Tiberius' letter is read. First, long obscure and vague phrases, mingled with indirect protestations and accusations, foreboding something and revealing nothing. Suddenly comes an insinuation against Sejanus. The fathers are alarmed, but the next line reassures them. A word or two further on the same insinuation is repeated with greater exactness. "Some there be that would interpret this his public severity to be particular ambition; and that, under a pretext of service to us, he doth but remove his own lets alleging the strengths he hath made to himself, by the prætorian soldiers, by his faction in court and senate, by the offices he holds himself, and confers on others, his popularity and dependents, his urging (and almost driving) us to this our unwilling retirement, and lastly, his aspiring to be our son-in-law." The fathers rise: "This is strange!" Their eager eyes are fixed on the letter, on Sejanus, who perspires and grows pale; their thoughts are busy with conjectures, and the words of the letter fall one by one, amidst a sepulchral silence, caught up as they fall with all devouring and attentive eagerness. The senators anxiously weigh the value of these shifty expressions, fearing to compromise themselves with the favorite or with the prince, all feeling that they must understand, if they value their lives. “Your wisdoms, conscript fathers, are able to`examine, and censure these suggestions. But, were they left to our absolving voice, we durst pronounce them, as we think them, most malicious.' Senator. O, he has restor'd all; list. Praco. Yet are they offered to be averr'd, and on the lives of the inform ers."" 2 At this word the letter becomes menacing. Those next Sejanus forsake him. "Sit farther. . . . . Let's remove!" The heavy 2 Ibid. 1 The Fall of Sejanus, v. Sanquinius leaps panting over the benches. The soldiers come in; then Macro. And now, at last, the letter orders the arrest of Sejanus. It is the baying of a furious pack of hounds, let loose at last on him, under whose hand they had crouched, and who had for a long time beaten and bruised them. Jonson discovered in his own energetic soul the energy of these Roman passions; and the clearness of his mind, added to his profound knowledge, powerless to construct characters, furnished him with general ideas and striking incidents, which suffice to depict manners. IV. Moreover, it was to this that he turned his talent. Nearly all his work consists of comedies, not sentimental and fanciful as Shakespeare's, but imitative and satirical, written to represent and correct follies and vices. He introduced a new model; he had a doctrine; his masters were Terence and Plautus. He observes the unity of time and place', almost exactly. He ridicules the authors who, in the same play, "Make a child now swaddled, to proceed Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed, 1 The Fall of Sejanus, v. Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars. He rather prays you will be pleas'd to see.' He wishes to represent on the stage ... "One such to-day, as other plays shou'd be; The gentlewomen. But deeds, and language, such as men do use. You, that have so grac'd monsters, may like men. 112 "When some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw Men, as we see them in the streets, with their whims and hu mors It is these humors which he exposes to the light, not with the artist's curiosity, but with the moralist's hate: "I will scourge those apes, 1) 4 1 Every Man in his Humour, Prologue. Doubtless a determination so strong and decided does violence to the dramatic spirit. Jonson's comedies are not rarely harsh; his characters are too grotesque, laboriously constructed, mere automatons; the poet thought less of producing living beings. than of scotching a vice; the scenes get arranged, or are confused together in a mechanical manner; we see the process, we feel the satirical intention throughout; delicate and easy-flowing imitation is absent, as well as the graceful fancy which abounds in Shakespeare. But if Jonson comes across harsh passions, visibly evil and vile, he will derive from his energy and wrath the 3 Ibid. 2 Ibid. 4 Every Man out of his Humour, Prologue. talent to render them odious and visible, and will produce a Volpone, a sublime work, the sharpest picture of the manners of the age, in which is displayed the full brightness of evil lusts, in which lewdness, cruelty, love of gold, shamelessness of vice, display a sinister yet splendid poetry, worthy of one of Titian's bacchanals.1 All this makes itself apparent in the first scene, when Volpone, says: "Good morning to the day; and next, my gold!- This saint is his piles of gold, jewels, precious plate: O thou son of Sol, "Hail the world's soul, and mine! .. Presently after, the dwarf, the eunuch, and the hermaphrodite of the house sing a sort of pagan and fantastic interlude; they chant in strange verses the metamorphoses of the hermaphrodite, who was first the soul of Pythagoras. We are at Venice, in the palace of the magnifico Volpone. These deformed creatures, the splendor of gold, this strange and poetical buffoonery, carry the thought immediately to the sensual city, queen of vices and of arts. The rich Volpone lives like an ancient Greek or Roman. Childless and without relatives, playing the invalid, he makes all his flatterers hope to be his heir, receives their gifts, "Letting the cherry knock against their lips, And draw it by their mouths, and back again.” 3 Glad to have their gold, but still more glad to deceive them, artistic in wickedness as in avarice, and just as pleased to look at a contortion of suffering as at the sparkle of a ruby. The advocate Voltore arrives, bearing a "huge piece of plate." Volpone throws himself on his bed, wraps himself in furs, heaps up his pillows, and coughs as if at the point of death: "Volpone. I thank you, signior Voltore, Where is the plate? mine eyes are bad. . . . Your love Hath taste in this, and shall not be unanswer'd . . . I feel me going,— I cannot now last long. 1 Compare Volpone with Regnard's Légataire; the end of the sixteenth with the beginning of the eighteenth century. 2 Volpone, i. I. 4 Ibid. i. 3. 3 Ibid. i. I. He closes his eyes, as though exhausted: "Voltore. Am I inscrib'd his heir for certain? Mosca (Volpone's Parasite). I do beseech you, sir, you will vouchsafe Volt. It shall both shine and warm thee, Mosca. I am man, that hath not done your love Keep the poor inventory of your jewels, Volt. But am I sole heir? M. Without a partner, sir; confirm'd this morning: Upon the parchment. Volt. "When will you have your inventory brought, sir? And he details the abundance of the wealth in which Voltore is about to revel, the gold which is to pour upon him, the opulence which is to flow in his house as a river: "Corbaccio. How does your patron? . . • Mosca. His mouth The imagination is fed with precise words, precise details. Thus, one after another, the would-be heirs come like beasts of prey. The second who arrives is an old miser, Corbaccio, deaf, "impotent," almost dying, who nevertheless hopes to survive Volpone. To make more sure of it, he would fain have Mosca give his master a narcotic. He has it about him, this excellent opiate: he has had it prepared under his own eyes, he suggests it. His joy on finding Volpone more ill than himself is bitterly humorous: Is ever gaping, and his eyelids hang. C. Good. M. A freezing numbness stiffens all his joints, 1 Volpone, i. 3. |
