Volpone and Other Plays (26 page)

VOLTORE
: Yes, I do know it well, it is my hand;

But all that it contains is false.

BONARIO
:                                 O practice!

2ND AVOCATORE
: What maze is this!

1ST AVOCATORE
:                 Is he not guilty then,

Whom you, there, name the parasite?

VOLTORE
:                 Grave fathers,

No more than his good patron, old Volpone.

4TH AVOCATORE
: Why, he is dead.

VOLTORE
:                 O, no, my honoured fathers.

He lives –

1ST AVOCATORE
: How! lives?

VOLTORE
:                 Lives.

2ND AVOCATORE
:                 This is subtler yet!

3RD AVOCATORE
: You said he was dead.

VOLTORE
:                 Never.

3RD AVOCATORE
:                             You said so!

CORVINO
:                                  I heard so.

50        
4TH AVOCATORE
: Here comes the gentleman, make him way.

[
Enter
MOSCA
.]

3RD AVOCATORE
:                                  A stool!

4TH AVOCATORE
: A proper man and, were Volpone dead,

A fit match for my daughter.

3RD AVOCATORE
:          Give him way.

VOLPONE
[
aside to
MOSCA
]: Mosca, I was almost lost; the advocate

Had betrayed all; but now it is recovered.

All's o' the hinge again. Say I am living.

MOSCA
: What busy knave is this? Most reverend fathers,

I sooner had attended your grave pleasures,

But that my order for the funeral

Of my dear patron did require me –

VOLPONE
[
aside
]:                  Mosca!

MOSCA
: Whom I intend to bury like a gentleman.

VOLPONE
[
aside
]: Ay, quick, and cozen me of all.

60    
2ND AVOCATORE
:                 Still stranger!

More intricate!

1ST AVOCATORE
: And come about again!

4TH AVOCATORE
[
aside
]: It is a match, my daughter is bestowed.

MOSCA
[
aside to
VOLPONE
]: Will you gi' me half?

VOLPONE
[
aside
]:                 First I'll be hanged.

MOSCA
[
aside
]:                       I know

Your voice is good, cry not so loud.

1ST AVOCATORE
:                 Demand

The advocate. Sir, did not you affirm

Volpone was alive?

VOLPONE
:                 Yes, and he is;

This gent 'man told me so. [
Aside to
MOSCA
] Thou shalt have half.

MOSCA
: Whose drunkard is this same? Speak, some that know him.

I never saw his face. [
Aside to
VOLPONE
] I cannot now

Afford it you so cheap.

VOLPONE
[
aside
]:                 No?

70    
1ST AVOCATORE
[
to
VOLTORE
]: What say you?

VOLTORE
: The officer told me.

VOLPONE
:                 I did, grave fathers,

And will maintain he lives with mine own life,

And that this creature told me. [
Aside
] I was born

With all good stars my enemies!

MOSCA
:                 Most grave fathers,

If such an insolence as this must pass

Upon me, I am silent; 'twas not this

For which you sent, I hope.

2ND AVOCATORE
:        Take him away.

VOLPONE
[
aside
]: Mosca!

3RD AVOCATORE
:      Let him be whipped.

VOLPONE
[
aside
]:                 Wilt thou betray me?

Cozen me?

3RD AVOCATORE
: And taught to bear himself

80        Toward a person of his rank.

[
The
OFFICERS
seize
VOLPONE
.]

4TH AVOCATORE
:            Away!

MOSCA
: I humbly thank your fatherhoods.

VOLPONE
[
aside
]:                 Soft, soft. Whipped?

And lose all that I have? If I confess,

It cannot be much more.

4TH AVOCATORE
[
to
MOSCA
]: Sir, are you married?

VOLPONE
[
aside
]: They' ll be allied anon; I must be resolute:

The Fox shall here
uncase
.

He puts off his disguise
.

MOSCA
:            Patron!

VOLPONE
:                 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.

MOSCA
:                 Why, patron!

VOLPONE
: I am Volpone, and this is my knave;

90        This, his own knave; this, avarice's fool;

This, a
chimera
of wittol, fool, and knave.

And, reverend fathers, since we all can hope

Nought but a sentence, let's not now despair it.

You hear me brief.

CORVINO
:      May it please your fatherhoods –

COMMENDATORE
:                 Silence.

1ST AVOCATORE
: The knot is now undone by miracle!

2ND AVOCATORE
: Nothing can be more clear.

3RD AVOCATORE
:                 Or can more prove

These innocent.

1ST AVOCATORE
: Give 'em their liberty.

BONARIO
: Heaven could not long let such gross crimes be hid.

2ND AVOCATORE
: If this be held the highway to get riches,

May I be poor!

100 
3RD AVOCATORE
: This's not the gain, but torment.

1ST AVOCATORE
: These possess wealth as sick men possess fevers,

Which trulier may be said to possess them.

2ND AVOCATORE
: Disrobe that parasite.

CORVINO, MOSCA
:                 Most honoured fathers –

1ST AVOCATORE
: Can you plead aught to stay the course of justice?

If you can, speak.

CORVINO
,
VOLTORE
: We beg favour.

CELIA
:                 And mercy.

1ST AVOCATORE
: You hurt your innocence, suing for the guilty.

Stand forth; and first the parasite. You appear

T' have been the chiefest minister, if not plotter,

In all these lewd impostures; and now, lastly,

110      Have with your impudence abused the court,

And habit of a gentleman of Venice,

Being a fellow of no birth or blood.

For which our sentence is, first thou be whipped;

Then live perpetual prisoner in our galleys.

VOLPONE
: I thank you for him.

MOSCA
:                 
Bane
to thy wolfish nature.

1ST AVOCATORE
: Deliver him to the
Saffi
.

[
MOSCA
is led out
.]

                                       Thou,
Volpone
,

By blood and rank a gentleman, canst not fall

Under like censure; but our judgement on thee

Is that thy substance all be straight confiscate

120      To the hospital of the
Incurabili
.

And since the most was gotten by imposture,

By feigning lame, gout, palsy, and such diseases,

Thou art to lie in prison, cramped with irons,

Till thou be'st sick and lame indeed. Remove him.

VOLPONE
: This is called
mortifying
of a Fox.

1ST AVOCATORE
: Thou, Voltore, to take away the scandal

Thou hast giv' n all worthy men of thy profession,

Art banished from their fellowship, and our state.

Corbaccio, bring him near! We here possess

130      Thy son of all thy state, and confine thee

To the monastery of
San Spirito
;

Where, since thou knew'st not how to live well here,

Thou shalt be learned to die well.

CORBACCIO
[
not hearing
]:         Ha! What said he?

COMMENDATORE
: You shall know anon, sir.

1ST AVOCATORE
:                 Thou, Corvino, shalt

Be straight embarked from thine own house, and rowed

Round about Venice, through the Grand Canal,

Wearing a cap with fair long ass's ears

Instead of horns; and so to mount, a paper

Pinned on thy breast, to the
Berlina
–

CORVINO
:                 Yes,

140      And have mine eyes beat out with stinking fish,

Bruised fruit, and rotten eggs – 'Tis well, I'm glad

I shall not see my shame yet.

1ST AVOCATORE
:        And to expiate

Thy wrongs done to thy wife, thou art to send her

Home to her father, with her dowry trebled.

And these are all your judgements.

ALL
:                 Honoured fathers!

1ST AVOCATORE
: Which may not be revoked. Now you begin,

When crimes are done and past, and to be punished,

To think what your crimes are. Away with them!

Let all that see these vices thus rewarded,

Take heart, and love to study 'em. 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 punished by the laws,

He yet doth hope there is no suff' ring due

For any fact which he hath done ' gainst you.

If there be, censure him; here he doubtful stands.

If not, fare jovially, and clap your hands.

THE END

The Alchemist
was first acted at the Globe Theatre by the King's Men in 1610, probably with Richard Burbage as Face and John Lowin as Sir Epicure Mammon. It was first published in quarto in 1612 and reprinted in the Folio
Workes
four years later. Soon after its London opening, the King's Men took the play to Oxford, and it was also acted in Dublin. At the Restoration, the comedy was quickly revived, and it was popular throughout the eighteenth century. Colley Cibber played Subtle ‘with great art', and Theophilus Cibber overplayed Abel Drugger. In 1743 David Garrick first played Drugger, and in the twenty-nine years from 1747 to 1776 in which Drury Lane was, under his management, the greatest theatre in Europe, he appeared each season as the little tobacconist. His acting version cut many of the alchemical terms, lines like Mammon's ‘the unctuous paps of a fat pregnant sow' were expurgated, and Abel Drugger became the leading part. In the nineteenth century the play was probably considered too coarse for revival, though Charles Dickens (whose amateur productions of
Every Man in his Humour
in the years 1845–8 were notable) thought of producing the play for charity in 1848. In 1899 William Poel's Elizabethan Stage Society mounted the comedy at Blackfriars, and in 1902 at Cambridge, where in 1914 it was acted by the Marlowe Society with the future Professor Sir Dennis Robertson as Subtle. It was also acted by the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1916, by the Phoenix Society for two performances in 1923, and at the Malvern Festival of 1932 (with Cedric Hardwicke as Drugger). In 1947 the Old Vic Company gave the play an eighteenth-century setting; Ralph Richardson was Face and Alec Guinness Drugger. Tyrone Guthrie directed the Liverpool Old Vic Company in a modern-dress revival of the play during the Playhouse repertory season, 1944–5; and at the Edinburgh Festival of 1950 he directed
The Atom Doctor
by Eric Link-later, which turned out to be an adaptation of
The Alchemist
set
in modern Edinburgh. During the Old Vic season 1962–3 Guthrie again produced the play in modern dress, with contemporary ‘gags'; Leo McKern was Subtle, and Lee Montague Face. In 1961 Peter Dews directed a brilliant television version from the B.B.C.'s Midland Studios, and in 1964 there was a production by Frank Hauser at the Oxford Playhouse.