work as a source. This is not his method of borrowing; he always picks out phrases, and 'conveys' them practically word for word, so that it is comparatively easy to follow his trail, once it has been struck. Many of the resemblances to Lucian and Petronius noted by various writers are due merely to similarity of theme; all satires on legacy-hunting have a natural likeness. As legacyhunting has been a very tempting field for the satirists of all ages, it is not, of course, hard to find incidents similar to some of those in the present play. There are many other quotations included in the play, largely from works suggested by those just enumerated. For example, Erasmus in his Praise of Folly borrows much from Lucian's Dream, and the notes to the Praise of Folly frequently call attention to this; many of these notes, it should be remembered, are almost certainly by Erasmus himself. Jonson probably used this dialogue, the Dream, in the translation by Erasmus, published in the edition of Lucian printed at Basel in 1602; for evidence of this, see the notes on 1., 2. 42-46. As indicated there, the commentary in this edition of Lucian furnished some suggestions for Volpone; others of these notes refer, for further information on the transformations of Pythagoras, to Diogenes Laertius, where Jonson found more material for this scene. I am inclined to think that the suggestion for another incident, the pretended death of Volpone, is also to be found in the Latin version of the Dream-or rather in an easy mistranslation of a passage in it: Ei consobrinus erat vir supra modum dives, nomine Drimylus : is quoad vivebat, ne obulum quidem donaverat Simoni: nam qui daret, quum ne ipse quidem pecunias attingeret? At simulatque mortuus est nuper: universis illis opibus juxta leges Simon ille, qui coria putria, qui patellam circumlingebat, gaudens potitur: purpura ostroque circumtectus, famulosque et currus, et aurea pocula, et mensas eburnas innexas pedibus possidet, ab omnibus adoratur. Jonson's Latin scholarship was not unimpeachable, and a hasty reading of these lines might easily make simulatque (which would have been printed simulatq;) seem to be a verb, instead of a compound of simul and atque. The resulting mistranslation, even though instantly corrected, would have been enough to suggest the whole incident. It will be noticed that little has yet been said of two characters of the play-Sir Politique Would-bee and Lady Would-bee. Holt believes that the portrait of the latter was taken from Juvenal; but Juvenal has merely furnished some few touches added to the character, after Jonson's usual custom; the notes to the scenes in which she appears indicate these borrowings. The real source of the character is the declamation of Libanius. It is not too much to say that every feature of Lady Would-bee, as well as most of the speeches made by and about her, is to be found in Libanius. The woman there portrayed, it should be noted further, is a feminine counterpart of the bore described in the famous ninth satire of Horace. It is, therefore, significant that this satire of Horace had been translated by Jonson in the comedy immediately preceding the present play-Poetaster. It seems reasonable to suppose that Jonson had been led to this declamation by the former play; perhaps some friend had suggested it as an interesting work to compare with Horace. I do not think that Jonson uses in his dramas any other of Libanius' many declamations. But this same declamation was soon to become the basis of another of the author's most popular comedies, Epicane; such repeated use of a single source is very characteristic of Jonson's method of composition. Although Libanius is an author little read now, he was popular in the sixteenth century; this particular declamation was an especial favorite. The following from Castiglione's Courtier, p. 235 (ed. 1900), may be of interest: And I again remember (quoth he) that I haue read an Oration, wherein an unfortunate husband asketh leaue of the Senate to die, and alleageth that he hath a just cause, for that he can not abide the continuall weerisomeness of his wives chattinge, and had leiffer drinke of that poison which you say was laied openly for these respectes, then of his wives scoldinges. The story of the man who married a dumb wife, told in the third book of Pantagruel, seems to have the same source, I should think. At the time Rabelais wrote, this had perhaps already been the theme of a play, and it was later to be used by Molière in his Médecin Malgré Lui, and, recently, by Anatole France. The popularity of this declamation is shown further by the fact that it had been separately edited by Morellus, Paris, 1597-8, in advance of his folio edition of Libanius published in 1606; Miss Henry's conjecture, therefore, in the Introduction to her edition of Epicane, that this play was inspired by the recent publication of the latter edition is probably incorrect, as this would not have been available at the time of writing Volpone. An understanding of the real sources of Volpone is of value in the light it throws both on the author's purpose in the play and on his usual method of composition. The play is a patchwork, or mosaic, rather than a work produced by the imagination, or by observation of life. But Jonson's prodigious memory and wide reading in the classical authors are frequently referred to by commenta- ) tors; both, I believe, have been considerably exaggerated. His apparent readiness in quotation has often deceived even his best editors; two examples of this will serve. Gifford, in a note quoted on I. I. 15 in the present edition, takes occasion to berate Malone for not appraising Jonson's worth high enough, when, as the passage shows, by including a quotation from a lost play of Euripides, he 'was not only familiar with the complete dramas of the Athenian stage, but even with the minutest fragments of them which have come down to us.' Unfortunately for Gifford's contention, Jonson had merely found the quotation from Euripides in an epistle of Seneca, as another borrowing from the same epistle a few lines earlier shows; and in Jonson's day every schoolboy was familiar with Seneca. A similar example may be taken from the Introduction to Miss Henry's excellent edition of Epicæne, p. lii: "The remaining references in the dialogue are for the most part reminiscences of the dramatist's vast reading. Morose's assertion that silence is the only dowry a wife need bring (1. 2. 26, 2. 5. 90) may be compared with Sophocles, Ajax 293 γύναι, γυναιξὶ κόσμον ἡ σιγὴ φέρει, and Euripides, Heraclidæ 476-7 yvvaikì yàp σiyŋ te kaì tò σwḍpoveiv κάλλιστον εἴσω θ' ἥσυχον μένειν δόμων. But again this is not an evidence of vast reading; the line comes from Libanius' declamation, the source of both Epicane and Lady Wouldbee: 'Est fœminis ornatui silentium'; see below on Volpone 3. 4. 76-78. Such a work as the present, one of Jonson's greatest comedies, is a product not so much of genius and originality, as of industry and patience. Its author must have kept careful notes, jotting down passages that struck him in his reading, and sometimes his own reflections on them; such a notebook we evidently still have in Discoveries. These notes were later amalgamated into whatever work the author happened to be writing. Some of them were used over and over in various forms, as in the case of the passages in Libanius that furnished both Lady Would-bee and Epicane. Much of the material that went to the making of Volpone was used also for The Staple of News and The New Inn. In fact, the material discovered at just this time was to furnish Jonson with his most successful plays, if we accept the evidence of the well-known couplet: The Fox, the Alchemist, and Silent Woman, Erasmus and Libanius are used in Volpone; the same declamation of Libanius is the source of Epicane, with the Praise of Folly still in Jonson's mind; it is very significant that in this play, written next after Volpone, were to appear the LaFooles, and also such animal-characters as Sir John Daw and Thomas Otter. Erasmus, again, is the source of The Alchemist, generally said to have no real source; this is not the place to discuss the matter fully, but one of the Colloquies,' called Alcumistica, is the origin of title, characters, and incidents. A comparison of the following passages will show that Jonson is borrowing in his usual literal fashion. The first is from Alcumistica; the pretended alchemist is speaking: Non, inquit, metuo mortem; utinam illa contingat! metuo quiddam crudelius. Roganti quid hoc esset: Rapiar, inquit, aliquo in turrim: illic per omnem vitam cogar his laborare, quibus non libet. Cf. Alchemist 4. 7. 79-82: If the house Shou'd chance to be suspected, all would out, And we be lock'd up in the tower for ever, To make gold there for the state, never come out. Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus were the sources of numerous passages in Volpone; and these same authors were used as well in The Alchemist and the Masques, for material on alchemy and magic. Of course, Erasmus, Paracelsus, and Cornelius Agrippa are not the writers from whom Jonson is usually said to have borrowed; they all belong to the sixteenth century and the north of Europe, not to the classical civilization of Greece and Rome. Many, if not most, of the frequent classical quotations in Volpone were taken at second hand, through the medium of these writers of the transalpine Renaissance. I have been continually surprised to find that most of Jonson's poetical theory, as well as such a large proportion of his 'The Colloquies had earlier furnished a considerable amount of material for Every Man Out. |