Volpone by Ben Jonson (small books to read .txt) 📕

VOLP: Troubled with noise, I cannot sleep; I dreamt That a strange fury enter’d, now, my house, And, with the dreadful tempest of her breath, Did cleave my roof asunder.

LADY P: Believe me, and I Had the most fearful dream, could I remember’t—

VOLP [ASIDE.]: Out on my fate! I have given her the occasion How to torment me: she will tell me hers.

LADY P: Me thought, the golden mediocrity, Polite and delicate—

VOLP: O, if you do love me, No more; I sweat, and suffer, at the mention Of any dream: feel, how I tremble yet.

LADY P: Alas, good soul! the passion of the heart. Seed-pearl were good now, boil’d with syrup of apples, Tincture of gold, and coral, citron-pills, Your elicampane root, myrobalanes—

VOLP [ASIDE.]: Ah me, I have ta’en a grass-hopper by the wing!

LADY P: Burnt silk, and amber: you have muscadel Good in the house—

VOLP: You will not drink, and part?

LADY P: No, fear not that. I doubt, we shall not get Some English saffron, half a dram would serve; Your sixteen cloves, a little musk, dried mints, Bugloss, and barley-meal—

VOLP [ASIDE.]: She’s in again! Before I fain’d diseases, now I have one.

LADY P: And these applied with a right scarlet cloth.

VOLP [ASIDE.]: Another flood of words! a very torrent!

LADY P: Shall I, sir, make you a poultice?

VOLP: No, no, no; I am very well: you need prescribe no more.

LADY P: I have a little studied physic; but now, I’m all for music, save, in the forenoons, An hour or two for painting. I would have A lady, indeed, to have all, letters, and arts, Be able to discourse, to write, to paint, But principal, as Plato holds, your music, And, so does wise Pythagoras, I take it, Is your true rapture: when there is concent In face, in voice, and clothes: and is, indeed, Our sex’s chiefest ornament.

VOLP: The poet As old in time as Plato, and as knowing, Says that your highest female grace is silence.

LADY P: Which of your poets? Petrarch, or Tasso, or Dante? Guarini? Ariosto? Aretine? Cieco di Hadria? I have read them all.

VOLP [ASIDE.]: Is every thing a cause to my distruction?

LADY P: I think I have two or three of them about me.

VOLP [ASIDE.]: The sun, the sea will sooner both stand still, Then her eternal tongue; nothing can ‘scape it.

LADY P: Here’s pastor Fido—

VOLP [ASIDE.]: Profess obstinate silence, That’s now my safest.

LADY P: All our English writers, I mean such as are happy in the Italian, Will deign to steal out of this author, mainly: Almost as much, as from Montagnie; He has so modern and facile a vein, Fitting the time, and catching the court-ear! Your Petrarch is more passionate, yet he, In days of sonetting, trusted them with much: Dante is hard, and few can understand him. But, for a desperate wit, there’s Aretine; Only, his pictures are a little obscene— You mark me not.

VOLP: Alas, my mind is perturb’d.

LADY P: Why, in such cases, we must cure ourselves, Make use of our philosophy—

VOLP: Oh me!

LADY P: And as we find our passions do rebel, Encounter them with reason, or divert them, By giving scope unto some other humour Of lesser danger: as, in politic bodies, There’s nothing more doth overwhelm the judgment, And cloud the understanding, than too much Settling and fixing, and, as ‘twere, subsiding Upon one object. For the incorporating Of these same outward things, into that part, Which we call mental, leaves some certain faeces That stop the organs, and as Plato says, Assassinate our Knowledge.

VOLP [ASIDE.]: Now, the spirit Of patience help me!

LADY P: Come, in faith, I must Visit you more a days; and make you well: Laugh and be lusty.

VOLP [ASIDE.]: My good angel save me!

LADY P: There was but one sole man in all the world, With whom I e’er could sympathise; and he Would lie you, often, three, four hours together To hear me speak; and be sometimes so rapt, As he would answer me quite from the purpose, Like you, and you are like him, just. I’ll discourse, An’t be but only, sir, to bring you asleep, How we did spend our time and loves together, For some six years.

VOLP: Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!

LADY P: For we were coaetanei, and brought up—

VOLP: Some power, some fate, some fortune rescue me!

[ENTER MOSCA.]

MOS: God save you, madam!

LADY P: Good sir.

VOLP: Mosca? welcome, Welcome to my redemption.

MOS: Why, sir?

VOLP: Oh, Rid me of this my torture, quickly, there; My madam, with the everlasting voice: The bells, in time of pestilence, ne’er made Like noise, or were in that perpetual motion! The Cock-pit comes not near it. All my house, But now, steam’d like a bath with her thick breath. A lawyer could not have been heard; nor scarce Another woman, such a hail of words She has let fall. For hell’s sake, rid her hence.

MOS: Has she presented?

VOLP: O, I do not care; I’ll take her absence, upon any price, With any loss.

MOS: Madam—

LADY P: I have brought your patron A toy, a cap here, of mine own work.

MOS: ‘Tis well. I had forgot to tell you, I saw your knight, Where you would little think it.—

LADY P: Where?

MOS: Marry, Where yet, if you make haste, you may apprehend, Rowing upon the water in a gondole, With the most cunning courtezan of Venice.

LADY P: Is’t true?

MOS: Pursue them, and believe your eyes; Leave me, to make your gift. [EXIT LADY P. HASTILY.] —I knew ‘twould take: For, lightly, they, that use themselves most license, Are still most jealous.

VOLP: Mosca, hearty thanks, For thy quick fiction, and delivery of me. Now to my hopes, what say’st thou?

[RE-ENTER LADY P. WOULD-BE.]

LADY P: But do you hear, sir?—

VOLP: Again! I fear a paroxysm.

LADY P: Which way Row’d they together?

MOS: Toward the Rialto.

LADY P: I pray you lend me your dwarf.

MOS: I pray you, take him.— [EXIT LADY P.] Your hopes, sir, are like happy blossoms, fair, And promise timely fruit, if you will stay But the maturing; keep you at your couch, Corbaccio will arrive straight, with the Will; When he is gone, I’ll tell you more.

[EXIT.]

VOLP: My blood, My spirits are return’d; I am alive: And like your wanton gamester, at primero, Whose thought had whisper’d to him, not go less, Methinks I lie, and draw—for an encounter.

[THE SCENE CLOSES UPON VOLPONE.]

SCENE 3.3

THE PASSAGE LEADING TO VOLPONE’S CHAMBER.

ENTER MOSCA AND BONARIO.

MOS: Sir, here conceal’d, [SHEWS HIM A CLOSET.] you may here all. But, pray you, Have patience, sir; [KNOCKING WITHIN.] —the same’s your father knocks: I am compell’d to leave you.

[EXIT.]

BON: Do so.—Yet, Cannot my thought imagine this a truth.

[GOES INTO THE CLOSET.]

SCENE 3.4.

ANOTHER PART OF THE SAME.

ENTER MOSCA AND CORVINO, CELIA FOLLOWING.

MOS: Death on me! you are come too soon, what meant you? Did not I say, I would send?

CORV: Yes, but I fear’d You might forget it, and then they prevent us.

MOS [ASIDE.]: Prevent! did e’er man haste so, for his horns? A courtier would not ply it so, for a place. —Well, now there’s no helping it, stay here; I’ll presently return.

[EXIT.]

CORV: Where are you, Celia? You know not wherefore I have brought you hither?

CEL: Not well, except you told me.

CORV: Now, I will: Hark hither.

[EXEUNT.]

SCENE 3.5.

A CLOSET OPENING INTO A GALLERY.

ENTER MOSCA AND BONARIO.

MOS: Sir, your father hath sent word, It will be half an hour ere he come; And therefore, if you please to walk the while Into that gallery—at the upper end, There are some books to entertain the time: And I’ll take care no man shall come unto you, sir.

BON: Yes, I will stay there. [ASIDE.]—I do doubt this fellow.

[EXIT.]

MOS [LOOKING AFTER HIM.]: There; he is far enough; he can hear nothing: And, for his father, I can keep him off.

[EXIT.]

SCENE 3.6.

VOLPONE’S CHAMBER.—VOLPONE ON HIS COUCH. MOSCA SITTING BY HIM.

ENTER CORVINO, FORCING IN CELIA.

CORV: Nay, now, there is no starting back, and therefore, Resolve upon it: I have so decreed. It must be done. Nor would I move’t, afore, Because I would avoid all shifts and tricks, That might deny me.

CEL: Sir, let me beseech you, Affect not these strange trials; if you doubt My chastity, why, lock me up for ever: Make me the heir of darkness. Let me live, Where I may please your fears, if not your trust.

CORV: Believe it, I have no such humour, I. All that I speak I mean; yet I’m not mad; Nor horn-mad, see you? Go to, shew yourself Obedient, and a wife.

CEL: O heaven!

CORV: I say it, Do so.

CEL: Was this the train?

CORV: I’ve told you reasons; What the physicians have set down; how much It may concern me; what my engagements are; My means; and the necessity of those means, For my recovery: wherefore, if you be Loyal, and mine, be won, respect my venture.

CEL: Before your honour?

CORV: Honour! tut, a breath: There’s no such thing, in nature: a mere term Invented to awe fools. What is my gold The worse, for touching, clothes for being look’d on? Why, this is no more. An old decrepit wretch, That has no sense, no sinew; takes his meat With others’ fingers; only knows to gape, When you do scald his gums; a voice; a shadow; And, what can this man hurt you?

CEL [ASIDE.]: Lord! what spirit Is this hath enter’d him?

CORV: And for your fame, That’s such a jig; as if I would go tell it, Cry it on the Piazza! who shall know it, But he that cannot speak it, and this fellow, Whose lips are in my pocket? save yourself, (If you’ll proclaim’t, you may,) I know no other, Shall come to know it.

CEL: Are heaven and saints then nothing? Will they be blind or stupid?

CORV: How!

CEL: Good sir, Be jealous still, emulate them; and think What hate they burn with toward every sin.

CORV: I grant you: if I thought it were a sin, I would not urge you. Should I offer this To some young Frenchman, or hot Tuscan blood That had read Aretine, conn’d all his prints, Knew every quirk within lust’s labyrinth, And were professed critic in lechery; And I would look upon him, and applaud him, This were a sin: but here, ‘tis contrary, A pious work, mere charity for physic, And honest polity, to assure mine own.

CEL: O heaven! canst thou suffer such a change?

VOLP: Thou art mine honour, Mosca, and my pride, My joy, my tickling, my delight! Go bring them.

MOS [ADVANCING.]: Please you draw near, sir.

CORV: Come on, what— You will not be rebellious? by that light—

MOS: Sir, Signior Corvino, here, is come to see you.

VOLP: Oh!

MOS: And hearing of the consultation had, So lately, for your health, is come to offer, Or rather, sir, to prostitute—

CORV: Thanks, sweet Mosca.

MOS: Freely, unask’d, or unintreated—

CORV: Well.

MOS: As the true fervent instance of his love, His own most fair and proper wife; the beauty, Only of price in Venice—

CORV: ‘Tis well urged.

MOS: To be your comfortress, and to preserve you.

VOLP: Alas, I am past, already! Pray you, thank him For his good care and promptness; but for that, ‘Tis a vain labour e’en to fight ‘gainst heaven; Applying fire to stone— [COUGHING.] uh, uh, uh, uh! Making a dead leaf grow again. I take His wishes gently, though; and you may