Volpone and Other Plays (73 page)

42.
is not warranted from being a solecism
: may well be an impropriety.

48.
Your Sporus
: Sporus was a youth much favoured by Nero, who dressed him as a woman, and eventually married him. The link is transvestism. Lady Would-be insisting that Peregrine is the ‘cunning courtesan' dressed up as a youth.

51.
Whitefriars nation
: Whitefriarswas a ‘liberty'without the jurisdiction of the City of London, and a noted haunt of prostitutes, criminals, etc.

v, ii     
[SCENE TWO]

22.
the French Hercules
: Gallic or Celtic god of eloquence.

v, i  89.
Bountijul bones!
This sarcastic aside refers to the miserliness of rv, vi Corbaccio's tip to Mosca.

v, i  
[SCENE ONE]

17.
This heat is life; ‘tis blood by this time!
Volpone is referring to the warming effect of the liquor as it enters his veins.

v,ii   93.
rope and dagger
: madmen, especially those in a frenzy of despair carried these (possibly as a means to suicide) in Elizabethan literature and the drama. See
Faerie Queene
, I, ix, and
The Spanish Tragedy
, iv, iv, when Hieronimo goes mad.

102.
Cestus
: marginal note by Jonson elucidating ‘the strange poetical girdle' – the
cestus
, or girdle, of Venus.

104.
Acrisius
: the father of Danaë, who imprisoned her in a tower, where Jove visited her as a shower of gold.

v, ii  
[SCENE TWO]

73.
Godso
: nineteenth-century editors took this as a contraction of
Cod's soul
, but modern scholars reckon it to be a euphemistic form of catso, a vulgar exclamation (from the Italian
cazzo
: penis).

v, iv  
[SCENB FOUR]

12–14.
moral emblems
: Volpone suggests that Corvino's name (‘Crow') is associated with moral fables such as the one in which the Crow, by too much talking, lets the cheese drop from his
beak, while the Fox watches all. The irony here is that Volpone me Fox,
is
watching Corvino's discomfiture.

II, ix  10.
Justinian
: the code of Roman law drawn up by the Emperor Justinian.

II, ix  
[SCENE SEVEN]

25.
crooked pins
, etc.: Volpone's description of Voltore's feigned fit accords with Jacobean accounts of bewitched persons. See notes in Herford-Simpson
Benjonson
, ix, pp. 731–2.

125.
mortifying
: humiliating; but also, in cooking, a word for keeping game till it is high, thus linking with the animal imagery throughout.

This appears only in the quarto text of 1612. Two passages are reprinted in
Timba, or Discoveries
.

[
Pertinax] Surly
: Sir Epicure calls him Pertinax (Latin: obstinate) which seems to reinforce the Elizabethan sense of
surly
as haughty, arrogant, or supercilious, rather than ill-humoured.
Gamester
: gambler, play-boy. For Surly's role, see the introduction, p.
22
.

I, i  3–4.
tick Jigs
: Subtle's vulgar suggestion alludes to Rabelais. Book IV, chapter 45 –
or figs
may be
Ficus morbus
, piles (F. H. Mares).

16.
livery-three-pound-thrum
: shabby, poorly paid drudge;
(livery
, uniform;
thrum
, coarse cloth).

18
vacations
: i.e. between the terms at the Inns of Court, which roughly corresponded to ‘the London season'.

25.
Pic-corner
: near Smithfield; famous for cooks' shops and for pigs prepared there for Bartholomew Fair. See p.
483
.

52–3.
chippings, dole-beer
: scraps of bread and beer ‘doled out' at great houses to the poor. Subtle is saying Face sold this free beer to wine-merchants instead.

64.
Thou vermin
, etc.: E. H. Duncan has shown that Subtle is here using an extended metaphor from alchemy to describe how he raised Face in the social scale. The image is of the systematic refining and preparation of the elixir or Philosopher's Stone from crude substances. The
dung
refers to the heat (that
‘equi clibanum/
The heat of horse-dung' mentioned by Subtle later), for which horse-manure was sometimes used, and which helped to achieve the first stage of the experiment. Subtle claims he has raised
vermin
(i.e. Face), his crude material
ta'en out of dung
, through the appropriate alchemical processes
{sublimation
and
exaltation)
to the point
{projection)
at which Face can turn base metals into gold - i.e. get gold from the ‘clients'. See
Publications of the Modern Language Associatim of America
, LXI (1946). p. 701.

74.
quarrtlling dimensions
: the limits within which a quarrel can be
conducted with safety. See II, vi, 65–9 and iv, ii, 16–33. The reference is to ‘quarrelling by the book', the rules of which Kastril wishes to learn.

79.
projection
: successful completion of an experiment;
fly out
i'
the projection
means to fail at the very last moment – when success is in sight.

93.
Paul's
: precincts of St Paul's Cathedral, a meeting-place where bills and notices were posted.

99.
Gamaliel Ratsey
: a highway-man, executed in 1605.

106.
lying too heavy 0' the basket
: eating more than his share of the prisoners' rations.

112–13.
statute
, etc.: statute against witchcraft in Henry VIII's thirty-third year, i.e. 1541.

114.
launa' ring gold
: washing off the surface of coins in acid;
barbing
: clipping coins.

165.
sin' the King came in
: i.e. in seven years (James I succeeded to the throne in 1603).

170.
Don Provost
: the hangman who was entitled to the criminals' clothes.

175.
Claridiana
: heroine of a popular prose novel.

I, ii  17–20.
Read
: Dr Simon Read was convicted in 1608 of magic practices on behalf of a young clerk like Dapper, hence the analogy.

24.
court-hand: the
official legal style of handwriting; different for different documents as in line 54 below.

46.
Clim-o'-the-Cloughs
, etc.: heroes of romantic ballads.

56.
Greek Xenophon
: ‘Testament' in earlier quarto edition; changed in view of strict Jacobean laws about profanity.

69.
assumpsit
: legal term for an oral promise involving an initial payment.

109.
Holland, Isaac
: probably well-known gamblers.

128.
born with a caul
: the
caul
is the inner membrane enclosing the foetus before birth, and a portion of it sometimes covers the head of a new-born child. It was a popular fallacy that this was a good omen, especially against death by drowning.

I, iii  
5.free of the Grocers
: a member of the Grocers' Company, or guild, i.e. no longer merely an apprentice.

28–31.
lily-pots
, etc.: tobacconists' shops in Jacobean times were places where customers could sit and smoke as well as merely purchase tobacco – and, the art being a novelty, thev could also be instructed in smoking. The
lily-pot is
an ornamental jar; the
maple-block
was the wooden slab on which the tobacco was
shredded; the
tongs
were for holding an ember or piece of charcoal to light one's pipe – and
the fire of juniper
was kept alight in the shop for this purpose. Drugger's shop, thus equipped, has pretensions to grandeur as a smoking academy.

36.
of the clothing of his company
: wear the livery of his guild (i.e. the Grocers' Company), as an office-holder.

37.
called to the scarlet
: made a Sheriff, a higher officer, gowned in scarlet.

66. Mathlai
, etc.: the names of spirits are taken from
Elementa Magica
by Pietro d'Albano.

II, i  
[SCENE ONE]

1.
Come on, sir
…: the action is continuous from Act One.

2.
Novo Orbe
: the New World (metaphor for untold riches).

17.
Madam Augusta's
: evidently a brothel.

33.
Lothbury
: a London street where copper-smiths lived.

35.
Devonshire, Cornwall
: the principal English counties where tinand copper were mined.

36.
make them perfect Indies
: turn their copper and tin into gold.

39–40.
Mercury
: quicksilver;
Venus
: copper;
Moon
: silver;
Sun
: gold

48.
elixir
: Mammon uses the word in a double sense:
(a)
in its alchemical meaning of the substance which would turn all metals into gold, i.e. the Philosopher's Stone, etc., and
(b)
in its medical sense of a liquid
(elixir vitae)
capable of prolonging life indefinitely. Many people thought the two elixirs to be identical, as Mammon clearly does here, and this gives free range to his imagination. See E. B. Partridge
The Broken Compass
, pp.
132–4
.

55.
fifth age
: Mammon is referring to the commonplace of the Seven Ages of Man: see Jaques' speech in
As You Like It
.

62. Pickt-hatch
: low district of London frequented by whores and pick-pockets.

63–9.
the secret
, etc.: Jonson is satirizing here claims about the Stone's powers put forward in all earnest by the alchemists. The powers attributed to the Stone are taken from Arnold of Villa Nova's
Rosarium Philosophorum
.

71.
the players
: the London actors had to close their playhouses whenever the plague became dangerously virulent, and they would therefore be especially grateful to anyone capable of ‘frighting the plague out of the kingdom' and thus guaranteeing their livelihood.

81–3.
Moses, Solomon
, etc.: the belief that Adam understood the mysteries of the Stone is a commonplace in alchemical writings, and occurs in Paracelsus, who also mentions Moses' possession of the elixir. Fifteenth-century manuscripts exist of an alchemical treatise attributed to Solomon.

89–104.
Jason's fleece
, etc.: This passage Professor Duncan styles ‘a barrage of mythological-alchemical erudition', and it lists the connexions alchemists traced between mythology and their own science. Duncan points out that ‘the legend that the true object of Jason's quest was an alchemical treatise or recipe is at least as old as the tenth century', and he believes that Jonson may have gone to Nicholas Flamel's
Hieroglyphicall Figures
(not translated until 1624) for the alchemists' interpretation of details in the myth as symbols for materials and processes in alchemy.
Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, LXI
, p. 703.

92.
Pythagoras' thigh
: see
Volpone
, I, ii, 27 for reference to ‘Pythagoras' golden thigh'.

92.
Pandora's tub
: this (more usually a box or jar) contained all the ills and diseases of mankind which Pandora unwittingly released.

96.
dragon's teeth
: the equation of these with
mercury sublimate
in alchemy, seems to be a Jonsonian invention as is the identification of Jason's helmet as an
alembic
(the top part of a distilling vessel). See Duncan's article.

102.
Demogorgon
: in Boccaccio's
Genealogia Deorum
he is the ancestor of the gods. Alchemically he was interpreted as Chaos, as the
quinta essentia
, and as the
parentum omnium rerum
.

II, ii  
[SCENE TWO]

Stage direction
: i.e. they pass from fore-stage to the main acting area which represents the interior of the house.

44.
Elephantis, Aretine
: both seem to have written poems which were accompamed by pornographic pictures. Elephantis is known only because of references in Suetonius's life of Tiberius and in Martial. For Aretine, see
Volpone
III, iv, 96.

77.
Apicuis' diet, etc
.: Jonson took many of the exotic delicacies from Lampridius's
Vita Heliogabali
.

87.
be a knight
: contemporary joke against King James's indiscriminate and mercenary creation of knights.

II, iii  32.
Ulen Spiegel
: Subtle's name for his ‘servant' Face: originally the knave-hero of a popular German jest-book.

33.
aludels
, etc.: In this passage Jonson uses accurately a number of alchemical terms, a fact which would be appreciated by only a
small, sophisticated part of his audience. For many Jacobeans, as for most of us, the expressions would sound impressive jargon merely. Compare once more Volpone's spiel, II, ii (pp.
79–85
); see note on Alchemy pp.
179–84
.

49.
pious uses
: Mammon here expresses a perhaps sincere wish for lasting fame dirough charitable acts performed with the Stone; but compare the sensual delights and fantasies he proposed to Surly earlier, and his earlier speeches to Dol.

185.
Your Stone
, etc.: Surly, the critic of alchemy, no less than Subtle, the bogus practitioner, uses correcdy terms from contemporary alchemical lore.