Volpone: Or, The Fox

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Yale University Press, 1919 - Drama - 254 pages
This Revels Student Edition, with a carefully modernized text, presents new material about "Volpone" 's debt to the popular Reynard beast epic and Italian "commedia dell 'art" and discusses its mockery of greed in relation to two Renaissance perversions of the myth of a Golden Age. Referring to famous productions, it pays particular attention to decisions that must be made whenever the play is performed.

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Page 156 - Ipse videretur sibi nequior : omnis enim res, Virtus, fama, decus, divina humanaque pulchris Divitiis parent ; quas qui construxerit ille Clarus erit, fortis, justus.
Page 216 - Her lips were red, and one was thin, Compared to that was next her chin. Some bee had stung it newly; But Dick, her eyes so guard her face, I durst no more upon them gaze Than on the sun in July.
Page 51 - Well, I am in a humour at this time to make a present of the small quantity my coffer contains ; to the rich in courtesy, and to the poor for God's sake. Wherefore now mark : I...
Page xxxi - And howsoever some may squeamishly cry out, that all endeavour of learning and sharpness in these transitory devices, especially where it steps beyond their little, or (let me not wrong them,) no brain at all, is superfluous ; I am contented, these fastidious stomachs should leave my full tables, and enjoy at home their clean empty trenchers, fittest for such airy tastes ; where perhaps a few Italian herbs, picked up and made into a sallad, may find sweeter acceptance than all the most nourishing...
Page 142 - Nam ceterae neque temporum sunt neque aetatum omnium neque locorum ; at haec studia adulescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant, adversis perfugium ac solacium praebent, delectant domi, non impediunt foris, pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur.
Page xxvii - Upon their actions : and that this was one I make no scruple.— But the holy synod Have been in prayer and meditation for it; And 'tis reveal'd no less to them than me, That casting of money is most lawful.
Page 9 - I take him, is no subject for pride and ignorance to exercise their railing rhetoric upon. But it will here be hastily answered, that the writers of these days are other things; that not only their manners, but their natures, are inverted, and nothing remaining...
Page xxvi - The Fox, the Alchemist, and Silent Woman, Done by Ben Jonson, and outdone by no man.
Page 201 - That he thought not Bartas a Poet, but a Verser, because he wrote not fiction. " He cursed Petrarch for redacting verses to Sonnets ; which he said were like that Tirrant's bed, wher some who where too short were racked, others too long cut short.
Page 179 - There was great execution done lately upon Stone the fool, who was well whipped in Bridewell, for a blasphemous speech, " that there went sixty fools into Spaine, besides my Lord Admiral and his two sons.

About the author (1919)

Born in 1572, Ben Jonson rejected his father's bricklaying trade and ran away from his apprenticeship to join the army. He returned to England in 1592, working as an actor and playwright. In 1598, he was tried for murder after killing another actor in a duel, and was briefly imprisoned. One of his first plays, Every Man Out of His Humor (1599) had fellow playwright William Shakespeare as a cast member. His success grew with such works as Volpone (1605) and The Alchemist (1610) and he was popular at court, frequently writing the Christmas masque. He is considered a very fine Elizabethan poet. In some anti-Stratfordian circles he is proposed as the true author of Shakespeare's plays, though this view is not widely accepted. Jonson was appointed London historian in 1628, but that same year, his life took a downward turn. He suffered a paralyzing stroke and lost favor at court after an argument with architect Inigo Jones and the death of King James I. Ben Jonson died on August 6, 1637.

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