Volpone and Other Plays (72 page)

35.
dogmatical silence
: Pythagoreans were expected to maintain a five years' silence.

46.
nativity-pie
: Puritans avoided the Catholic implications of Christmas by saying ‘the Nativity' or ‘Christ-tide.' See
The Alchemist
, III, ii, 43 (p.
246
).

10.
bought at St Mark
: bought at one of the celebrated goldsmiths' shops in the square of St Mark.

21.
Your love hath taste in this
: I can sense from this plate how great your love is.

53.
speak to every cause, and things mere contraries
: act as advocate in any case, and support opposite positions.

58.
take provoking gold on either hand, and put it up
: ‘to provoke' is to ask a court to take up one's case: Voltore accepts fees from both parties in a case, and pockets it himself.

46.
from his brain
: Mosca here describes correctly (according to Jacobean medical views) the final symptoms of apoplexy - fluid flowing from the brain and visible in the eyes.

73.
aurum palpabile, if not potabile
: a play on words by Corbaccio who in Latin calls his ‘bag of bright chequins' touchable but not drinkable gold -
aurum potabile
being a medicine containing gold particles.

i, v 125–6.…
have all their charge, when he goes out, when he comes in, examined
: every time Corvino enters or leaves his house, he
interrogates the ten guards who have to watch Celia and to spy on each other.

128.
My brother
: i.e. Bonario, Corbaccio's son. The allusion is to Jacob cheating Esau of Isaac's blessing.

129.
Maintain mine own shape still
: keep up the pretence of being a dying man.

II, i  [SCBNB ONE]

10.
with Ulysses
: like Ulysses - the great Homeric traveller and observer whom Sir Politic here lightly dismisses.

17.
my lord Ambassador
: i.e. the English Ambassador to Venice (Sir Henry Wotton).

30.
the spider and the bee
: insects who are natural enemies (proverbial).

34.
lion's whelping in the Tower
: King James I owned a lioness which twice gave birth to cubs in the Tower of London: in 1604 and 1605. Sir Politic sees this as another omen.

36.
the fires at Berwick
: in 1604 apparitions were reported fighting on the Scottish border.

37.
the new star
: in 1604 also Kepler discovered a new star in the constellation Serpentarius.

38.
meteors
: any disruption in the Elizabethan heavens suggested imminent corresponding social or political disorder.

40.
porpoises
: a porpoise, and (soon after) a whale were seen in England in January 1606; Jonson's audience would appreciate these references, but the dramatic point is Sir Politic's persistent superstitious interest in them.

49.
the Stode fteet
: Stode - a port at the mouth of the Elbe, where the ships of the English Merchant Adventurers were based.

50.
the Archdukes
: the joint title given to the Infanta Isabella and her husband Albert when they were granted the Spanish Netherlands by her father, Philip II of Spain.

51.
Spinola's Whale
: Ambrosio Spinola commanded the Spanish Army in the Netherlands from 1604. Sir Politic thinks the whale must be one of his secret weapons; rumours show he was not alone in this.

55.
Mas' Stone
: Master Stone, a clown, famous for his quips, who was flogged for making fun of the Lord Admiral.

90.
Mamuluchi
: the Mamelukes, a military class, who seized power ill Egypr c. 1250, and ruled till 1517; they held power until 1811.

101.
though I live out, free from the active torrent
: though I am not involved in public affairs.

113.
vulgor grammar
: grammar-book or guide to speaking a language
such as
The Italian Schoolmaster, containing Rules for the perfect pronouncing of the Italian Tongue
(1597). Grammar-books then, as often now, used commonplaces and proverbial sayings as exercises for translation. These are the common ‘rules' (I: iii, above) which Sir Politic has laboriously memorized.

4.
Mountebanks
: from the Italian
monta in banco
, where
banco
means a platform or bench. A Mountebank was a travelling quack who, by persuasive sales-talk and fairground patter, got the bystanders to buy his medicines, as Sir Politic correctly explains to Peregrine.

22.
Scoto of Mantua
: a professional actor, leading member of an Italian troupe, and known in London chiefly as a juggler and sleight-of-hand performer in Elizabethan times. In England his name was proverbially linked with skill and deceit.

46.
Cardinal Bembo's - cook
: One presumes that cook is here an euphemism for mistress. Cardinal Bembo was a great Italian humanist.

92.
malignant humours
: throughout his speech Volpone's medical reference is to the theory of humours, the physiological theory derived from Hippocrates and current throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The four elements in the universe were earth, air, fire, and water. Everything was made out of these, including Man in whom the elements took the form of four fluid ‘humours' - blood (hot and moist), phlegm (cold and moist), choler or yellow bile (hot and dry), and melancholy or black bile (cold and dry). The balance within any individual of these four humours produced what we would call a well-adjusted personality, but imbalance meant that one humour predominated to produce a particular temperament: hence the adjectives sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, and melancholic. Jonson's early comethes,
Every Man in His Humour
and
Every Man out of His Humour
used these physiological traits as psychological ones: see the General Introduction p.
10
.

114.
Broughton's books
: the works of Hugh Broughton (1549–1617), a Puritan divine and scholar, whose learned works are also satirized by Jonson in
The Alchemist
, II, iii, 238, (p.
230
).

123.
Raymund Lully
: a metheval Catalan scholar (1235–1315) believed (erroneously) to have been an alchemist and (equally erroneously) to have discovered the elixir. See note on
The Alchemist
, II, v, 8.

124.
Danish Gonswart
: even Herford and the Simpsons could not identify this figure satisfactorily.

125.
Paracelsus
: the pseudonym of Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493–1541), the physician and alchemist, who carried his special drugs in the pommel of his long sword.

133.
the signiory of the Sanita
: the official board in Venice for licensing medical men.

234.
like virginal jacks
: Jonson seems to use jacks wrongly as the keys of a virginal (a spinet or harpsichord), but the technical point is unimportant.

II, iii  3.
Signior Flaminio
: Flaminio Scale was a well-known commedia dell'arte performer.

4.
Franciscina
: the usual name for the stock character of the amorous maid-servant in the improvised commedia dell'arte.

8.
the Pantalone di Besogniosi
: Pantalone was the jealous old Venetian always cuckolded in the commedia dell'arte: the role that Corvino obsessively dreads.

II, iv  [
SCENE TWO
]

9.
my liver melts
: traditionally the liver (now the heart) was the seatof violent or romande feelings, such as jealousy or love.

33.
I would escape your epilogue
: I would prefer not to end as you did (getting beaten by Corvino); the lines also point, with irony, to Mosca's later scheme to deceive Volpone, and, with greater irony, to the eventual downfall of them both.

II, v  [
SCENE THREE
]

12.
toad-stone
: the precious stone popularly thought to be between the eyes of a toad, and imagined to have special qualities as an antidote against poisons.

24.
save your dowry
: if a wife was unfaithful, her dowry reverted completely to her husband.

24.
I am a Dutchman
: you must think I am a Dutchman, i.e. complacent and not like an Italian.

55.
a conjurer that had heedless left his circle's safety ere his devil was laid
: a magician who wished to conjure up a devil used to draw a magic circle within which he remained protected until the devil was ‘laid' - i.e. sent back to Hell.

70.
make thee an anatomy
: ‘anatomize you' - i.e. ‘analyze your moral qualities in detail'; Corvino seems to extend the metaphor to mean ‘dissect you like an anatomical exhibit'.

II,vi  59.
God's so
: here probably God's soul, but see note on v, iv, 73.

III, i  [
SCBNE ONE
]

22.
lick away a moth
: this extends the suggestion of dog-like fawning on the patron.

III, ii  [
SCENE TWO
]

47.
the golden mediocrity
: Lady Would-be's malapropism for ‘the golden mean' of moderation, a principle to which none of the legacy-hunters adhere.

79–81.
Petrarch
, etc.: Lady Would-be correctly names the major Italian poets, including Giovanni Guarini (whose
Pastor Fido
or
Faithful Shepherd
she is carrying with her), but Pietro Aretino, who wrote scurrilous and obscene satires, and Cieco di Hadria - ‘the Blind Man of Hadria' - do not belong in this great company.

III, vi 60.
prints
: the same pornographic illustrations to poems by Aretino m, vii that Lady Would-be called ‘a little obscene' - III, iv, 97.

153.
the blue Proteus
: the god who looked after Neptune's sea-flocks and who could change into any ‘Protean shape' he wished; ‘blue' suggests the sea, and is the Latin ‘caeruleus'.

153.
the hornèd flood
: the river Achelous which fought with Hercules in his three assumed shapes - bull; serpent; half-man, half-ox.

161.
the entertainment for the great Valois
: a masque in Venice in honour of the future Henry III of France (historical date: 1574).

162.
young Antinous
: the favourite of the Emperor Hadrian and famous for his youthful good looks. Volpone equates his own youth and beauty with sex-appeal.

165.
Come, my Celia
…: the educated members of the audience would recognize that the opening lines are adapted from Catullus's
‘Vivamus, mea Lesbia
…' Though the song is beautiful, it is commending sensuality; Volpone's insidious argument is that time is passing, that youth will not last, and that illicit love is illicit only when it is discovered. Compare the tempting speeches of Comus to the Lady in Milton's masque.

192.
Than that the brave Egyptian queen caroused
: Pliny records that Cleopatra once, as an extravagant gesture, drank priceless pearls dissolved in vinegar. Volpone suggests that Celia does the same with a whole rope of pearls.

193.
a carbuncle may put out both the eyes of our St Mark
: perhaps a gem exceeding both those set in the statue of St Mark - or, possibly, a gem which would dazzle even our patron saint of Venice

195.
Lollia Paulina
: mistress of the Emperor Claudius, (eventually murdered by Agrippina); see Tacitus,
Annals
, Book 12, Chapter I ff. and Suetonius'
Claudius
, Chapter 25; the point is that Volpone sees her (as he sees everyone) as someone to be ‘bought' - a prostitute.

215.
panthers' breath
: this reference is not just exotic; panthers were thought to attract their prey by sweet and alluring breath.

221.
Ovid's tales
: the
Metamorphoses
, which deal with transformations - Zeus, disguised as a bull, carried off Europa; Erycinc is another name for Venus.

262.
Nestor's hernia
: Nestor, ancient and wise Greek in
The Iliad
. His hernia (an invention of Juvenal's) here suggests sexual incapacity.

III, viii 15.
since we have lived like Grecians
: since we have led dissolute, self-indulgent lives. London, or Troynovant, was, according to tradition, founded by a Trojan, and the English sided with Troy in retelling the stories of antiquity.

17.
I do feel the brand
: branding on the forehead was a common punishment for certain crimes.

19.
Mine ears are boring
: I feel (in imagination) my ears being slit (or even cut off).

III, ix  36.
stated in a double hope
: set in a doubly advantageous position (with Corbaccio murdered, Bonario disinherited, Volpone would get their money and bequeath all to Voltore).

IV, i   [
SCENE ONE
]

26.
Nick Machiavett and Monsieur Bodin
: Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) who wrote
The Prince
, a realistic analysis of political power; Jean Bodin (1530–96), whose work advocated religious toleration, on the realistic grounds that religious unity could never be achieved within a state.

28.
silver fork
: forks were a novelty in England.

40.
Contarini
: Cardinal Contarini (1483–1542), author of a book about Venice.

74.
the Great Council… the Forty… the Ten
: the Venetian governing bodies in order of importance.

79.
such as they are put in their mouths what they should say, sometimes, as well as greater
: sometimes
commendatori
and the like are just as influential in telling administrators what to say as great men are.

iv, ii 
35.
The Courtier: II Cortegiano
by Baldassar Castiglione (published iv, ii 1528) was the great manual on civilized conduct; Lady Would-be's own behaviour falls short of her reading.