Volpone and Other Plays (71 page)

20  
OVERDO
: If this grave matron be your mother, sir, stand by her, et digito
compesce labellum
; I may perhaps spring a wife for you anon. Brother Barthol' mew, I am sadly sorry to see you so lightly given, and such a disciple of enormity, with your grave governor Humphrey; but stand you both there, in the middleplace; I will reprehend you in your course. Mistress Grace, let me rescue you out of the hands of the stranger.

WINWIFE
: Pardon me, sir, I am a kinsman of hers.

OVERDO
: Are you so? Of what name, sir?

WINWIFE
: Winwife, sir.

30  
OVERDO
: Master Winwife? I hope you have won no wife of her, sir. If you have, I will examine the possibility of it at fit leisure. Now to my enormities: look upon me, O London! and see me, O Smithfield! the example of justice and mirror of magistrates, the true top of formality and scourge of enormity! Hearken unto my labours and but observe my discoveries, and compare Hercules with me, if thou dar'st, of old; or Columbus, Magellan, or our countryman Drake of later times. Stand forth you weeds of enormity, and spread. (
To
BUSY
) First, Rabbi Busy, thou superlunatical hypocrite. (
To
LANTERN
) Next, thou other

40        extremity, thou profane professor of puppetry, little better than poetry. (
To
THE HORSE-COURSER
and
CUTPURSE
) Then thou strong debaucher and seducer of youth; witness this easy and honest young man. (
Then
CAPTAIN WHIT
and
MISTRESS LITTLEWIT
) Now thou esquire of dames, madams, and twelve-penny ladies. Now my green madam herself, of the price. Let me unmask your ladyship.

[
He removes
MISTRESS LITTLEWIT's
mask
.]

LITTLEWIT
: O my wife, my wife, my wife!

OVERDO
: Is she your wife?
Redde te Harpocratem!

Enter
TROUBLE-ALL
[
with a dripping-pan, followed by
URSULA
and
NIGHTINGALE
].

50  
TROUBLE-ALL
: By your leave, stand by, my masters;
be uncovered
.

URSULA
: O stay him, stay him! Help to cry, Nightingale; my pan, my pan!

OVERDO
: What's the matter?

NIGHTINGALE
: He has stol' n Gammer Urs' la's pan.

TROUBLE-ALL
: Yes, and I fear no man but Justice Overdo.

OVERDO
: Urs' la? Where is she? O the sow of enormity, this! (
To
URSULA
and
NIGHTINGALE
) Welcome, stand you there; you songster, there.

URSULA
: An' please your worship, I am in no fault. A gentleman

60             stripped him in my booth, and borrowed his gown and his hat; and he ran away with my goods, here, for it.

OVERDO
(
To
QUARLOUS
): Then this is the true madman, and you are the enormity!

QUARLOUS
: You are i' the right, I am mad but from the gown outward.

OVERDO
: Stand you there.

QUARLOUS
: Where you please, sir.

MISTRESS OVERDO
[
wakes up and
]
is sick, and her husband is silenced
.

MISTRESS OVERDO
: O lend me a basin, I am sick, I am sick. Where's Master Overdo?
Bridget
, call hither my Adam.

70  
OVERDO
: How?

WHIT
: Dy very own wife, i' fait, worshipful Adam.

MISTRESS OVERDO
: Will not my Adam come at me? Shall I see him no more then?

QUARLOUS
: Sir, why do you not go on with the enormity? Are you oppressed with it? I' ll help you, sir, i' your ear: Your ‘innocent young man', you have ta' en such care of all this day, is a cutpurse, that hath got all your brother Cokes's things, and helped you to your beating and the stocks. If you have a mind

80         to hang him now and show him your magistrate's wit, you may; but I should think it were better recovering the goods, and to save your
estimation
in him. I thank you, sir, for the gift of your ward, Mistress Grace. Look you, here is your hand and seal, by the way. Master Winwife, give you joy, you are Palemon; you are possessed of the gentlewoman, but she must
pay me value, here's warrant for it. And honest madman, there's thy gown and cap again; I thank thee for my wife. (
To
THE WIDOW
.) Nay, I can be mad, sweetheart, when I please, still; never fear me. And careful Numps, where's he? I thank him for my licence.

WASP
: How!

QUARLOUS
: 'Tis true, Numps.     90

WASP
: I' ll be hanged then.

QUARLOUS
: Look i' your box, Numps.

WASP
misseth the licence
.

[
To
OVERDO
] Nay, sir, stand not you fixed here, like a
stake
in Finsbury to be shot at, or the whipping post i' the Fair, but get your wife out o' the air; it will make her worse else. And remember you are but Adam, flesh and blood! You have your frailty; forget your other name of Overdo and invite us all to supper. There you and I will compare our discoveries, and drown the memory of all enormity in your bigg'st bowl at

100   home.

COKES
: How now, Numps, ha' you lost it? I warrant ‘twas when thou wert i' the stocks. Why dost not speak?

WASP
: I will never speak while I live, again, for aught I know.

OVERDO
: Nay, Humphrey, if I be patient, you must be so, too; this pleasant conceited gentleman hath wrought upon my judgement, and prevailed. I pray you take care of your sick friend, Mistress Alice, and my good friends all –

QUARLOUS
: And no enormities.

110  
OVERDO
: I invite you home with me to my house, to supper. I will have none fear to go along, for my intents are
ad correctionem, non ad destmctinem; ad aedificandum, non ad diruendum
. So lead on.

COKES
: Yes, and bring the actors along, we' ll ha' the rest o' the play at home.

[
Exeunt
.]

THE EPILOGUE

Your Majesty hath seen the play, and you

Can best allow it from youi ear and view.

You know the scope of writers, and what store

Of leave is given them, if they take not more,

And turn it into licence. You can tell

If we have used that leave you gave us well;

Or whether we to rage or licence break,

Or be profane, or make profane men speak.

This is your power to judge, great sir, and not

The envy of a few. Which if we have got,

We value less what their dislike can bring,

If it so happy be, t' have pleased the King.

The epistle dedicatory is addressed to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, appropriately (and tactfully) hailed as ‘most
equal
Sisters'. The episde is important in that it states Jonson's high aims in writing comethes. The stand-point is similar to Sir Philip Sidney's (see the Introduction, pp.
12–13
). The address and date are in the quarto.

57.
Sejanus
: The production of
Sejanus
had involved Jonson in charges of Popish sympathies.

89.
Sibi
, etc.: Horace,
Satires
, II, i, 23. There is a fixe translation by Jonson of the line in
Poetaster
, III, v:

In satires, each man (though untouched) complains

As he were hurt; and hates such biting strains.

114.
turning back to my promise
: not fulfilling my undertaking to bring back to the theatre the practice of the ancients. In the matter of the catastrophe, Jonson is here saying,
Volpone
is too harsh.

142.
Cinnamus the barber
: a barber-surgeon is indicated here.

The principal characters' names are derived from animals.
Volpone
is Italian for fox ('an old fox, an old reynard, an old crafty, sly, subtle companion, sneaking lurking wily deceiver' was John Florio's gloss on the word in
A World of Words
in 1598);
Mosca
is Italian for fly ('flesh-fly' in the play),
Voltore
for vulture,
Corbaccio
for raven, and
Corvino
for crow (i.e. carrion crow). The name
Sir Politic Would-be
expresses the character's aspirations, but the familiar form
Sir Pol
makes him a parrot; and J. J. Enck suggests that
Peregrine
, ‘the single sound person in the play', is the peregrine falcon, the pilgrim hawk. Lady Would-be is once referred to in the play as a kite, and once as a she-wolf. Mosca also talks of a physician Signior Lupo, the wolf.

17.
coadjutor; novice; journeyman; tutor
: tour different kinds of collaborator in the Elizabedian Theatre: a joint-author, sharing responsibility for a play with someone else - for example, Beaumont
and Fletcher; an apprentice, learning the craft; a hack-writer or adaptor of old plays; a supervisor of apprentice-work. Jonson had been novice, journeyman, and coadjutor in his time, but here puts forward his claim to be considered a serious dramatic artist.

21.
quaking custards
: may be an allusion to the huge custard set out at the Lord Mayor's feasts for the fool to jump into, and, in conjunction with the reference to eggs above, may indicate the sort of slap-stick which Jonson has avoided. A. B. Kernan believes that this is a literary allusion and that it describes such plays as Marston's
Histriomastix
.

23.
Nor hales he in a gull old ends reciting
: the author does not haul in a dupe reciting bits of poetry from old plays.

24.
Make Bedlam a faction
: turn lunatics into enthusiasts for the play, Bedlam being a madhouse.

31.
The laws of time, place, persons
: the ‘unities'. See the Introduction, p.
14
, and the notes on location and time-scheme, p.
38
, p.
176
, and p.
321
.

i  5.
the celestial Ram
: the sun enters Aries, the Ram, on 21 March, the spring equinox, when the ‘teeming earth' needs sunshine.

10.
son of Sol
: gold is referred to as the offspring of Sol, the sun, in alchemical writings.

19.
Venus
: Latin poets frequendy referred to Venus as ‘golden'.

33.
I use no trade
…: Volpone here lists the various new capitalist and mercantile practices which he himself scorns, including speculative ventures.

i,ii I.The interlude, which is supposed to have been written by Mosca, is in the loose four-stressed verse of the old morality-plays, and is recited by the dwarf and the hermaphrodite. It is a cynical account of the transmigration of souls. The suggestion that the soul of Pythagoras, itself having transmigrated from various mythical and Homeric figures (lines 8–16), could now inhabit the body of the freak, Androgyno, contributes to the general debasing effect of the human into the animal which is a major theme in
Volpone
. The classical references and thematic relevance of all this are impossible to convey in the modem theatre, and readers who are interested in the background and the significance of this scene to Jonson's work as a whole are directed to Harry Levin's article ‘Jonson's Metempsychosis',
Philological Quarterly
, XXII. Mosca's
source is Lucían, a Greek satirist of the 2nd century, whose
Dream of the Cobbler and the Cock
is referred to in line 24.

6.
Pythagoras
: Greek philosopher of the sixth century
B.C
. who believed in transmigration of souls after death from one body to another. In lines 8–16 Nano reels off the names of those whose bothes Pythagoras's soul had previously inhabited.

26. ‘
By quater
!': Pythagoras and his followers believed that number was the basis of harmony in the universe, and they invented a numerical and geometrical symbolism. The quater is the triangle with four as its base:

27.
golden thigh
: Pythagoras was reputed to have had a thigh of gold.

33.
forbid meats
: Pythagoreans were not allowed to eat fish or beans (see line 40).