Volpone

I chose the 1607 edition of Volpone to be my copy-text. I consulted the other two editions, the edition from 1616 and the other from 1692 where I used words, punctuation, and small grammatical changes in order to form this newest edition. I have changed the spelling in most words to reflect the correct version of modern English. My edition is slightly modernized; I have taken off extraneous “e” and changed the “f” to s which was a common error in 1600 literature (due to the typewriter). 

1. CORV: O, My dear Mosca. Do’s he not perceive us?
2. MOS:   No more than a blind harper. He knows no man, 
3.              No face of friend, nor name of any servant  
4.              Who was that fed him last, or gave him drink?
5.              Not those he hath begotten or brought up, 
6.              Can he remember? 
7. CORV: Has he children? 
8. MOS: Bastards, 
9.           Some dozen, or more, that he begot on beggars, 
10.           Gypsies and Jews and Black-moors, when he was drunk.
11.            Knew you not that, sir? ‘Tis the common fable. 
12.            The Dwarf, the Fool, the Eunuch are all his; 
13.            He’s the true father of his family, 
14.            In all save [except] me, but he has given them nothing. 
15. CORV: That’s well, that’s well. Art sure he does not
16.              hear us? 
17. MOS:   Sure, sir? Why, look you, credit your own sense. 
18.              The pox approach, and add to your diseases, 
19.              If it would send you hence the sooner, Sir
20.              For your incontinence, it hath deserved it. 
21.              Thoroughly, and thoroughly, and the plague to boot. 
22.              (You may come near, Sir) would you would once close 
23.              Those filthy eyes of yours, that flow with slime, 
24.              Like two frog-pits; and those same hanging cheeks, 
25.              Covered with hide, instead of skin: (nay help, Sir)
26.               That look like frozen dish-clouts, set on end. 
27. CORV:  Or, like an old smoked wall, on which the rain
28.                Ran down in streaks.
29. MOS:  Excellent, Sir, speak out; 
30.               You may be louder yet: a culvering, 
31.               Discharged in his ear, would hardly bore it. 
32. CORV: His nose is like a common sewer, still running. 
33. MOS:   ‘Tis good, and what his mouth? 
34. CORV: A very draught. 
35. MOS:   O, stop it up
36. CORV: By no means. 
37. MOS:    ‘Pray you let me. 
38.                Faith, I could stifle him, rarely, with a pillow, 
39.                As well as any woman that should keep him. 
40. CORV:  Do as you will, but I’ll be gone
41. MOS:   Be so;
42.                It is your presence makes him last so long. 
43. CORV: I pray you, use no violence.
44. MORV: No, sir. Why?
45.               Why should you be thus scrupulous? ‘Pray you, sir. 
46. CORV:  Nay, at your discretion. 
47. MOS:   Well, good sir, be gone. 
48. CORV: I will not trouble him now, to take my pearl? 
49. MOS:   Puh, nor your diamond. What a needless care
50.              Is this afflicts you? Is not all, here, yours? 
51.              Am not I here? Whom you have made? Your creature? 
52.              That owe my being to you? 
53. CORV: Grateful Mosca! 
54.              Thou art my friend, my fellow, my companion, 
55.               My partner, and shalt share in all my fortunes.

• Bastards: A person conceived and born out of wedlock; an illegitimate child
• Begot: To get, obtain, acquire; to win, gain; to procure (something) for someone, furnish, provide
• Black-moors: A black-skinned individual

• Pox: To infect a person with the pox; (usually syphilis)

• Hide: The skin of an animal, raw or dressed
• Dish-clouts: A dishcloth;  used in contemptuous comparison or allusion

• Culvering: The name of a gun and cannon formerly in use:  In later times, a large cannon, very long in proportion to its bore
• Sewer: An artificial watercourse for draining marshy land and carrying off surface water into a river or the sea
• Stifle: To kill by stopping respiration; to kill or deprive of consciousness

• Scrupulous: To kill by stopping respiration; to kill or deprive of consciousness

When creating the final edition of Volpone, there was a lot that went into the editorial process. In order to construct a proper edition of the play Volpone, I researched three older editions (including the first publication) and began to note the variants between them once I chose a 40 line segment of the play. The first published edition was from 1607 titled Ben: Ionson his Volpone or The Foxe, the next was published in 1616 titled, The Workes of Beniamin Ionson, while the last edition was published in 1692 and is titled, The Works of Ben Jonson…  I decided that the first publication of Volpone, 1607, should be the copy-text for my new edition. From here, I consulted the other two editions and noted the differences in relation to the copy-text. After reading the 40 line segment in each edition, I carefully noted all the differences between the editions. However, the problem was that there were not many differences. Moreover, most of the variations I noted were minor; words were spelled slightly differently, punctuation marks were added or subtracted, and stage directions were present. For example, I modernized the text as I changed the word “drunke” in the 1607 edition to “drunk” that the 1692 version had. There were more edits similar to this, but I also added punctuation marks in order to help the overall flow of the play. For example, I changed “or gaue him drinke:” to “or gave him drink?” I decided to note even the slightest variation, which proved to be beneficial when choosing what I wanted to incorporate into the final edition. From here, the next step was to choose how to catalog the variants. I chose to lightly modernize my edition because there were only minor changes between the three editions; words were spelled slightly differently and there were some grammatical errors. When choosing words to gloss/annotate, I decided to highlight the ones that were spelled differently among the three editions, as well as words that may have been hard to understand, or would benefit the reader if there was a definition or description of the term(s). For example, the term “dish-clout” was used in all editions and is a term used to describe a dishcloth, but also a term used to describe a comparison or an allusion. Annotations like this will help the reader understand some of the terms that were used during the Renaissance time period. Furthermore, I chose to gloss the term “Bastard” because the definition helped to explain the context in which the word was used – to describe a child that is ‘illegitimate.’ In order to obtain the correct definition of English words from the time period 1600, I used the library’s literary database to access the Oxford English Dictionary which houses definitions of words originating thousands of years ago. The Oxford English Dictionary in addition to the Early English Books database helped me in my efforts of editing and lightly modernizing the play Volpone.