Volpone and Other Plays

by Ben Jonson

  17. Madam Augusta’s: evidently a brothel.

  33. Lothbury: a London street where copper-smiths lived.

  35. Devonshire, Cornwall: the principal English counties where tinand copper were mined.

  36. make them perfect Indies: turn their copper and tin into gold.

  39–40. Mercury: quicksilver; Venus: copper; Moon: silver; Sun: gold

  48. elixir: Mammon uses the word in a double sense: (a) in its alchemical meaning of the substance which would turn all metals into gold, i.e. the Philosopher’s Stone, etc., and (b) in its medical sense of a liquid (elixir vitae) capable of prolonging life indefinitely. Many people thought the two elixirs to be identical, as Mammon clearly does here, and this gives free range to his imagination. See E. B. Partridge The Broken Compass, pp. 132–4.

  55. fifth age: Mammon is referring to the commonplace of the Seven Ages of Man: see Jaques’ speech in As You Like It.

  62. Pickt-hatch: low district of London frequented by whores and pick-pockets.

  63–9. the secret, etc.: Jonson is satirizing here claims about the Stone’s powers put forward in all earnest by the alchemists. The powers attributed to the Stone are taken from Arnold of Villa Nova’s Rosarium Philosophorum.

  71. the players: the London actors had to close their playhouses whenever the plague became dangerously virulent, and they would therefore be especially grateful to anyone capable of ‘frighting the plague out of the kingdom’ and thus guaranteeing their livelihood.

  81–3. Moses, Solomon, etc.: the belief that Adam understood the mysteries of the Stone is a commonplace in alchemical writings, and occurs in Paracelsus, who also mentions Moses’ possession of the elixir. Fifteenth-century manuscripts exist of an alchemical treatise attributed to Solomon.

  89–104. Jason’s fleece, etc.: This passage Professor Duncan styles ‘a barrage of mythological-alchemical erudition’, and it lists the connexions alchemists traced between mythology and their own science. Duncan points out that ‘the legend that the true object of Jason’s quest was an alchemical treatise or recipe is at least as old as the tenth century’, and he believes that Jonson may have gone to Nicholas Flamel’s Hieroglyphicall Figures (not translated until 1624) for the alchemists’ interpretation of details in the myth as symbols for materials and processes in alchemy. Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, LXI, p. 703.

  92. Pythagoras’ thigh: see Volpone, I, ii, 27 for reference to ‘Pythagoras’ golden thigh’.

  92. Pandora’s tub: this (more usually a box or jar) contained all the ills and diseases of mankind which Pandora unwittingly released.

  96. dragon’s teeth: the equation of these with mercury sublimate in alchemy, seems to be a Jonsonian invention as is the identification of Jason’s helmet as an alembic (the top part of a distilling vessel). See Duncan’s article.

  102. Demogorgon: in Boccaccio’s Genealogia Deorum he is the ancestor of the gods. Alchemically he was interpreted as Chaos, as the quinta essentia, and as the parentum omnium rerum.

  II, ii [SCENE TWO]

  Stage direction: i.e. they pass from fore-stage to the main acting area which represents the interior of the house.

  44. Elephantis, Aretine: both seem to have written poems which were accompamed by pornographic pictures. Elephantis is known only because of references in Suetonius’s life of Tiberius and in Martial. For Aretine, see Volpone III, iv, 96.

  77. Apicuis’ diet, etc.: Jonson took many of the exotic delicacies from Lampridius’s Vita Heliogabali.

  87. be a knight: contemporary joke against King James’s indiscriminate and mercenary creation of knights.

  II, iii 32. Ulen Spiegel: Subtle’s name for his ‘servant’ Face: originally the knave-hero of a popular German jest-book.

  33. aludels, etc.: In this passage Jonson uses accurately a number of alchemical terms, a fact which would be appreciated by only a small, sophisticated part of his audience. For many Jacobeans, as for most of us, the expressions would sound impressive jargon merely. Compare once more Volpone’s spiel, II, ii (pp. 79–85); see note on Alchemy pp. 179–84.

  49. pious uses: Mammon here expresses a perhaps sincere wish for lasting fame dirough charitable acts performed with the Stone; but compare the sensual delights and fantasies he proposed to Surly earlier, and his earlier speeches to Dol.

  185. Your Stone, etc.: Surly, the critic of alchemy, no less than Subtle, the bogus practitioner, uses correcdy terms from contemporary alchemical lore.

  225. Bradamante: heroine in the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto.

  230. Paracelsian: follower of Paracelsus (1493–1541), who studied medicine and mineralogy. His interest in alchemy stemmed from a concern with healing. See Volpone, II, ii, 125.

  238. Broughton: the rabbinical scholar who thed in 1612; mentioned also in Volpone, II, ii, 114; source of Dol’s ‘mad’ speech.

  II, v 8.Lullianist; Ripley: disciple of Ramón Lull or of Sir George Ripley, noted alchemists. Lull (c. 1232–1315) was born in Majorca and founded an influential school of philosophy. His disciples wrote systematic alchemical treatises and attributed them to him. Ripley (thed 1490) was a Canon of Bridlington, Yorks, studied in Italy, and wrote the Compound of Alchemy. Filius artis: son of the art. Subtle is pretending to think that Ananias by ‘Brother’ meant brother-or fellow-alchemist.

  13. Knipperdoling: leader of the Anabaptist sect.

  II, vi 2. Bayards: blind fools (named from the horse Charlemagne gave II, vi to the sons of Aymon).

  20. Dee: Dr John Dee, astrologer and mathematician, who thed in 1608.

  ACT THREE

  III, ii [SCENE TWO]

  Stage direction: they pass from the fore-stage to the main acting area, as did Mammon and Surly in II, ii. The action is continuous.

  43. Christ-tide: the Puritans regarded Christ-mas as a Popish term. See also Bartholomew Fair.

  18. Cinque Port: The Cinque Ports are five Channel ports, at this period strategically important: Dover, Sandwich, Romney, Hastings, and Hythe. The use here is metaphorical.

  24. John Leydens: Puritans (John Brockholdt or John of Leyden an Anabaptist was leader).

  III, v Final stage-direction: Face and Subtle lock Dapper into a privy, probably on-stage. If Act IV is played as continuous, Face must also be changing from his Captain’s clothes into his disguise as Lungs. The final moments of the scene (lines 50–81) are full of farcical action.

  ACT FOUR

  IV, i [SCENE ONB]

  90. [Edward] Kelly: an alchemist and associate of Dr Dee. The Emperor Rudolph II of Germany was his patron and dupe. Kelly thed in 1595.

  93. Thunderer: Zeus who struck Æsculapius dead with a thunderbolt.

  IV, ii 23. intentions, canons, etc.: the technical terms in Subtle’s two speeches are from scholastic logic.

  IV, iii 30. d’Alva: governor of the Netherlands from 1567 to 1573; Count Egmont, a Fleming executed at Alva’s orders.

  IV, iii [SCENE TWO]

  48. Bedlam: Bethlehem Hospital – visiting the lunatics there was regarded as an amusement; China-houses: shops selling articles from the East.

  IV, iii [SCENE THREE]

  Stage-direction ‘fit’: Mammon thinks Dol is being cured of madness. Her ‘mad’ speeches incorporate phrases from Hugh Broughton’s Concent of Scriptures.

  IV, vi [SCENE FOUR]

  Location: older editors suggest the garden, but the scene can be played indoors. See my preliminary note to the comedy, p. 176.

  IV, vii 53. seventy-seven: i.e. 1577; no editor has satisfactorily explained this Elizabethan allusion, which may be to the invasion of the Netherlands by d’Alva in 1567, or to the Armada, 1588. The unclean birds are from Revelation, xviii, 2.

  ACT FIVE

  V, i [SCENE ONE]

  6. Pimlico: a popular London place for entertainment neat Hogsden.

  V, iv [SCENE TWO]

  76. Ratcliff: a place in Stepney, frequented by sailors.

  77. Brainford: Brentford.

  115. Ward
: notorious as a pirate.

  141. Mistress Amo: a brothel-keeper (Madam Caesarian also).

  v, v 117. Harry Nicholas: a wellrknown religious fanatic.

  BARTHOLOMEW FAIR

  TITLE-PAGE

  Note the spelling ‘Bartholmew’, which probably represented the Jacobean pronunciation, Bartle-mew or Bartle-my. See also p. 322.

  PROLOGUE

  In other words, for the performance at Court on 1 November 1614 – the day after the first public performance.

  THE PERSONS OF THB PLAY

  Minor characters, such as Solomon, Haggis, Filcher, etc., do not appear in the Folio cast-list.

  Banbury: town in Oxfordshire, proverbially noted for Puritans and cakes.

  Tumbull: a street in Clerkenwell infamous on account of its brothels.

  THE PERSONS IN THE INDUCTION

  Not in the Folio cast-list. It is conceivable that the actual stage-keeper and book-holder at the Hope Theatre appeared in these parts, but more likely that they were imitated by acting members of their company, the Lady Elizabeth’s Servants.

  THE INDUCTION

  5. Arches: here, an officer of the Court of Arches, the ecclesiastical court of appeal, at Bow Church.

  5. Hospital: i.e. St Bartholomew in Smithfield.

  7. Master Brome: Richard Brome, servant, friend, and imitator of Jonson – a successful member of ‘the tribe of Ben’.

  10. Smithfield: the site of the Fair just outside the City of London.

  13. little Davy: a well-known bully.

  14. Kindheart: an itinerant tooth-drawer.

  31. Inns o’ Court: houses for the law students belonging to the four societies (Lincoln’s Inn, the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, Gray’s Inn) constituting what was, after Oxford and Cambridge, virtually the ‘Third University of England’.

  33. [Richard] Tarlton: a leading comedian (died 1588) of the previous reign. See Chambers, Elizabethan Stage (1923), vol. ii, pp. 342–5.

  36. cloth-quarter: the booths or stalls along the north wall of St Bartholomew’s Church; one of Tarlton’s jests hinged on his being cheated of his domes there.

  36. [John?] Adams: a fellow-actor of Tarlton’s.

  59. Bankside: the area on the South Bank of the Thames where theatres, bear-baiting arenas, and other centres of entertainment were situated.

  80. six pen’orth: six-pence-worth: the high cost of admission here seems to indicate, as it were, ‘first-night’ prices.

  85. the lottery: i.e. the one started in 1612 to raise money for the plantation of the colonies in Virginia.

  96. Jeronimo: The Spanish Tragedy by Kyd; Andronicus: Titus Andronicus by Shakespeare. By 1614 bom were old-fashioned, heavily rhetorical and over-bloody Elizabethan revenge-plays, and Jonson’s ‘five and twenty or thirty years’ deliberately exaggerates their age. He had himself written additional speeches for Kyd’s play.

  115. servant-monster: i.e. Caliban in The Tempest, which, with The Winter’s Tale, is alluded to in the lines following; antics, jigs, etc., refer to the masque-like dances characteristic of Shakespeare’s Romances or Last Plays, an indecorous genre of which Jonson disapproved.

  128. Mirror: here ‘paragon’; but possibly also an allusion to A Mirror for Magistrates, the sixteenth century collection of exemplary stories about the fall of rulers. A work by Whetstone of this title advised the magistrate to disguise himself and frequent places of entertainment to discover what happened there as Justice Overdo (to so little effect) does in this comedy. Compare Hal in Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays and the Duke in Measure for Measure. In warning his audience not to identify his characters with actual people, Jonson has been judged by scholars to be especially avoiding any identification of Overdo with Sir Thomas Hayes, Lord Mayor of London in 1614.

  ACT ONE

  11. Paul’s: St Paul’s, where the middle aisle was a recognized meeting-place of courtiers and professional men for conversation and the transaction of business.

  15. archdεeacon’s court: the Court of Arches; See the Induction, line 5.

  21. Budge Row: a street where fur was sold, budge=lambskin fur.

  23. The Spanish lady: an allusion to a fashionable English widow who dressed in the Spanish style, with high-heeled shoes, etc. In the production at Edinburgh in 1950 Dorothy Turin as Mistress Littlewit paraded like a mannequin in this scene to Littlewit’s admiring commentary.

  31. Three Cranes, Mitre, etc.: London taverns, the Mermaid being Jonson’s particular haunt.

  I, ii 6. Cheapside: the ‘garment district’ of London.

  6. Moorfields: a park reclaimed from marshlands outside the City.

  6. Pimlico: a tavern in Hoxton noted for cakes and ale.

  7. Exchange: the New Exchange, built in 1608–9 as a fashionable shopping area for ladies.

  51. Bedlam: the mad-house, a visit to which was popularly regarded as entertainment.

  I, iii 57. Tottenham: Tottenham Court, a popular place for buying cakes and cream.

  64. Pannyer Alley: street associated with leather-making and tripe-selling. Quarlous’s speech stresses through vigorous, homely imagery the sexual unattractiveness of the old widows whom Winwife pursues.

  72. inherit according to thy inches: allusion to a passage in the first satire of Juvenal in which the two lovers of an old woman are rewarded, in G. G. Ramsay’s euphemistic translation, ‘each in proportion to his services’. See Satires, 1, 40–41.

  89. [John] Knox: the Scots religious leader.

  I, iv 6.saved by my book: exempted from punishment for a crime by pleading benefit of clergy. This involved demonstrating the ability to read (as Ben Jonson himself had done after killing Gabriel Spencer; see Introduction p. 10).

  34. Cloister: the market held during Fair-time in part of a former monastery, Christ Church cloisters.

  103. Uncle Hodge: the old man who is said to have accepted a wager that a cat could not pull him across a pond. A rope was tied round him and the other end fastened to the cat, but the actual pulling was done by men in hiding who made it appear that the cat was responsible. This was evidently a standard practical joke in Jonson’s day.

  107. blackboy: figure on a tobacconist’s sign.

  108. Bucklersbury: a street inhabited by grocers and apothecaries – the latter being also tobacconists.

  I, v 24. Whetstone: probably a keeper of Bedlam. There is a pun on 1, v whetstone – a stone for sharpening knives.

  145. Pie-comer: at the sign of the Magpie, an inn at the edge of Smith-field. Face recalls that he first met Subde there ‘taking [his] meal of steam in, from cooks’ stalls’ (The Alchemist, 1, i.), and, since food was sold outside at the street-corner, the etymology of Pie-corner may have become obscured.

  ACT TWO

  Opening stage-directions: for the rest of the play the scene is the Fair. How the change is effected in any production is the individual director’s business, but Act One should be followed by a busding ‘transformation scene’. See pp. 321–2.

  4. Lynceus: one of the Argonauts, famous for his keen sight.

  5. Epidaurian serpent: Horace in his Satires mentions the serpents, which were thought to have keen sight and to be incarnations of Æsculapius, whose temple was at Epidaurus.

  12. a worthy worshipful man, sometime a capital member of this City: i.e. Thomas Hayes, Lord Mayor of the City of London.

  39. Pie-powders: corruption of pieds poudrés, dusty feet; ‘a summary court formerly held at fairs and markets to administer justice among itinerant dealers and others temporarily present.’ – The Oxford English Dictionary. The point is that Overdo, for all his gravity and self-importance, is a mere Justice of the Peace presiding over the humblest kind of court.

  42. cloud: Aeneas and his followers were hidden in a cloud as they entered Carthage – the Aeneid, 1, 412.

  44. Junius Brutus: in order to escape execution at the hands of Tarquinius Superbus he disguised himself as an idiot; also famous as an inflexible judge – hence Justice Overdo’s two-fold self-identific
ation with this Roman.

  II, ii One knocks (stage-direction in Folio): i.e. Justice Overdo knocks 11, ii (presumably at the door of Ursula’s booth).

  108. O temporal O mores!: ‘What times! What manners 1’ Overdo is quoting Cicero, In Catilinam, 1, i, 2.

  120. Arthur of Bradley: a figure in ballads who assumed the disguise of a madman, as Justice Overdo has done. His habit of speechifying is described by Ursula.

  II, iii 23. vapours: this term is used habitually and often tiresomely by 11, iii Knockem – indeed Eugene Waith in his Yale edition of the comedy calls his use of the word ‘a kind of verbal tic’. ‘Vapours’ means deliberate quarrelsomeness – as in the formal game of vapours played in Act Four – but in the play it is often synonymous with Jonsonian ‘humours’, so dut the more eccentric, one-idea characters can be said to have their own ‘vapours’.

  II, vi 66. Iamque opus, etc.: ‘And now I have finished my task, which neither Jove’s wrath, nor fire…’ – Metamorphoses, xv, 871–2. The passage continues: ‘nor sword, nor the gnawing tooth of time shall ever be able to undo’.

  II, v 7. Orpheus: the god of music.

  10. Ceres: mother of Proserpina.

  92. Dutchmen: it was a popular fallacy that they ate a great deal of butter.

  159. race-bawd: breeder of bawds; on the analogy of race-mare- a brood mare.

  177. Ursa major: the constellation of the Great Bear; astronomical pun on Ursula’s shorter name, Urs, and on her hugeness.

  II, vi 34. some late writers: see note following.

  45. hole in the nose… third nostril: this disfigurement would normally be the result of syphilis; Justice Overdo is railing against the evils of tobacco by claiming that smoking can have the same effects as the pox. His speech is a parody of Jacobean pamphlets against smoking by ‘some late writers’ (see lines above), of whom King James VI was one.