But here has been Corbaccio,
Here has been Voltore, here were others too –
I cannot number ’em, they were so many –
All gaping here for legacies; but I,
Taking the vantage of his naming you,
30 ‘Signior Corvino, Signior Corvino, ’took
Paper, and pen, and ink, and there I asked him
Whom he would have his heir? ‘Corvino.’Who
Should be executor? ‘Corvino.’And
To any question he was silent to,
I still interpreted the nods he made,
Through weakness, for consent; and sent home th’others,
Nothing bequeathed them but to cry and curse.
They embrace.
CORVINO: O, my dear Mosca. Does he not perceive us?
MOSCA: No more than a blind harper. He knows no man,
40 No face of friend, nor name of any servant,
Who ’t was that fed him last, or gave him drink;
Not those he hath begotten, or brought up,
Can he remember
CORVINO: Has he children?
MOSCA: Bastards,
Some dozen, or more, that he begot on beggars,
Gypsies, and Jews, and black-moors when he was drunk.
Knew you not that, sir? ’Tis the common fable,
The dwarf, the fool, the eunuch are all his;
He’s the true father of his family,
In all save me – but he has given ’em nothing.
50 CORVINO: That’s well, that’s well. Art sure he does not hear us?
MOSCA: Sure, sir? why, look you, credit your own sense. –
[He shouts at VOLPONE.]
The pox approach and add to your diseases,
If it would send you hence the sooner, sir!
For your incontinence, it hath deserved it
Throughly and throughly, and the plague to boot!
(You may come near, sir.) Would you would once close
Those filthy eyes of yours that flow with slime
Like two frog-pits, and those same hanging cheeks,
Covered with hide instead of skin (Nay, help, sir)
60 That look like frozen dish-clouts set on end.
CORVINO: Or, like an old smoked wall, on which the rain
Ran down in streaks.
MOSCA: Excellent, sir, speak out.
You may be louder yet; a culverin
Discharged in his ear would hardly bore it.
CORVINO: His nose is like a common sewer, still running.
MOSCA: ’Tis good! And what his mouth?
CORVINO: A very draught.
MOSCA: O, stop it up –
CORVINO: By no means.
MOSCA: Pray you, let me.
Faith I could stifle him rarely with a pillow,
As well as any woman that should keep him.
70 CORVINO: Do as you will, but I’ll be gone.
MOSCA: Be so.
It is your presence makes him last so long.
CORVINO: I pray you, use no violence.
MOSCA: No, sir? Why?
Why should you be thus scrupulous, pray you, sir?
CORVINO: Nay, at your discretion.
MOSCA: Well, good sir, be gone.
CORVINO: I will not trouble him now to take my pearl?
MOSCA: Puh! nor your diamond. What a needless care
Is this afflicts you! Is not all here yours?
Am not I here, whom you have made your creature?
That owe my being to you?
CORVINO: Grateful Mosca!
80 Thou art my friend, my fellow, my companion,
My partner, and shalt share in all my fortunes.
MOSCA: Excepting one.
CORVINO: What’s that?
MOSCA: Your gallant wife, sir.
[Exit CORVINO.]
Now is he gone; we had no other means
To shoot him hence but this.
VOLPONE: My divine Mosca!
Thou hast today outgone thyself.
Another knocks.
Who’s there?
I will be troubled with no more. Prepare
Me music, dances, banquets, all delights;
The Turk is not more sensual in his pleasures
Than will Volpone.
[Exit MOSCA.]
Let me see: a pearl!
90 A diamond! plate! chequins! Good morning’s purchase.
Why, this is better than rob churches, yet,
Or fat, by eating once a month a man.
[Enter MOSCA.]
Who is ’t?
MOSCA: The beauteous lady would-be, sir,
Wife to the English knight, Sir Politic Would-be,
(This is the style, sir, is directed me)
Hath sent to know how you have slept tonight,
And if you would be visited?
VOLPONE: Not now.
Some three hours hence, –
MOSCA: I told the squire so much.
VOLPONE: When I am high with mirth and wine, then, then.
100 ‘Fore heaven, I wonder at the desperate valour
Of the bold English, that they dare let loose
Their wives to all encounters!
MOSCA: Sir, this knight
Had not his name for nothing; he is politic,
And knows, howe’er his wife affect strange airs,
She hath not yet the face to be dishonest.
But had she Signior Corvino’s wife’s face –
VOLPONE: Has she so rare a face?
MOSCA: O, sir, the wonder,
The blazing star of Italy! a wench
O’the first year! a beauty ripe as harvest!
110 Whose skin is whiter than a swan, all over!
Than silver, snow, or lilies! a soft lip,
Would tempt you to eternity of kissing!
And flesh that melteth in the touch to blood!
Bright as your gold! and lovely as your gold!
VOLPONE: Why had not I known this before?
MOSCA: Alas, sir,
Myself but yesterday discovered it.
VOLPONE: How might I see her?
MOSCA: O, not possible;
She’s kept as warily as is your gold,
Never does come abroad, never takes air
120 But at a window. All her looks are sweet
As the first grapes or cherries, and are watched
As near as they are.
VOLPONE: I must see her –
MOSCA: Sir,
There is a guard, of ten spies thick, upon her;
All his whole household; each of which is set
Upon his fellow, and have all their charge,
When he goes out, when he comes in, examined.
VOLPONE: I will go see her, though but at her window.
MOSCA: In some disguise then.
VOLPONE: That is true. I must
Maintain mine own shape still the same: we’ll think.
[Exeunt.]
ACT TWO
II, i [SCENE ONE]
[The Public Square outside Corvino’s house.]
[Enter SIR POLITIC WOULD–BE and PEREGRINE.]
[SIR POLITIC:] Sir, to a wise man, all the world’s his soil.
It is not Italy, nor France, nor Europe,
That must bound me, if my fates call me forth.
Yet, I protest, it is no salt desire
Of seeing countries, shifting a religion,
Nor any disaffection to the state
Where I was bred, and unto which I owe
My dearest plots, hath brought me out; much less
That idle, antique, stale, grey-headed project.
10 Of knowing men’s minds, and manners, with Ulysses;
But a peculiar humour of my wife’s,
Laid for this height of Venice, to observe,
To quote, to learn the language, and so forth –
I hope you travel, sir, with licence?
PEREGRINE: Yes.
SIR POLITIC: I dare the safelier converse – How long, sir,
Since you left England?
PEREGRINE: Seven weeks.
SIR POLITIC: So lately!
You ha’not been with my Lord Ambassador?
PEREGRINE: Not yet, sir.
SIR POLITIC: Pray you, what news, sir, vents our climate?
I heard last night a most strange thing reported
20 By some of my lord’s followers, and I long
To hear how ’twill be seconded.
PEREGRINE: What was’t, sir?
SIR POLITIC: Marry, sir, of a raven, that should build
In a ship royal of the King’s.
PEREGRINE [aside]: – This fellow,
Does he gull me, trow? or is gulled? – Your name, sir?
SIR POLITIC: My name is Politic Would-be.
PEREGRINE [aside]: – O, that speaks him–
A knight, sir?
SIR POLITIC: A poor knight, sir.
PEREGRINE: Your lady
Lies here, in Venice, for intelligence
Of tires, and fashions, and behaviour
Among the courtesans? The fine Lady Would-be?
30 SIR POLITIC: Yes, sir, the spider and the bee oft-times
Suck from one flower.
PEREGRINE: Good Sir Politic!
I cry you mercy; I have heard much of you.
’Tis true, sir, of your raven.
SIR POLITIC: On your knowledge?
PEREGRINE: Yes, and your lion’s whelping in the Tower.
SIR POLITIC: Another whelp!
PEREGRINE: Another, sir.
SIR POLITIC: Now heaven!
What prodigies be these? The fires at Berwick!
And the new star! These things concurring, strange!
And full of omen! Saw you those meteors?
PEREGRINE: I did, sir.
SIR POLITIC: Fearful! Pray you, sir, confirm me,
40 Were there three porpoises seen above the bridge,
As they give out?
PEREGRINE: Six, and a sturgeon, sir.
SIR POLITIC: I am astonished!
PEREGRINE: Nay, sir, be not so;
I’ll tell you a greater prodigy than these –
SIR POLITIC: What should these things portend?
PEREGRINE: The very day
(Let me be sure) that I put forth from London,
There was a whale discovered in the river,
As high as Woolwich, that had waited there,
Few know how many months, for the subversion
Of the Stode fleet.
SIR POLITIC: Is’t possible? Believe it,
50 ’Twas either sent from Spain, or the Archdukes!
Spinola’s whale, upon my life, my credit!
Will they not leave these projects? Worthy sir,
Some other news.
PEREGRINE: Faith, Stone the fool is dead,
And they do lack a tavern fool extremely.
SIR POLITIC: Is Mas’Stone dead?
PEREGRINE: He’s dead, sir; why, I hope
You thought him not immortal? [Aside.] – O, this knight,
Were he well known, would be a precious thing
To fit our English stage. He that should write
But such a fellow, should be thought to feign
Extremely, if not maliciously –
60 SIR POLITIC: Stone dead!
PEREGRINE: Dead. Lord, how deeply, sir, you apprehend it!
He was no kinsman to you?
SIR POLITIC: That I know of.
Well, that same fellow was an unknown fool.
PEREGRINE: And yet you know him, it seems?
SIR POLITIC: I did so. Sir,
I knew him one of the most dangerous heads
Living within the state, and so I held him.
PEREGRINE: Indeed, sir?
SIR POLITIC: While he lived, in action.
He has received weekly intelligence,
Upon my knowledge, out of the Low Countries,
70 For all parts of the world, in cabbages;
And those dispensed, again, t’ambassadors,
In oranges, musk-melons, apricots,
Lemons, pome-citrons, and suchlike; sometimes
In Colchester oysters, and your Selsey cockles.
PEREGRINE: You make me wonder.
SIR POLITIC: Sir, upon my knowledge.
Nay, I have observed him at your public ordinary
Take his advertisement from a traveller,
A concealed statesman, in a trencher of meat;
And, instantly, before the meal was done,
80 Convey an answer in a toothpick.
PEREGRINE: Strange!
How could this be, sir?
SIR POLITIC: Why, the meat was cut
So like his character, and so laid as he
Must easily read the cipher.
PEREGRINE: I have heard
He could not read, sir.
SIR POLITIC: So ’twas given out,
In policy, by those that did employ him:
But he could read, and had your languages,
And to ’t, as sound a noddle –
PEREGRINE: I have heard, sir,
That your baboons were spies, and that they were
A kind of subtle nation near to China.
90 SIR POLITIC: Ay, ay, your Mamuluchi. Faith, they had
Their hand in a French plot, or two; but they
Were so extremely given to women as
They made discovery of all; yet I
Had my advices here, on Wednesday last,
From one of their own coat, they were returned,
Made their relations, as the fashion is,
And now stand fair for fresh employment.
PEREGRINE [aside]: –Heart!
This Sir Pol will be ignorant of nothing –
It seems, sir, you know all.
SIR POLITIC: Not all, sir. But
100 I have some general notions; I do love
To note and to observe: though I live out,
Free from the active torrent, yet I’d mark
The currents and the passages of things
For mine own private use; and know the ebbs
And flows of state.
PEREGRINE: Believe it, sir, I hold
Myself in no small tie unto my fortunes
For casting me thus luckily upon you,
Whose knowledge, if your bounty equal it,
May do me great assistance in instruction
110 For my behaviour, and my bearing, which
Is yet so rude and raw.
SIR POLITIC: Why? came you forth
Empty of rules for travel?
PEREGRINE: Faith, I had
Some common ones, from out that vulgar grammar,
Which he that cried Italian to me, taught me.
SIR POLITIC: Why, this it is that spoils all our brave bloods,
Trusting our hopeful gentry unto pedants,
Fellows of outside, and mere bark. You seem
To be a gentleman, of ingenuous race –
I not profess it, but my fate hath been
120 To be where I have been consulted with
In this high kind, touching some great men’s sons,
Persons of blood and honour –
PEREGRINE: Who be these, sir?
II, ii [Enter MOSCA and NANO, disguised, with properties for erecting 11, ii a scaffold stage.]
[MOSCA:] Under that window, there ’t must be. The same.
SIR POLITIC: Fellows to mount a bank! Did your instructor
In the dear tongues never discourse to you
Of the Italian mountebanks?
PEREGRINE: Yes, sir.
SIR POLITIC: Why,
Here shall you see one.
PEREGRINE: They are quacksalvers,
Fellows that live by venting oils and drugs.
SIR POLITIC: Was that the character he gave you of them?
PEREGRINE: As I remember.
SIR POLITIC: Pity his ignorance.
They are the only knowing men of Europe!
10 Great general scholars, excellent physicians,
Most admired statesmen, professed favourites
And cabinet counsellors to the greatest princes!
The only languaged men of all the world!
PEREGRINE: And I have heard they are most lewd impostors,
Made all of terms and shreds; no less beliers
Of great men’s favours than their own vile med’cines;
Which they will utter upon monstrous oaths,
Selling that drug for twopence, ere they part,
Which they have valued at twelve crowns before.
20 SIR POLITIC: Sir, calumnies are answered best with silence.
Yourself shall judge. Who is it mounts, my friends?
MOSCA: Scoto of Mantua, sir.
SIR POLITIC: Is’t he? Nay, then
I’ll proudly promise, sir, you shall behold
Another man than has been phant’sied to you.
I wonder, yet, that he should mount his bank
Here, in this nook, that has been wont t’appear
In face of the Piazza! Here he comes.
[Enter VOLPONE, disguised as a Mountebank, and followed by the GREGE, or crowd.]
VOLPONE [to NANO]: Mount, zany.
GREGE: Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow!
SIR POLITIC: See how the people follow him! He’s a man
May write ten thousand crowns in bank here.
[VOLPONE mounts the stage.]
30 Note,
Mark but his gesture. I do use to observe
The state he keeps in getting up!
PEREGRINE: ’Tis worth it, sir.
VOLPONE: Most noble gentlemen, and my worthy patrons, it may seem strange that I, your Scoto Mantuano, who was ever wont to fix my bank in face of the public Piazza, near the shelter of the Portico to the Procuratia, should now, after eight months’absence from this illustrious city of Venice, humbly retire myself into an obscure nook of the Piazza.
SIR POLITIC: Did not I now object the same?
PEREGRINE: Peace, sir.
40 VOLPONE: Let me tell you: I am not, as your lombard proverb saith, cold on my feet, or content to part with my commodities at a cheaper rate than I accustomed. Look not for it. nor that the calumnious reports of that impudent detractor, and shame to our profession (Alessandro Buttone, I mean) who gave out, in public, i was condemned a sforzato to the galleys, for poisoning the Cardinal Bembo’s – cook, hath at all attached, much less dejected me. No, no, worthy gentlemen; to tell you true, I cannot endure to see the rabble of these ground ciarlatani that spread their cloaks on the pavement as if they meant to do feats
50 of activity, and then come in lamely with their mouldy tales out of Boccaccio, like stale Tabarine, the fabulist: some of them discoursing their travels, and of their tedious captivity in the Turk’s galleys, when, indeed, were the truth known, they were the Christian’s galleys, where very temperately they eat bread, and drunk water, as a wholesome penance, enjoined them by their confessors, for base pilferies.
SIR POLITIC: Note but his bearing and contempt of these.
VOLPONE: These turdy-facy-nasty-paty-lousy-fartical rogues, with one poor groatsworth of unprepared antimony, finely
60 wrapped up in several scartocaos, are able, very well, to kill their twenty a week, and play; yet these meagre, starved spirits, who have half stopped the organs of their minds with earthly oppilations, want not their favourers among your shrivelled salad-eating artisans, who are overjoyed that they may have their half-pe’rth of physic; though it purge ’em into another world, ’t makes no matter.
SIR POLITIC: Excellent! ha’you heard better language, sir?
VOLPONE: Well, let ’em go. And, gentlemen, honourable gentlemen, know that for this time our bank, being thus removed
70 from the clamours of the canaglia, shall be the scene of pleasure and delight; for I have nothing to sell, little or nothing to sell.
SIR POLITIC: I told you, sir, his end.
PEREGRINE: You did so, sir.
VOLPONE: I protest, I and my six servants are not able to make of this precious liquor so fast as it is fetched away from my lodging by gentlemen of your city, strangers of the Terra Firma, worshipful merchants, ay, and senators too, who, ever since my arrival, have detained me to their uses by their splendidous liberalities. And worthily. for what avails your rich man to have his magazines stuffed with moscadelli, or of the purest grape,
80 when his physicians prescribe him, on pain of death, to drink nothing but water cocted with aniseeds? O health! health! the blessing of the rich! the riches of the poor! who can buy thee at too dear a rate, since there is no enjoying this world without thee? Be not then so sparing of your purses, honourable gentlemen, as to abridge the natural course of life –
PEREGRINE: You see his end?
SIR POLITIC: Ay, is’t not good?
VOLPONE: For, when a humid flux, or catarrh, by the mutability of air falls from your head into an arm or shoulder, or any other part, take you a ducat, or your chequin of gold, and apply to the
90 place affected: see, what good effect it can work. No, no, ’tis this blessed unguento, this rare extraction, that hath only power to disperse all malignant humours that proceed either of hot, cold, moist, or windy causes –
PEREGRINE: I would he had put in dry too.
SIR POLITIC: Pray you, observe.
VOLPONE: To fortify the most indigest and crude stomach, ay, were it of one that through extreme weakness vomited blood, applying only a warm napkin to the place, after the unction and fricace; for the vertigine in the head, putting but a drop into your nostrils, likewise behind the ears; a most sovereign and approved remedy: the mal-caduco, cramps, convulsions,
100 para-lyses, epilepsies, tremor cordia, retired nerves, ill vapours of the spleen, stoppings of the liver, the stone, the strangury, hernia ventosa, iliaca passio; stops a dysenteria immediately; easeth the torsion of the small guts; and cures melancholia hypocondriaca, being taken and applied according to my printed receipt.
Pointing to his bill and his glass.
For, this is the physician, this the medicine; this counsels, this cures; this gives the direction, this works the effect; and, in sum, both together may be termed an abstract of the theoric and practic in the Æsculapian art. ’Twill cost you eight crowns.
110 And, Zan Fritada, pray thee sing a verse, extempore, in honour of it.
SIR POLITIC: How do you like him, sir?
PEREGRINE: Most strangely, I!
SIR POLITIC: Is not his language rare?
PEREGRINE: But alchemy
I never heard the like, or Broughton’s books.
SONG
Had old Hippocrates or Galen,
That to their books put med’cines all in,
But known this secret, they had never,
(Of which they will be guilty ever)
Been murderers of so much paper,
Or wasted many hurtless taper.
120 No Indian drug had e’er been famèd,
Tobacco, sassafras not namèd;
Ne yet of guacum one small stick, sir,
Nor Raymund Lully’s great elixir.
Ne had been known the Danish Gonswart,
Or Paracelsus, with his long sword.
PEREGRINE: All this, yet, will not do; eight crowns is high.
VOLPONE: No more. Gentlemen, if I had but time to discourse to you the miraculous effects of this my oil, surnamed Oglio del scoto, with the countless catalogue of those I have cured of
130 th’aforesaid, and many more diseases; the patents and privileges of all the princes and commonwealths of Christendom; or but the depositions of those that appeared on my part, before the signiory of the Sanita and most learned College of Physicians; where I was authorized, upon notice taken of the admirable virtues of my medicaments, and mine own excellency in matter of rare and unknown secrets, not only to disperse them publicly in this famous city, but in all the territories that happily joy under the government of the most pious and magnificent states of Italy. But may some other gallant fellow say, ‘O, there be
140 divers that make profession to have as good and as experimented receipts as yours.’Indeed, very many have assayed, like apes, in imitation of that which is really and essentially in me, to make of this oil; bestowed great cost in furnaces, stills, alembics, continual fires, and preparation of the ingredients (as indeed there goes to it six hundred several simples, besides some quantity of human fat, for the conglutination, which we buy of the anatomists), but, when these practitioners come to the last decoction, blow, blow, puff, puff, and all flies in fumo. Ha, ha, ha! Poor wretches! I rather pity their folly and indiscretion than
150 their loss of time and money; for those may be recovered by
industry; but to be a fool born is a disease incurable. For myself, I always from my youth have endeavoured to get the rarest secrets, and book them, either in exchange or for money; I spared nor cost nor labour where anything was worthy to be learned.
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