Volpone

“ The Turk is not more sensual in his pleasures,
Than will Volpone." [551]
On this invitation, Mosca draws a most voluptuous portrait of Corvino's wife, Celia. Smitten with a sudden desire, Volpone dresses himself as a mountebank, and goes singing under her windows with all the sprightliness of a quack; for he is naturally a comedian, like a true Italian, of the same family as Scaramouch, as good an actor in the public square as in his house. ”

“ 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 look fresh a week after.
ACT 1. SCENE 1.1. A ROOM IN VOLPONE'S HOUSE. 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 DISCOVERS PILES OF GOLD, PLATE, JEWELS, ETC.] Hail the world's soul, and mine! ”

“ In Face as in Subtle, in Volpone as in Mosca, the qualities which delight us are virtues misapplied: it is not their cunning, their avarice, or their lust, it is their courage, their genius, and their wit in which we take no ignoble or irrational pleasure. And indeed it would be strange and incongruous if a great satirist who was also a great poet had erred so grossly as not to aim at this result, or had fallen so grievously short of his aim as not to vindicate the dignity of his design. ”

“ But Jonson was on sound historical ground, for "Volpone" is conceived far more logically on the lines of the ancients' theory of comedy than was ever the romantic drama of Shakespeare, however repulsive we may find a philosophy of life that facilely divides the world into the rogues and their dupes, and, identifying brains with roguery and innocence with folly, admires the former while inconsistently punishing them. ”

“ Mischiefs feed Like beasts, till they be fat, and then they bleed. [EXEUNT.] [VOLPONE COMES FORWARD.] VOLPONE: The seasoning of a play, is the applause. Now, though the Fox be punish'd by the laws, He yet doth hope, there is no suffering due, For any fact which he hath done 'gainst you ”

“ Such perfection of plot, with such multiplicity of characters—such ingenuity of incident, with such harmony of construction—can be matched, we may surely venture to say, nowhere in the whole vast range of comic invention—nowhere in the whole wide world of dramatic fiction. If the interest is less poignant than in Volpone, the fun less continuous than in The Silent Woman, the action less simple and spontaneous than that of Every Man in his Humour, the vein of comedy is even richer than in any of these other masterpieces. ”

“ Patron! VOLP: Nay, now, My ruins shall not come alone; your match I'll hinder sure: my substance shall not glue you, Nor screw you into a family. MOS: Why, patron! VOLP: I am Volpone, and this is my knave; [POINTING TO MOSCA.] This [TO VOLT.] , his own knave; This [TO CORB.] , avarice's fool; This [TO CORV.] , a chimera of wittol, fool, and knave: And, reverend fathers, since we all can hope Nought but a sentence, let's not now dispair it. You hear me brief. CORV: May it please your fatherhoods— COM: Silence. 1 AVOC: The knot is now undone by miracle. 2 AVOC: Nothing can be more clear. ”

“ We may object to the fact that the only person in the play possessed of a scruple of honesty is discomfited, and that the greatest scoundrel of all is approved in the end and rewarded. The comedy is so admirably written and contrived, the personages stand out with such lifelike distinctness in their several kinds, and the whole is animated with such verve and resourcefulness that "The Alchemist" is a new marvel every time it is read. ”

“ Its subject is a struggle of wit applied to chicanery; for among its dramatis personae, from the villainous Fox himself, his rascally servant Mosca, Voltore (the vulture) , Corbaccio and Corvino (the big and the little raven) , to Sir Politic Would-be and the rest, there is scarcely a virtuous character in the play. Question has been raised as to whether a story so forbidding can be considered a comedy, for, although the plot ends in the discomfiture and imprisonment of the most vicious, it involves no mortal catastrophe. ”

“ On the derivation of Hephæstus, see Roscher, p. 2037. From Greek aphē, 'to kindle,' or pha, 'to shine,' or spha, 'to burn.' The Latin Vulcan, while a god of fire, is not represented by the Romans as possessed of technical skill. It is said that Romulus built him a temple in Rome and instituted the Vulcanalia,—a festival in honor of the god. The name Vulcanus, or Volcanus, is popularly connected with the Latin fulgere, 'to flash' or 'lighten,' fulgur a 'flash of lightning,' etc. It is quite natural that, in many legends, fire should play an active part in the creation of man. ”

“ At night, when viewed by the light of a setting moon or the flame of Vesuvius, the Forum Vulcani, with only its natural terrors, is gloomy enough: hemmed in by rocks of basalt, from the clefts of which the burning bitumen flashes forth at times, or white steam curls on the breeze—the ground thick with sulphur, and trembling with the throes of the mighty volcano in the distance, it has horrors enough for ordinary men; but that night it had none for me, and I startled the echoes of its rocks with my cries of "Despina!" ”

“ When Jupiter, the king of the gods, fared no better than the rest, he declared that she should be punished for her pride and must marry Vulcan, the lame blacksmith god who lived in the volcano, Mount Etna. Vulcan was delighted with her grace and beauty, and made for her a magic girdle, and the wonderful arrows of Cupid.
Joy and mirth always attend the goddess of beauty. Cupid, her son, the roguish god of love, is her constant companion, and he sends his arrows wherever she directs. Venus drives in a chariot drawn by graceful swans. ”

“ She is a gorgeous and powerful fly; and her costume, with its brown and yellow bands, shows a vague resemblance to that of the wasps. Our fashionable theorists have availed themselves of this brown and yellow to cite the Volucella as a striking instance of protective mimicry. Obliged, if not on her own behalf, at least on that of her family, to introduce herself as a parasite into the wasp's home, she resorts, they tell us, to trickery and craftily dons her victim's livery. Once inside the wasps' nest, she is taken for one of the inhabitants and attends quietly to her business. ”

“ Now we follow the musical little river Vologne as it tosses over its stony bed amid banks golden with yellow loosestrife, or gently ripples amid fair stretches of pasture starred with the grass of Parnassus. The perpetual music of rushing, tumbling, trickling water is delightful, and even in hot weather, if it is ever indeed hot here, the mossy banks and babbling streams must give a sense of coolness. ”

“ It is not easy to understand how a number of distinct beings can move in such perfect unison as to be frequently mistaken for a single animalcule. Yet so it is; this group of monads rolls round and round the drop of water, with the peculiar revolving or spinning movement which has given rise to its distinctive appellation of volvox, just as if it were a simple being. ”

“ I read men's thoughts upon their foreheads. My friend, societies do much, but at times one man arises who by a swift stroke accomplishes what societies are only meditating."
"You assume the air of a prophet."
"Well, time will tell. Now to our work. Volpetti will soon arrive, either alone or with a companion. He is to embark from Dover. When he reaches this inn, you and I shall enter his room and dispatch him before he has time to say 'Amen.' The Polipheme awaits us in the harbor. The captain is our brother and confederate. I trust Volpetti will come alone for so he will fall to me ”

“ The general plan of the Voluspo is fairly clear. Othin, chief of the gods, always conscious of impending disaster and eager for knowledge, calls on a certain “Volva,” or wise-woman, presumably bidding her rise from the grave. She first tells him of the past, of the creation of the world, the beginning of years, the origin of the dwarfs (at this point there is a clearly interpolated catalogue of dwarfs’ names, stanzas 10–16) , of the first man and woman, of the world-ash Yggdrasil, and of the first war, between the gods and the Vanir, or, in Anglicized form, the Wanes. ”

“ To thwart this vigilance, the real enemies need to be masters of the art of deceptive immobility and cunning disguise. But there is no deception about the Volucella grub. It comes and goes, openly, wheresoever it will; it looks round amongst the wasps for cells to suit it. What has it to make itself thus respected? Strength? Certainly not. It is a harmless creature, which the wasp could rip open with a blow of her shears, while a touch of the sting would mean lightning death. It is a familiar guest, to whom no denizen of a wasps' nest bears any ill will. ”

“ Volckman had seen the apparition was furnished as a drawing-room, and the room adjoining it, which was divided by a portière only from the larger apartment, she had converted for convenience sake into her bedroom. The first evening we sat it was about seven o'clock, and so light that we let down all the venetians, which, however, did little to remedy the evil. We had no cabinet, nor curtains, nor darkness, for it was full moon at the time, and the dancing, sparkling waves were quite visible through the interstices of the venetians. ”

“ VESUVIUS CLIMBING A VOLCANO Everybody who comes to Naples,—that is, everybody except the lady who fell from her horse the other day at Resina and injured her shoulder, as she was mounting for the ascent,—everybody, I say, goes up Vesuvius, and nearly every one writes impressions and descriptions of the performance. If you believe the tales of travelers, it is an undertaking of great hazard, an experience of frightful emotions. ”

“ The sun rose like a white-hot ball in the brazen sky and the men held to the rails, mouths open, and stared ahead into the safe open water, expecting every moment for the Vulcan to spatter skyward in a volcano of fire and steel. ”

“ Minerva resisted with success, though there remained on her body some marks of Vulcan’s passion, which she threw down upon earth wrapped up in wool. See: ♣Erichthonius. This disappointment in his love was repaired by Jupiter, who gave him one of the Graces. Venus is universally acknowledged to have been the wife of Vulcan; but her infidelity is well known, as well as her amours with Mars, which were discovered by Phœbus, and exposed to the gods by her own husband. See: Alectryon. The worship of Vulcan was well established, particularly in Egypt, at Athens, and at Rome. ”

“ Then he sent the blacksmith Vulcan to bind him with iron chains and fetter him to the rocks so that he could not move hand or foot.
Vulcan did not like to do this, for he was a friend of Prometheus, and yet he did not dare to disobey. And so the great friend of men, who had given them fire and lifted them out of their wretchedness and shown them how to live, was chained to the mountain peak; and there he hung, with the storm-winds whistling always around him, and the pitiless hail beating in his face, and fierce eagles shrieking in his ears and tearing his body with their cruel claws. ”

“ Völund resembles Vulcan, also, in that he is a clever smith and makes use of his talents to work out his revenge. Vulcan, lamed by a fall from Olympus, and neglected by Juno, whom he had tried to befriend, sends her a golden throne, which is provided with cunning springs to seize and hold her fast. Völund, hamstrung by the suggestion of Nidud’s queen, secretly murders her sons, and out of their eyes fashions marvelous jewels, which she unsuspectingly wears upon her breast until he reveals their origin. ”

“ When Volgá was seventeen he called his friends and companions together and formed a bodyguard of thirty youths save one, and Volgá himself was the thirtieth. He was their Chief, and took them with him on his journeys. He provided for them all and gave them abundance of food and drink, and of sugar sweetmeats many kinds. And warm clothes, too, he gave them, fur coats made of the skins of marten and sable and of panther. ”

“ As one mounts, the city drops away, and the long semicircle of hills behind it rises into sight, green rounded hills, bearing on their summits palms which stand out sharp and dark against the sky. With every convolution of the stairs one sees more and more of the great plain out of which Vesuvius rises,—the Campagna Felice, a purple flat, stretching from the base of the 19 volcano as far as that mountain chain which marks the limit of its power. Out of the mountains comes a fresh cool wind, and all the city sparkles in the sun. ”

“ Regarding Vesuvius both from the land and the sea, we note that it rises in solitary majesty from an extended base some thirty miles in circumference, and that it sweeps upwards in graceful curving lines until at a distance of about 3000 feet from sea level its summit is cleft into two peaks; that to the north being a rocky ridge which catches our eye as we gaze eastward from the heights of Sant’ Elmo or the Corso at Naples, the other point being the actual cone of the volcano itself. The upper part of the Mountain has in fact two aspects ”

“ Vulcan.
“The Crippled Artist God.”
“He made the gods their golden shoes,
And shod their steeds with brass.” STORY.
THE GOD OF FIRE.
“Those who labor
The sweaty forge, who edge the crooked scythe,
Bend stubborn steel, and harden gleaming armor,
Acknowledge Vulcan’s aid.”
—Prior.
Vulcan, the son of Jupiter, was born lame. He was flung from Olympus by his mother, Juno, who hated him for his deformity, and he fell into the sea, where the mother of Achilles found him. He made for her son a shield, which was a wonderfully clever piece of handiwork. ”