOS: Be resolute, madam.
LADY P: Ay, this same is she.
[POINTING TO CELIA.]
Out, thou chameleon harlot! now thine eyes
Vie tears with the hyaena. Dar'st thou look
Upon my wronged face?--I cry your pardons,
I fear I have forgettingly transgrest
Against the dignity of the court--
2 AVOC: No, madam.
LADY P: And been exorbitant--
2 AVOC: You have not, lady.
4 AVOC: These proofs are strong.
LADY P: Surely, I had no purpose
To scandalise your honours, or my sex's.
3 AVOC: We do believe it.
LADY P: Surely, you may believe it.
2 AVOC: Madam, we do.
LADY P: Indeed, you may; my breeding
Is not so coarse--
1 AVOC: We know it.
LADY P: To offend
With pertinacy--
3 AVOC: Lady--
LADY P: Such a presence!
No surely.
1 AVOC: We well think it.
LADY P: You may think it.
1 AVOC: Let her o'ercome. What witnesses have you
To make good your report?
BON: Our consciences.
CEL: And heaven, that never fails the innocent.
4 AVOC: These are no testimonies.
BON: Not in your courts,
Where multitude, and clamour overcomes.
1 AVOC: Nay, then you do wax insolent.
[RE-ENTER OFFICERS, BEARING VOLPONE ON A COUCH.]
VOLT: Here, here,
The testimony comes, that will convince,
And put to utter dumbness their bold tongues:
See here, grave fathers, here's the ravisher,
The rider on men's wives, the great impostor,
The grand voluptuary! Do you not think
These limbs should affect venery? or these eyes
Covet a concubine? pray you mark these hands;
Are they not fit to stroke a lady's breasts?--
Perhaps he doth dissemble!
BON: So he does.
VOLT: Would you have him tortured?
BON: I would have him proved.
VOLT: Best try him then with goads, or burning irons;
Put him to the strappado: I have heard
The rack hath cured the gout; 'faith, give it him,
And help him of a malady; be courteous.
I'll undertake, before these honour'd fathers,
He shall have yet as many left diseases,
As she has known adulterers, or thou strumpets.--
O, my most equal hearers, if these deeds,
Acts of this bold and most exorbitant strain,
May pass with sufferance; what one citizen
But owes the forfeit of his life, yea, fame,
To him that dares traduce him? which of you
Are safe, my honour'd fathers? I would ask,
With leave of your grave fatherhoods, if their plot
Have any face or colour like to truth?
Or if, unto the dullest nostril here,
It smell not rank, and most abhorred slander?
I crave your care of this good gentleman,
Whose life is much endanger'd by their fable;
And as for them, I will conclude with this,
That vicious persons, when they're hot and flesh'd
In impious acts, their constancy abounds:
Damn'd deeds are done with greatest confidence.
1 AVOC: Take them to custody, and sever them.
2 AVOC: 'Tis pity two such prodigies should live.
1 AVOC: Let the old gentleman be return'd with care;
[EXEUNT OFFICERS WITH VOLPONE.]
I'm sorry our credulity hath wrong'd him.
4 AVOC: These are two creatures!
3 AVOC: I've an earthquake in me.
2 AVOC: Their shame, even in their cradles, fled their faces.
4 AVOC [TO VOLT.]: You have done a worthy service to the state, sir,
In their discovery.
1 AVOC: You shall hear, ere night,
What punishment the court decrees upon them.
[EXEUNT AVOCAT., NOT., AND OFFICERS WITH BONARIO AND CELIA.]
VOLT: We thank your fatherhoods.--How like you it?
MOS: Rare.
I'd have your tongue, sir, tipt with gold for this;
I'd have you be the heir to the whole city;
The earth I'd have want men, ere you want living:
They're bound to erect your statue in St. Mark's.
Signior Corvino, I would have you go
And shew yourself, that you have conquer'd.
CORV: Yes.
MOS: It was much better that you should profess
Yourself a cuckold thus, than that the other
Should have been prov'd.
CORV: Nay, I consider'd that:
Now it is her fault:
MOS: Then it had been yours.
CORV: True; I do doubt this advocate still.
MOS: I'faith,
You need not, I dare ease you of that care.
CORV: I trust thee, Mosca.
[EXIT.]
MOS: As your own soul, sir.
CORB: Mosca!
MOS: Now for your business, sir.
CORB: How! have you business?
MOS: Yes, your's, sir.
CORB: O, none else?
MOS: None else, not I.
CORB: Be careful, then.
MOS: Rest you with both your eyes, sir.
CORB: Dispatch it.
MOS: Instantly.
CORB: And look that all,
Whatever, be put in, jewels, plate, moneys,
Household stuff, bedding, curtains.
MOS: Curtain-rings, sir.
Only the advocate's fee must be deducted.
CORB: I'll pay him now; you'll be too prodigal.
MOS: Sir, I must tender it.
CORB: Two chequines is well?
MOS: No, six, sir.
CORB: 'Tis too much.
MOS: He talk'd a great while;
You must consider that, sir.
CORB: Well, there's three--
MOS: I'll give it him.
CORB: Do so, and there's for thee.
[EXIT.]
MOS [ASIDE.]: Bountiful
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