Editor: Palmer White
Act 1, Scene 3: Mosca assists Volpone in disguising him as ill before his bearers of gifts enter… Mosca fantasizes–on the bearer’s behalves–what it would be like to inherit Volpone’s fortune.
* The copy text used to create this edition is the one found in The Workes on Benjamin Jonson, published in 1616.
VOLPONE I am not for ’em yet.1
[Enter MOSCA.]
How now? The news?
MOSCA A piece of plate, sir.
VOLPONE Of what bigness?
MOSCA Huge,
Massie,2 and antique, with your name inscribed,
And arms ingraven.
VOLPONE Good! And not a Fox
Stretched on the earth, with fine delusive sleights,
Mocking a gaping Crow?3 Ha, Mosca?
MOSCA Sharp, sir.
VOLPONE Give me my furs.4 Why dost thou laugh fo, man?
MOSCA I cannot choose, sir, when I apprehend
What thoughts he has, within, now, as he walks:5
That this might be the last gift, he should give;
That this would fetch you; if you died today,
And gave him all, what he should be tomorrow;
What large return would come of all his venters;
How he should worshiped be, and reverenced;
Ride, with his furs and foot-clothes;6 waited on
By herds of fools and clients; have clear way
Made for his moil, as lettered as himself;7
Be called the great, and learned Advocate:
And then concludes there’s nought impossible.
VOLPONE Yes, to be learned, Mosca.
MOSCA O no rich
Implies it. Hood an ass, with reverend purple,8
So you can hide his two ambitious ears,
And, he shall pass for a cathedral Doctor.9
VOLPONE My caps, my caps, good Mosca. Fetch him in.
MOSCA Stay, sir, your ointment for your eyes.
[Mosca gets closer to, and applies medicine for, Volpone.]
VOLPONE That’s true;
Dispatch, dispatch: I long to have possession
Of my new present.
MOSCA That, and thousands more,
I hope to see you lord of.
VOLPONE Thanks, kind Mosca.
MOSCA And that, when I am lost in blended dust,
And hundred such, as I am, in succession–
VOLPONE Nay, that were too much, Mosca.
MOSCA –you shall live,
Still, to delude these harpyies.10
VOLPONE Loving Mosca,
‘Tis well. My pillow now, and let him enter.
[Mosca leaves to retrieve gift bearer.]
Now, my fained cough, my physic, my gout,
My apoplexy, palsy, catarrh,
Help, with your forced functions, this my posture,
Wherein, this three year, have milked their hopes.
He comes, I hear him. [Exaggeratedly coughing.] Uh, uh, uh, uh! O.
Annotations
- Volpone is not yet ready for God, meaning he doesn’t yet want to die.
- “Massie” is an adjective of precious metals: occurring in mass; solid and weight; wrought in solid pieces (OED Online).
- In one of the Fables of Aesop, the fox tricks the crow into dropping his cheese so he can steal it (Greenblatt).
- Wealthy people, in the 1600s, slept with fur bed coverlets whereas the less wealthy slept with those made of wool (Stirler).
- Different editions of Volpone vary between “within” and “without.” Use of “within” creates a more significant emphasis on introspective thinking–as Mosca is clearly doing, while “without” merely focuses on physical location.
- “Foot-clothes” are fancy, ornamental dressings for a horse’s back (Greenblatt).
- “Lettered” implies a sophisticated degree of education (Greenblatt).
- Doctors of Divinity used to wear purple academic hoods (Greenblatt).
- A cathedral doctor–or Doctor of the Church, in Roman Catholicism, is any of the 36 saints whose doctrinal writings hold profound authority (Britannica).
- “Harpyies” are voracious mythological creatures made up of female heads and the bodies and claws of birds (Greenblatt).
Editor’s Note
This edition of Volpone, Act 1, Scene 3 was informed by four other editions, those published in 1607, 1616, 1692, and 2018. The copy text of this edition was published in 1616 in The Workes on Ben Jonson. I chose to use this edition as my copy text because this was the version that Ben Jonson accepted to be the true version of Volpone; however, there was not much variation between all four editions. All areas in which the text was modernized–or something was added–is identified by italics. The largest points of variation were punctuation, capitalization, and spelling. Additionally, the 2018 edition included stage directions while the others did not. There was no variation in lines–in the sense that some editions omitted lines, and there was only minimal variation in word choice.
I decided to display lines with multiple speakers–Volpone and Mosca–as distinct lines. All three of the older editions displayed these as singular lines containing multiple speakers; however, I felt that for reading simplicity it was more helpful to include a visual distinction between the lines and their speakers.
This edition also includes stage directions, while the old editions do not. I chose to include stage directions because I feel they encourage emphasis of many different aspects of the text. I added them in four different places: first, to show how Mosca returns after fetching Volpone’s things for bed; second, when Mosca applies Volpone’s ‘eye ointment’; third, to show Mosca leaves the room to fetch Voltore because Volpone is far too sick to get up; and lastly, to display Volpone’s exaggerated cough when Voltore enters. These stage directions display the ways in which Mosca tends to Volpone as though he is pure gold, and the sexual tension present between the two men throughout the play. They also emphasize Volpone’s dramatically faked illness and immobility, which is a focus of this scene.
On a smaller scale, I chose to modernize spelling throughout this edition. In the earlier editions, there are many instances in which words are spelled with extra Es: newes, bignesse, sharpe, foxe. There are also words in earlier forms such as phthisick and to morrow, which I changed to their modern versions. I believe these changes–even though minor–make the reading experience simpler because one can read them naturally, as opposed to having to decipher their modern form.
Another minor–though significant–variation is the variation in comma placement throughout the editions. Contrasting comma placement causes different reading paces, on the most basic level, though it also alters the meaning and interpretation of the words. Some of these instances include: “That this might be the last gift, he should give” which also appears as “That this might be the last gift he should give.” The former reads as a command that he should give the last gift, whereas the latter reads as a conditional that it may be the last gift he ever gives. Also, “And hundred such, as I am, in succession—” appears as “And hundred such as I am, in succession—.” The latter assumes the individual is hundred such, whereas the former does not, at least not to the same degree. These variations appear minor, and their meanings only differ slightly, though they still alter the reading of the scene in subtle ways.
I included two primary types of annotations: those that contain historical information necessary to understand the scene, and those that contain language specification. The historical footnotes contain largely Catholic information, including Doctors of Divinity and Doctors of the Church, as well as other cultural material from fields like literature and mythology. For the second type of footnote, there were words I felt needed further clarification for the scene to have its fullest effect. These include: massie, foot-clothes, lettered, cathedral doctor, and harpyies. Footnotes were necessary in these specific places because it is crucial to understand the era in which this was written by Jonson. For this reason, I felt it was important to include clarification both on cultural relevance and language tendencies of the time.
Works Cited
Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. “doctor of the church.” Encyclopedia Britannica, November 19, 2020. https://www.britannica.com.
Greenblatt, Stephen, 12th. 2018. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, Inc.
Jonson, Ben. Ben: Jonson His Volpone Or the Foxe. London, 1607. STC 14783.
Jonson, Ben. “Volpone.” In The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 12th ed, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, 995-1089. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, Inc., 2018.
Jonson, Ben. The Workes on Benjamin Jonson. London, 1616. STC 14752.
Jonson, Ben. 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. London, 1692. STC 1006.
“Massy, adj. (and adv.)”. OED Online. March 2022. Oxford University Press. https://www-oed-com.
Stirler, Gael. “Sleep in the Middle Ages.” Renstore. Last modified February 2009. Accessed April 3, 2022. https://stores.renstore.com.