"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 informers.' 999 At this word the letter becomes menacing. Those next Sejanus forsake him. "Sit farther. . . . Let's remove!" The heavy Sanquinius leaps panting over the benches. The soldiers come in; then Macro. And now, at last, the letter orders the arrest of Sejanus. "Regulus. Take him hence; And all the gods guard Cæsar! Haterius. Hence. Cotta. To the dungeon with him. Senator. Crown all our doors with bays. San. And let an ox, With gilded horns and garlands, Straight be led unto the Capitol. And sacrific'd To Jove, for Cæsar's safety. Tri. All our gods 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 Shakspeare'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, * The Fall of Sejanus, v. "When some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw All his affects, his spirits, and his powers In their confluctions, all to run one way, This may be truly said to be a humour." 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, And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror As large as is the stage whereon we act; Where they shall see the time's deformity Anatomized in every nerve, and sinew, With constant courage, and contempt of fear. My strict hand Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe Squeeze out the humour of such spongy souls, As lick up every idle vanity." § Doubtless a determination so strong and decided does violence to the dra matic 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 ar ranged, 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 grace. ful fancy which abounds in Shakspeare. But if Jonson comes across harsh pas Every Man in his Humour, Prologue. t Ibid. Ibid. Every Man out of his Humour, Prologue sions, visibly evil and vile, he will derive from his energy and wrath the 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 Titan's bacchanals. All this makes itself apparent in the first scene, when Volpone says: 'Good-morning to the day; and next, my gold! Open the shrine, that I may see my saint." This saint is his piles of gold, jewels, precious plate: "Hail the world's soul, and mine! . . . .0 thou son of Sol, But brighter than thy father, let me kiss, With adoration, thee, and every relick Of sacred treasure in this blessed room." ↑ 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." t Glad to have their gold, but still more glad to deceive them, artistic in wickedness as in avarice, and just as pleased 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: • Compare Volpone with Regnard's Ligahairs; the end of the sixteenth with the beginning of the eighteenth century. + Volpone, . s. Ibid. 66 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 cannot now last long. I feel me going,Uh, uh, uh, uh!" He closes his eyes, as though exhausted: "Voltore. Am I inscrib'd his heir for certain I do beseech you, sir, you will vouchsafe Or see a copy of the will?" 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 nar cotic. 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: "Corbaccio. How does your patron? His mouth Is ever gaping, and his eyelids hang. C. Good. Mosca. M. A freezing numbness stiffens all his joints, Forth the resolved corners of his eyes. C. Is't possible? Yet I am better, ha! How does he, with the swimming of his head? MO, sir, 'tis past the scotomy; he now Hath lost his feeling, and hath left to snort: You hardly can perceive him, that he breathes. C. Excellent, excellent! sure I shall outlast him: This makes me young again, a score of years." Faith, I could stifle him rarely with a pillow, As well as any woman that should kee C. Do as you will; but I'll begone." * Corvino presently departs; for the passions of the time have all the beauty of frankness. And Volpone, casting aside his sick man's garb, cries: "My divine Mosca! Thou hast to-day out gone thyself. . . . Prepare ... The Turk is not more sensual in his pleasur Than will Volpone." + If you would be his heir, says Mosca, Me music, dances, banquets, all delights; the moment is favorable; but you must not let yourself be forestalled. Voltore has been here, and presented him with this piece of plate: MC. See, Mosca, look, Here, I have brought a bag of bright chequines, Will quite weigh down his plate. M. Now, would I counsel you, make home with speed; There, frame a will; whereto you shall inscribe My master your sole heir. C. Did I think on before. ... This plot And the old man hobbles away, not hearing the insults and ridicule thrown at him, he is so deaf. When he is gone the merchant Corvino arrives, bringing an orient pearl and a splendid diamond: "Corvino. Am I his heir? Mosca. Sir, I am sworn, I may not show the will Till he be dead; but here has been Corbaccio, him, Whom he would have his heir? Who on this invitation, Mosca draws a most voluptuous portrait of Corvino's wife, Celia. Smitten with a sudden desire, Volpone dresses himself as a mountebank, and goes singing under her windows with all the sprightliness comedian, like a true Italian, of the of a quack; for he is naturally a same family as Scaramouch, as good an actor in the public square as in his house. Having once seen Celia, he resolves to obtain her at any price: "Mosca, take my keys, Gold, plate, and jewels, all's at thy devotion; Employ them how thou wilt; nay, coin me too: So thou, in this, but crown my longings, Mosca." + Mosca then tells Corvino that some quack's oil has cured his master, and that they are looking for a 66 young woman, lusty and full of juice," to complete the cure: "Have you no kinsworgan? Odso-Think, think, think, think, think, ink, think, sir. One o' the doctors offer'd there his daughter, Corvino. How! Mosca. Yes, signior Lupo, the physician C. His daughter! Corvino. M. C. And a virgin, sir.. Though unreasonably jealous, Corvino is gradually induced to offer his and would not lose his advantage. He wife. He has given too much already, is like a half-ruined gamester, who with a shaking hand throws on the green * Volpone, i. 5. Ibid. l. a Ibid. ↑ Ibid. cloth the remainder of his fortune. | acted the part of the lovely Antinous He brings the poor, sweet woman, weeping and resisting. Excited by his own hidden pangs, he becomes furious: "Be damn'd! Heart. I will drag thee hence, home, by the hair; Cry thee a strumpet through the streets; rip up Thy mouth unto thine ears; and slit thy nose; Like a raw rochet!-Do not tempt me; come, Yield, I am loth-Death! I will buy some slave Whom I will kill, and bind thee to him, alive; And at my window hang you forth, devising Some monstrous crime, which I, in capital letters, Will eat into thy flesh with aquafortis, And burning corsives, on this stubborn breast. Now, by the blood thou hast incensed, I'll do it! Celia. Sir, what you please, you may, I am your martyr. Corvino. Be not thus obstinate, I have not deserv'd it: Think who it is intreats you. Prithee, sweet ;Good faith thou shalt have jewels, gowns, attires, What thou wilt think, and ask. Do but go kiss him, Or touch him, but. For my sake.-At my suit. This once.-No! not! I shall remember this. Will you disgrace me thus? Do you thirst my undoing?" *. In his transport he sings a love song, his voluptuousness culminates in poetry; for poetry was then in Italy the blossom of vice. He spreads before her pearls, diamonds, carbuncles. is in raptures at the sight of the treas ures, which he displays and sparkles before her eyes: "Take these He And wear, and lose them: yet remains a ea ring To purchase them again, and this whole state Conscience? 'Tis the beggar's virtue. . . . Thy baths shall be the juice of July flowers, Spirit of roses, and of violets, The milk of unicorns, and panthers' breath Thou, like Europa now, and I like Jove, We recognize Venice in this splendor of debauchery Venice, the throne Mosca turned a moment before, to of Aretinus, the country of Tintoretto Volpone: and Giorgione. Volpone seizes Celia: "Yield, or I'll force thee?" But suddenly Bonario, disinherited son of Corbaccio, whom Mosca had concealed there with another design, enters violently, delivers her, wounds Mosca, and accuses Volpone before the tribunal, of imposture and rape. The three rascals who aim at being his heirs, work together to save Volpone. Corbaccio disavows his son, and accuses him of parricide. Corvino declares his wife an adulteress, the shameless mistress of Bonario. Never on the stage was seen such energy of lying, such open villany. The hus band, who knows his wife to be inno cent, is the most eager : "This woman (please your fatherhoods) is whore, Of most hot exercise, more than a partrick, Upon record. 1st Advocate. No more. Corvino. Neighs like a jennet. Notary. Preserve the honour of the court I shall, C. * Ibid. iii. 5. And modesty of your most reverend ears. 3d Adv. His grief hath made him frantic. C. Rare! Prettily feign'd! again!"* They have Voipone brought in, like a Volpone. And quite divert the torrent M. You are not taken with it enough, me Have, any time this three years, snuff about, With your most grov'ling nose, and would Me to the pois'ning of my patron, sir? Volpone goes out disguised, comes to "Have mine eyes beat out with stinking fish, Bruis'd fruit, and rotten eggs.-'Tis well. I'm glad, I shall not see my shame yet." t No more vengeful comedy has been written, none more persistently athirst to make vice suffer, to unmask, triumph over, and punish it. To conclude, he writes a will in Mosca's favor, has his death reported, hides behind a curtain, and enjoys the looks of the would-be heirs. They had just saved him from being thrown into prison, which makes the fun all the better; the wickedness will be all the greater and more exquisite. "Torture 'em rarely," Volpone says to MosWhere can be the gayety of such a ca. The latter spreads the will on the theatre? In caricature and farce. table, and reads the inventory aloud. There is a rough gayety, a sort of phys "Turkey carpets nine. Two cabinets, ical, external laughter which suits this one of ebony, the other mother-of-combative, drinking, blustering mode. pearl. A perfum'd box, made of an It is thus that this mood relaxes from onyx." The heirs are stupefied with war-waging and murderous satire; the disappointment, and Mosca drives pastime is appropriate to the manners them off with insults. He says to Cor-of the time, excellent to attract men vino: who look upon hanging as a good |