Read Volpone and Other Plays for Free Online Page B

1946
.
    M. C. B RADBROOK .
The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy
, 1955.
    O. J. C AMPBELL .
Comicall Satyre and Shakespeare’s ‘Troilus and Cressida’
, 1938.
    M ARCHETTE C HUTE .
Ben Jonson of Westminster
, 1954.
    T. S. E LIOT . ‘Ben Jonson’,
Selected Essays
, 1932; revised edition, 1951; reprinted by J. A. Barish, editor,
Ben Jonson: A Collection of Critical Essays
, 1963.
    J. J. E NCK .
Jonson and the Comic Truth
, 1957.
    D.J. E NRIGHT . ‘Poetic Satire and Satire in Verse: A Consideration of Ben Jonson and Philip Massinger’,
The Apothecary’s Shop
, 1957.
    B RIAN G IBBONS .
Jacobean city comedy: A Study of Satiric Plays by Jonson, Marston and Middleton
, 1968.
    A. B. K ERNAN .
The Cankered Muse: Satire of the English Renaissance
, 1959.
    L. C. K NIGHTS . ‘Ben Jonson, Dramatist’,
The Pelican Guide to English Literature, 2, The Age of Shakespeare
, Boris Ford, editor, 1955;
Drama and Society in the Age of Jonson
, 1937.
    H ARRY L EVIN . Introduction to
Ben Jonson: Selected Works
, n.d. [1938]; reprinted by J. A. Barish, editor,
Ben Jonson: A Collection of Critical Essays
, 1963.
    E RIC L INKLATER .
Ben Jonson and King James: Biography and Portrait
, 1931.
    R OBERT G ALE N OYES .
Ben Jonson on the English Stage, 1660–1776
, 1935
    J OHN P ALMER .
Ben Jonson
, 1934.
    E. B. P ARTRIDGE .
The Broken Compass: A Study of the Major Comedies of Ben Jonson
, 1958.
    A. H. S ACKTON .
Rhetoric as a Dramatic Language in Ben Jonson
, 1948.
    F REDA L. T OWNSEND .
Apologie for Bartholmew Fayre: The Art of Jonson’s Comedies
, 1947.
    W ESLEY T RIMPI .
Ben Jonson’s Poems: A Study of the Plain Style
, 1962.
    E DMUND W ILSON . ‘MOROSE BEN JONSON’,
The Triple Thinkers
, revised edition, 1952; reprinted by J. A. Barish, editor,
Ben Jonson: A Collection of Critical Essays
, 1963.

VOLPONE,
OR
THE FOX
PRELIMINARY NOTE
1. STAGE-HISTORY AND FIRST PUBLICATION
    Volpone
was first acted in late 1605 or early 1606 by the leading company of the times, the King’s Men, led by Richard Burbage, who probably played Mosca with John Lowin as Volpone. It was successfully performed by them at Oxford and Cambridge. The play was published in quarto in 1607, prefaced by verse-eulogies from John Donne, George Chapman, Francis Beaumont, and John Fletcher, and was dedicated by Jonson ‘To the Most Noble and Most Equal Sisters, the Two Famous Universities for their Love and Acceptance Shown to his Poem in the Presentation’. It was printed in the Folio
Workes
in 1616 and in the enlarged posthumous Folio of 1640. The play was regularly staged in London throughout the seventeenth and for most of the eighteenth century. After 1785 it does not seem to have been revived until the nineteen-twenties, when it was given two performances by the Phoenix Society and also played by Cambridge undergraduates. Donald Wolfit first appeared as Volpone at the Westminster Theatre in London in 1938, and included the play in several of his annual far-flung provincial tours in the forties. Sir Donald also appeared in the play on B.B.C. television. In 1952 Sir Ralph Richardson played Volpone at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon. Peter Woodthorpe was Volpone in the Marlowe Society production at Cambridge in 1955, when Jonathan Miller played Sir Politic Would-be. It was performed in modern dress under the direction of Joan Littlewood (who played Lady Would-be) by Theatre Workshop in 1955, a production more acclaimed in Paris than in London.
    In 1926 Stefan Zweig made a German version, which was later translated into French by Jules Romains and played in Paris in 1928 by Charles Dullin in a multiple set by André Barsacq. This script was the basis of the memorable French film with Harry Baur as Volpone and Louis Jouvet as Mosca. Jean-Louis Barrault keeps the Zweig-Romains adaptation in his Parisian repertory.Ruth Langner
actually translated Zweig’s version back into English
for a