In my compilation of Volpone texts, I found an immense interest in the historical nature of the text, which lead my away from any thoughts of modernization on account of the richness of the history preserved through this language. While the point of modernization is to make something more accessible to the current everyday reader, to remake a story in such a way that it is more powerful on account of its relatability to the audience, Volpone’s theme is just so out of the realm of normalcy for us, and I feel like it is a set in the 1600s in a very fundamental way that could not perfectly translate to an issue of today. The closest I came was something like the new “Clue” movie, Knives Out, in which there is a long story of disease and dis-ease and death and deceit—but even that sort of plot would not do the class commentary of Volpone, the assertion of the Fly and the Fox, the same poetic justice. Further, this excerpt in particular discusses in detail the currency and affluence of the time, and since it is dated, it makes their world feel like an alternate one in which we know intimately none of his references and do not currently handle the same coins and bills as The Foxe; this helps me personally distance myself from the character and his choices.
In terms of the title, I didn’t really ever consider the other two, as they were largely long and dramatic descriptions of the combination of several of Ionson’s works: as seen in the 1692 edition The works of Ben Jonson which were formerly printed in two volumes, are now reprinted in one: To which is added a comedy, called The new inn: With additions never before published. While comedically long, especially for an era in which every single letter counted in printing, this is definitely an interesting choice. Additionally, it is quite possible that I just blindly went for the title we were given initially for this play in class, Volpone, because that is how it is still designated in my brain. Regardless, while I didn’t end up feeling super attached to the long, meandering justification for publishing the newest edition of “The works of Ben Johnson”, but I did find it important to keep the reference to this play as “The Foxe,” because there are some references that only go by one or the other (Volpone or The Foxe) and this makes it hard to find unless you account for both. Notably, the edition presented in class did not include the “The Foxe” title, which made it rather difficult to find this edition in the first place, so I wanted to make sure to include both main forms of identification.
As compared to the edition provided for class, I think my editorial differences are rather similar, as the main alterations I did to the original detailed the addition of stage directions and the alteration of some punctuation to aid in readability; this partially influenced my choice to not modernize as well, because I found that with the definitions provided in the gloss of the in-class edition, I was able to largely understand the situational context, and I enjoyed garnering new historical information simply from reading, and I think that it’s a valuable tool in the preservation and presentation of information. My glosses are primarily definitional and provide what I feel is necessary context to the story, such as how much the specific currencies were worth in a language we would understand nowadays, but I feel like the excerpt could definitely still benefit from more clarification in other areas not currently expanded upon. For example, the Norton Anthology edition of Volpone has references for outdated metaphors present in the song especially, such as “moist of hand” or “fright all aches from your bones” that give a richer meaning to the text and serve to make the interpretation of his possible meaning a bit clearer.
While interpretation is obviously personal and contingent upon so many unpredictable factors such as upbringing, education, and direction in the actual play’s performance, a key part of the interpretation always stems from the existence of the thing on paper. While my edits did do some work in altering the interpretation, as any change would, by and large, I feel as though the alterations mostly served to emphasize the tone already conveyed by the page: yes, I do understand that this is also based in my personal interpretation, and thus biased, but I feel as though the changes made to this docket do no eliminate the possibility of a different interpretation, but rather lead you more easily to a specific one. Overall, I do not know if these additions would truly shape the reader’s experience, other than providing more context to make the comprehension aspect easier.