Volpone; Or, the Fox E-Book

Ben Jonson

• Herausgeber: libreka classics
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 103

Beschreibung

Volpone; Or, the Fox by Ben Jonson libreka classics – These are classics of literary history, reissued and made available to a wide audience. Immerse yourself in well-known and popular titles!

Leseprobe

Titel: Volpone; Or, the Fox

von Augustus J. Thebaud, Charles Kingsley, Henry James, Thomas Hardy, Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin, Joseph Butler, John D. Barry, William Allan Neilson, Henry Rider Haggard, Rudolf Erich Raspe, Paul Heyse, Carl Russell Fish, Tom Taylor, Margaret Pedler, Homer, John Kendrick Bangs, John Burroughs, Juanita Helm Floyd, Maurice Liber, Anthony Trollope, William Morris, Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner, Thomas Hobbes, Winfried Honig, Albrecht Dürer, Militia of Mercy . Gift Book Committee, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Andrew Lang, Katharine Pyle, Sir Samuel White Baker, Frederic William Moorman, the Younger Pliny, Samuel Butler, William Dean Howells, Harold MacGrath, Joseph Crosby Lincoln, Ralph Connor, Various, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Abraham Lincoln, John Galsworthy, Ian Maclaren, Charlotte Mary Yonge, Sir Owen Morgan Edwards, Robert J. C. Stead, Harold Bell Wright, Eleanor H. Porter, Richard Le Gallienne, Ann Ward Radcliffe, Mark Rutherford, John Bunyan, Artemus Ward, John Hanning Speke, James Fenimore Cooper, Edmund Burke, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Francis Bacon, Gisela Engel, Edward Samuel Corwin, Washington Irving, Rafael Sabatini, Emma Lazarus, Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine, Christian Friedrich Hebbel, Adam Smith, Upton Sinclair, Michael Earls, John Hargrave, Charles Hose, William McDougall, Albert Ernest Jenks, marquis de Jean-François-Albert du Pouget Nadaillac, Robert Sewell, 16th cent. Fernão Nunes, 16th cent. Domingos Paes, Inez Haynes Gillmore, Charles Warren Stoddard, Will Irwin, Vivia Hemphill, J. Hampton Moore, Philip Gibbs, Sir Richard Steele, Joseph Addison, L. Mühlbach, Leroy Scott, Mrs. Henry Wood, Ottilie A. Liljencrantz, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Thomas Bulfinch, Bernard Shaw, Confucius, Samuel Pepys, Luís Vaz de Camões, Walter Bigges, Theodore Roosevelt, Émile Gaboriau, fl. 1580. Edward Hayes, Eugène Sue, Earl of Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Robert Smythe Hichens, Bliss Perry, Isabella L. Bird, Stewart Edward White, Roald Amundsen, Viscount James Bryce Bryce, Francis Hopkinson Smith, Annie Hamilton Donnell, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jean-Henri Fabre, Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke, Marietta Holley, W. E. Gladstone, Ellis Parker Butler, Booth Tarkington, G. A. Henty, E. L. Voynich, Anonymous, Francis Leggett, Charles Alfred Tyrrell, Josef Cohen, Jules Verne, Zane Grey, Mary Baker Eddy, Albert Bigelow Paine, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Ouida, Joseph Furphy, Harry Leon Wilson, Sir Hugh Walpole, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Fay Inchfawn, E. Pauline Johnson, Abraham Merritt, James Sheridan Knowles, Herbert George Jenkins, Richard Hakluyt, Georges Victor Legros, J. M. Barrie, Dana Gatlin, Padraic Colum, Lucy Fitch Perkins, Heinrich Heine, Louisa May Alcott, John Ceiriog Hughes, Henry Van Dyke, Laurence Housman, Ludwig van Beethoven, Stephen Leacock, Watkin Tench, E. Nesbit, Edward William Bok, graf Leo Tolstoy, Giacomo Casanova, Oliver Goldsmith, Raffaello Carboni, Orville O. Hiestand, Abraham Cowley, Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, Louis Constant Wairy, Michel de Montaigne, Edward Salisbury Field, Guy de Maupassant, Doris Stevens, Hamilton Brock Fuller, Anna Chapin Ray, Wilkie Collins, Robert Tressell, Victoria Cross, William Guthrie, Alexandre Dumas père, Mary Jane Holmes, Charles Darwin, J. Hartley Manners, Sir James George Frazer, Sir Adolphus William Ward, James Hamilton, Theodore Dreiser, Kathleen Thompson Norris, William Henry Knight, Arnold Bennett, Cosmo Hamilton, Voltaire, Molière, Winston Churchill, Alexander Mackenzie, Joseph A. Altsheler, Maria Edgeworth, Florence L. Barclay, Mary E. Bamford, Frank Harris, Harold Bindloss, Alfred Henry Lewis, Charles Reade, United States. Central Intelligence Agency, Charles Ives, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Marion Polk Angellotti, Steele Rudd, Louis Stone, J. C. F. Johnson, Pierre Loti, Henry Martyn Cist, Howard Pyle, Saki, Franz Liszt, H. G. Wells, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ben Jonson, William Cowper, Lord Dufferin, Dion Boucicault, Ethel C. Pedley, Robert Alexander Wason, Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton, O. Henry, Rufus Phillips Williams, Friedrich Heinrich Karl Freiherr de La Motte-Fouqué, Ambrose Bierce, Francis Parkman, Gene Stratton-Porter, Addison B. Poland, John H. Haaren, Giovanni Boccaccio, Henry Handel Richardson, Oliver T. Osborne, Victor [pseud.] Appleton, Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Thomas Paine, Maria Thompson Daviess, Gilbert Parker, Lodovico Ariosto, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ethel Dench Puffer Howes, Walter De la Mare, P. G. Wodehouse, Van Tassel Sutphen, Esaias Tegnér, Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli, H. E. Marshall, Edna St. Vincent Millay, James Smith, Horace Smith, Henry Edward Krehbiel, Sir Charles Lyell, John S. C. Abbott, Georgina Pell Curtis, Logan Marshall, G. P. R. James, Bram Stoker, John Buchan, Maksim Gorky, Mabel Thorne, Paul Thorne, Henry Kingsley, Mrs. Inchbald, J. Cuthbert Hadden, James Lane Allen, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, L. M. Montgomery, R. H. Gronow, of Youghal the younger Joseph Fisher, Benedictus de Spinoza, Henry Seton Merriman, J. H. Patterson, Clinton W. Gilbert, Evelyn Blantyre Simpson, F. Marion Crawford, Louis Becke, K. Langloh Parker, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Frederick Lawton, Marie Corelli, Frederick Jackson Turner, Lord Frederick Spencer Hamilton, William John Locke, James Elroy Flecker, Richard Wagner, Johann David Wyss, King of France consort of Henry IV Queen Marguerite, Jean François Paul de Gondi de Retz, marquise de Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart Montespan, duchesse d' Charlotte-Elisabeth Orleans, duc de Louis de Rouvroy Saint-Simon, princesse de Marie Thérèse Louise de Savoie-Carignan Lamballe, Mme. 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ISBN 978-3-7429-3897-8

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VOLPONE;

OR, THE FOX

By Ben Jonson

Contents

INTRODUCTION

VOLPONE; OR, THE FOX

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

NOTARIO, the Register.

THE ARGUMENT.

ACT 1. SCENE 1.1.

ACT 2. SCENE 2.1.

ACT 3. SCENE 3.1.

ACT 4. SCENE 4.1.

ACT 5. SCENE 5.1

GLOSSARY

INTRODUCTION

The greatest of English dramatists except Shakespeare, the first literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and criticism who most potently of all the men of his time affected the subsequent course of English letters: such was Ben Jonson, and as such his strong personality assumes an interest to us almost unparalleled, at least in his age.

Ben Jonson came of the stock that was centuries after to give to the world Thomas Carlyle; for Jonson's grandfather was of Annandale, over the Solway, whence he migrated to England. Jonson's father lost his estate under Queen Mary, "having been cast into prison and forfeited." He entered the church, but died a month before his illustrious son was born, leaving his widow and child in poverty. Jonson's birthplace was Westminster, and the time of his birth early in 1573. He was thus nearly ten years Shakespeare's junior, and less well off, if a trifle better born. But Jonson did not profit even by this slight advantage. His mother married beneath her, a wright or bricklayer, and Jonson was for a time apprenticed to the trade. As a youth he attracted the attention of the famous antiquary, William Camden, then usher at Westminster School, and there the poet laid the solid foundations of his classical learning. Jonson always held Camden in veneration, acknowledging that to him he owed,

and dedicating his first dramatic success, "Every Man in His Humour," to him. It is doubtful whether Jonson ever went to either university, though Fuller says that he was "statutably admitted into St. John's College, Cambridge." He tells us that he took no degree, but was later "Master of Arts in both the universities, by their favour, not his study." When a mere youth Jonson enlisted as a soldier, trailing his pike in Flanders in the protracted wars of William the Silent against the Spanish. Jonson was a large and raw-boned lad; he became by his own account in time exceedingly bulky. In chat with his friend William Drummond of Hawthornden, Jonson told how "in his service in the Low Countries he had, in the face of both the camps, killed an enemy, and taken opima spolia from him;" and how "since his coming to England, being appealed to the fields, he had killed his adversary which had hurt him in the arm and whose sword was ten inches longer than his." Jonson's reach may have made up for the lack of his sword; certainly his prowess lost nothing in the telling. Obviously Jonson was brave, combative, and not averse to talking of himself and his doings.

In 1592, Jonson returned from abroad penniless. Soon after he married, almost as early and quite as imprudently as Shakespeare. He told Drummond curtly that "his wife was a shrew, yet honest"; for some years he lived apart from her in the household of Lord Albany. Yet two touching epitaphs among Jonson's "Epigrams," "On my first daughter," and "On my first son," attest the warmth of the poet's family affections. The daughter died in infancy, the son of the plague; another son grew up to manhood little credit to his father whom he survived. We know nothing beyond this of Jonson's domestic life.

How soon Jonson drifted into what we now call grandly "the theatrical profession" we do not know. In 1593, Marlowe made his tragic exit from life, and Greene, Shakespeare's other rival on the popular stage, had preceded Marlowe in an equally miserable death the year before. Shakespeare already had the running to himself. Jonson appears first in the employment of Philip Henslowe, the exploiter of several troupes of players, manager, and father-in-law of the famous actor, Edward Alleyn. From entries in "Henslowe's Diary," a species of theatrical account book which has been handed down to us, we know that Jonson was connected with the Admiral's men; for he borrowed 4 pounds of Henslowe, July 28, 1597, paying back 3s. 9d. on the same day on account of his "share" (in what is not altogether clear); while later, on December 3, of the same year, Henslowe advanced 20s. to him "upon a book which he showed the plot unto the company which he promised to deliver unto the company at Christmas next." In the next August Jonson was in collaboration with Chettle and Porter in a play called "Hot Anger Soon Cold." All this points to an association with Henslowe of some duration, as no mere tyro would be thus paid in advance upon mere promise. From allusions in Dekker's play, "Satiromastix," it appears that Jonson, like Shakespeare, began life as an actor, and that he "ambled in a leather pitch by a play-wagon" taking at one time the part of Hieronimo in Kyd's famous play, "The Spanish Tragedy." By the beginning of 1598, Jonson, though still in needy circumstances, had begun to receive recognition. Francis Meres—well known for his "Comparative Discourse of our English Poets with the Greek, Latin, and Italian Poets," printed in 1598, and for his mention therein of a dozen plays of Shakespeare by title—accords to Ben Jonson a place as one of "our best in tragedy," a matter of some surprise, as no known tragedy of Jonson from so early a date has come down to us. That Jonson was at work on tragedy, however, is proved by the entries in Henslowe of at least three tragedies, now lost, in which he had a hand. These are "Page of Plymouth," "King Robert II. of Scotland," and "Richard Crookback." But all of these came later, on his return to Henslowe, and range from August 1599 to June 1602.