The Duchess of Malfi

by Frank Kermode

  For the present, most reverenced Sisters, as I have cared to be thankful for your affections past, and here made the understanding acquainted with some ground of your favours; let me not despair their continuance, to the maturing of some worthier fruits; wherein, if my muses be true to me, I shall raise the despised head of poetry again, and stripping her out of those rotten and base rags wherewith the times have adulterated her form, restore her to her primitive habit, feature, and majesty, and render her worthy to be embraced and kist of all the great and master spirits of our world. As for the vile and slothful, who never affected an act worthy of celebration, or are so inward with their own vicious natures, as they worthily fear her, and think it an high point of policy to keep her in contempt, with their declamatory and windy invectives; she shall out of just rage incite her servants (who are genus irritabile2) to spout ink in their faces, that shall eat farther than their marrow into their fames; and not Cinnamus the barber, with his art, shall be able to take out the brands; but they shall live, and be read, till the wretches die, as things worst deserving of themselves in chief, and then of all mankind.

  From my House in the Black-Friars,

  this 11th day of February, 1607.

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  VOLPONE, a Magnifico

  MOSCA, his Parasite

  VOLTORE, an Advocate

  CORBACCIO, an old Gentleman

  CORVINO, a Merchant

  BONARIO, son to Corbaccio

  SIR POLITICK WOULD-BE, a Knight

  PEREGRINE, a Gentleman Traveller

  NANO, a Dwarf

  CASTRONE, an Eunuch

  ANDROGYNO, an Hermaphrodite

  GREGE3

  Commandadori, Officers of Justice

  Mercatori, three Merchants

  Avocatori, four Magistrates

  Notario, the Register

  LADY WOULD-BE, Sir Politick’s Wife

  CELIA, Corvino’s Wife

  Servitori, Servants, two Waiting-women, etc.

  THE SCENE, — VENICE

  THE ARGUMENT

  Volpone, childless, rich, feigns sick, despairs,

  Offers his state to hopes of several heirs,

  Lies languishing: his parasite receives

  Presents of all, assures, deludes; then weaves

  Other cross plots, which ope themselves, are told.

  New tricks for safety are sought; they thrive; when bold,

  Each tempts the other again, and all are sold.

  Now, luck yet send us, and a little wit

  Will serve to make our play hit;

  (According to the palates of the season)

  Here is rhime, not empty of reason.

  This we were bid to credit from our poet,

  Whose true scope, if you would know it,

  In all his poems still hath been this measure,

  To mix profit with your pleasure;

  And not as some, whose throats their envy failing,

  Cry hoarsely, All he writes is railing:

  And when his plays come forth, think they can flout them,

  With saying, he was a year about them.

  To this there needs no lie, but this his creature,

  Which was two months since no feature;

  And though he dares give them five lives to mend it,

  ’Tis known, five weeks fully penned it,

  From his own hand, without a co-adjutor,

  Novice, journey-man, or tutor.

  Yet thus much I can give you as a token

  Of his play’s worth, no eggs are broken,

  Nor quaking custards with fierce teeth affrighted,

  Wherewith your rout are so delighted;

  Nor hales he in a gull old ends reciting,

  To stop gaps in his loose writing;

  With such a deal of monstrous and forced action,

  As might make Bethlem4 a faction:

  Nor made he his play for jests stolen from each table,

  But makes jests to fit his fable;

  And so presents quick comedy refined,

  As best critics have designed;

  The laws of time, place, persons he observeth,

  From no needful rule he swerveth.

  All gall and copperas from his ink he draineth,

  Only a little salt remaineth,

  Wherewith he’ll rub your cheeks, till red, with laughter,

  They shall took fresh a week after.

  ACT I, SCENE I

  Enter Volpone and Mosca

  VOLP. Good morning to the day; and next, my gold!—

  Open the shrine, that I may see my saint.

  [Mosca withdraws the curtain, and reveals piles of gold, plate, jewels, etc.]

  Hail the world’s soul, and mine! more glad than is

  The teeming earth to see the long’d-for sun

  Peep through the horns of the celestial Ram,

  Am I, to view thy splendour darkening his;

  That lying here, amongst my other hoards,

  Show’st like a flame by night, or like the day

  Struck out of chaos, when all darkness fled

  Unto the center.5 O thou son of Sol,

  But brighter than thy father, let me kiss,

  With adoration, thee, and every relic

  Of sacred treasure in this blessed room.

  Well did wise poets, by thy glorious name,

  Title that age which they would have the best;

  Thou being the best of things, and far transcending

  All style of joy, in children, parents, friends,

  Or any other waking dream on earth:

  Thy looks when they to Venus did ascribe,

  They should have given her twenty thousand Cupids;

  Such are thy beauties and our loves! Dear saint,

  Riches, the dumb god, that giv’st all men tongues,

  Thou canst do nought, and yet mak’st men do all things;

  The price of souls; even hell, with thee to boot,

  Is made worth heaven. Thou art virtue, fame,

  Honor, and all things else. Who can get thee,

  He shall be noble valiant, honest, wise—

  MOS. And what he will, sir. Riches are in fortune

  A greater good than wisdom is in nature.

  VOLP. True, my beloved Mosca. Yet I glory

  More in the cunning purchase of my wealth,

  Than in the glad possession, since I gain

  No common way; I use no trade, no venture;

  I wound no earth with plough-shares, fat no beasts,

  To feed the shambles; have no mills for iron,

  Oil, corn, or men, to grind them into powder:

  I blow no subtle glass, expose no ships

  To threat’nings of the furrow-facèd sea;

  I turn no monies in the public bank,

  Nor usure private.

  MOS. No, sir, nor devour

  Soft prodigals. You shall have some will swallow

  A melting heir as glibly as your Dutch

  Will pills of butter, and ne’er purge for it;

  Tear forth the fathers of poor families

  Out of their beds, and coffin them alive

  In some kind clasping prison, where their bones

  May be forth-coming, when the flesh is rotten:

  But your sweet nature doth abhor these courses;

  You loathe the widow’s or the orphan’s tears

  Should wash your pavements, or their piteous cries

  Ring in your roofs, and beat the air for vengeance.

  VOLP. Right, Mosca; I do loathe it.

  MOS. And besides, sir,

  You are not like the thresher that doth stand

  With a huge flail, watching a heap of corn,

  And, hungry, dares not taste the smallest grain,

  But feeds on mallows, and such bitter herbs;

  Nor like the merchant, who hath fill’d his vaults

  With Romagnia, and rich Candian wines,6

  Yet drinks the lees of Lombard’s vine
gar:7

  You will lie not in straw, whilst moths and worms

  Feed on your sumptuous hangings and soft beds;

  You know the use of riches, and dare give now

  From that bright heap, to me, your poor observer,

  Or to your dwarf, or your hermaphrodite,

  Your eunuch, or what other household trifle

  Your pleasure allows maintenance—

  VOLP. Hold thee, Mosca,

  [Gives him money]

  Take of my hand; thou strik’st on truth in all,

  And they are envious term thee parasite.

  Call forth my dwarf, my eunuch, and my fool,

  And let them make me sport. [Exit Mosca] What should I do,

  But cocker up my genius, and live free

  To all delights my fortune calls me to?

  I have no wife, no parent, child, ally,

  To give my substance to; but whom I make

  Must be my heir: and this makes men observe me:

  To give my substance to; but whom I make

  Women and men of every sex and age,

  That bring me presents, send me plate, coin, jewels,

  With hope that when I die (which they expect

  Each greedy minute) it shall then return

  Ten-fold upon them; whilst some, covetous

  Above the rest, seek to engross me whole,

  And counter-work the one unto the other,

  Contend in gifts, as they would seem in love:

  All which I suffer, playing with their hopes,

  And am content to coin them into profit,

  And look upon their kindness, and take more,

  And look on that; still bearing them in hand,

  Letting the cherry knock against their lips,

  And draw it by their mouths, and back again.—

  How now!

  Enter Mosca with Nano, Androgyno, and Castrone

  NAN. Now, room for fresh gamesters, who do will you to know,

  They do bring you neither play nor university show;

  And therefore do entreat you, that whatsoever they rehearse,

  May not fare a whit the worse, for the false pace of the verse.

  If you wonder at this, you will wonder more ere we pass,

  For know, here is inclosed the soul of Pythagoras,

  That juggler divine, as hereafter shall follow;

  Which soul, fast and loose, sir, came first from Apollo,

  And was breath’d into Æthalides, Mercurius his son,

  Where it had the gift to remember all that ever was done.

  From thence it fled forth, and made quick transmigration

  To goldly-locked Euphorbus, who was killed in good fashion,

  At the siege of old Troy, by the cuckold of Sparta.8

  Hermotimus was next (I find it in my charta)

  To whom it did pass, where no sooner it was missing

  But with one Pyrrhus of Delos it learn’d to go a fishing;

  And thence did it enter the sophist of Greece.

  From Pythagore, she went into a beautiful piece,

  Hight Aspasia, the meretrix; and the next toss of her

  Was again of a whore, she became a philosopher,

  Crates the cynick, as it self doth relate it:

  Since kings, knights, and beggars, knaves, lords, and fools gat it,

  Besides ox and ass, camel, mule, goat, and brock,9

  In all which it hath spoke, as in the cobbler’s cock.

  But I come not here to discourse of that matter,

  Or his one, two, or three, or his great oath, By quater!10

  His musics, his trigon, his golden thigh,

  Or his telling how elements shift, but I

  Would ask, how of late thou hast suffered translation

  And shifted thy coat in these days of reformation.

  AND. Like one of the reformed, a fool, as you see,

  Counting all old doctrine heresie.

  NAN. But not on thine own forbid meats hast thou ventured?

  AND. On fish, when first a Carthusian I entered.

  NAN. Why, then thy dogmatical silence hath left thee?

  AND. Of that an obstreperous lawyer bereft me.

  NAN. O wonderful change, when sir lawyer forsook thee!

  For Pythagore’s sake, what body then took thee?

  AND. A good dull mule.

  NAN. And how! by that means

  Thou wert brought to allow of the eating of beans?

  AND. Yes.

  NAN. But from the mule into whom didst thou pass?

  AND. Into a very strange beast, by some writers called an ass;

  By others, a precise,11 pure, illuminate brother,

  Of those devour flesh, and sometimes one another;

  And will drop you forth a libel, or a sanctified lie,

  Betwixt every spoonful of a nativity-pie.

  NAN. Now quit thee, for heaven, of that profane nation,

  And gently report thy next transmigration.

  AND. To the same that I am.

  NAN. A creature of delight,

  And, what is more than a fool, an hermaphrodite!

  Now, prithee, sweet soul, in all thy variation,

  Which body would’st thou choose, to keep up thy station?

  AND. Troth, this I am in: even here would I tarry.

  NAN. ’Cause here the delight of each sex thou canst vary?

  AND. Alas, those pleasures be stale and forsaken;

  No, ’tis your fool wherewith I am so taken,

  The only one creature that I can call blessed;

  For all other forms I have proved most distressed.

  NAN. Spoke true, as thou wert in Pythagoras still.

  This learned opinion we celebrate will,

  Fellow eunuch, as behoves us, with all our wit and art,

  To dignify that whereof ourselves are so great and special a part.

  VOLP. Now, very pretty! Mosca, this

  Was thy invention?

  MOS. If it please my patron,

  Not else.

  VOLP. It doth, good Mosca.

  MOS. Then it was, sir.

  Nano and Castrone sing

  Fools, they are the only nation

  Worth men’s envy or admiration:

  Free from care or sorrow-taking,

  Selves and others merry making:

  All they speak or do is sterling.

  Your fool he is your great man’s darling,

  And your ladies’ sport and pleasure;

  Tongue and bauble are his treasure.

  E’en his face begetteth laughter,

  And he speaks truth free from slaughter;

  He’s the grace of every feast,

  And sometimes the chiefest guest;

  Hath his trencher and his stool,

  When wit waits upon the fool.

  O, who would not be

  He, he, he?

  [One knocks without]

  VOLP. Who’s that? Away!

  Exeunt Nano and Castrone

  Look, Mosca. Fool, begone!

  Exit Androgyno

  MOS. ’Tis signior Voltore, the advocate;

  I know him by his knock.

  VOLP. Fetch me my gown,

  My furs and night-caps; say, my couch is changing,

  And let him entertain himself awhile

  Without i’ the gallery. [Exit Mosca] Now, now, my clients

  Begin their visitation! Vulture, kite,

  Raven, and gorcrow,12 all my birds of prey,

  That think me turning carcase, now they come;

  I am not for them yet—

  Re-enter Mosca, with the gown, etc.

  Now now! the news?

  MOS. A piece of plate, sir.

  VOLP. Of what bigness?

  MOS. Huge,

  Massy, and antique, with your name inscribed,

  And arms engraven.

  VOLP. Good! and not a fox

  Stretched on the earth, with fine delusive sleights,


  Mocking a gaping crow? ha, Mosca!

  MOS. Sharp, sir.

  VOLP. Give me my furs. [Puts on his sick dress] Why dost thou laugh so, man?

  MOS. I cannot choose, sir, when I apprehend

  What thoughts he has without now, as he walks:

  That this might be the last gift he should give;

  That this would fetch you; if you died to-day,

  And gave him all, what he should be to-morrow;

  What large return would come of all his ventures;

  How he should worshipped be, and reverenced;

  Ride with his furs, and foot-cloths;13 waited on

  By herds of fools, and clients; have clear way

  Made for his mule, as lettered as himself;

  Be call’d the great and learned advocate:

  And then concludes, there’s nought impossible.

  VOLP. Yes, to be learned, Mosca.

  MOS. O, no: rich

  Implies it. Hood an ass with reverend purple,

  So you can hide his two ambitious ears,

  And he shall pass for a cathedral doctor.

  VOLP. My caps, my caps, good Mosca. Fetch him in.

  MOS. Stay, sir; your ointment for your eyes.

  VOLP. That’s true;

  Dispatch, dispatch: I long to have possession