ACT 1. SCENE 1.1.

A ROOM IN VOLPONE’S HOUSE.

ENTER VOLPONE AND MOSCA.

VOLP: Good morning to the day; and next, my gold:

Open the shrine, that I may see my Saint.

[MOSCA WITHDRAWS THE CURTAIN, AND DISCOVERS PILES OF GOLD,

PLATE, JEWELS, ETC.]

Hail the world’s soul, and mine! more glad than is

The teeming earth to see the long’d-for sun

Peep through the horns of the celestial Ram,

Am I, to view thy splendour darkening his;

That lying here, amongst my other hoards,

Shew’st like a flame by night; or like the day

Struck out of chaos, when all darkness fled

Unto the centre. O 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.

Well did wise poets, by thy glorious name,

Title that age which they would have the best;

Thou being the best of things: and far transcending

All style of joy, in children, parents, friends,

Or any other waking dream on earth:

Thy looks when they to Venus did ascribe,

They should have given her twenty thousand Cupids;

Such are thy beauties and our loves! Dear saint,

Riches, the dumb God, that giv’st all men tongues;

That canst do nought, and yet mak’st men do all things;

The price of souls; even hell, with thee to boot,

Is made worth heaven. Thou art virtue, fame,

Honour, and all things else. Who can get thee,

He shall be noble, valiant, honest, wise,—

MOS: And what he will, sir. Riches are in fortune

A greater good than wisdom is in nature.

VOLP: True, my beloved Mosca. Yet I glory

More in the cunning purchase of my wealth,

Than in the glad possession; since I gain

No common way; I use no trade, no venture;

I wound no earth with plough-shares; fat no beasts,

To feed the shambles; have no mills for iron,

Oil, corn, or men, to grind them into powder:

I blow no subtle glass; expose no ships

To threat’nings of the furrow-faced sea;

I turn no monies in the public bank,

Nor usure private.

MOS: No sir, nor devour

Soft prodigals. You shall have some will swallow

A melting heir as glibly as your Dutch

Will pills of butter, and ne’er purge for it;

Tear forth the fathers of poor families

Out of their beds, and coffin them alive

In some kind clasping prison, where their bones

May be forth-coming, when the flesh is rotten:

But your sweet nature doth abhor these courses;

You lothe the widdow’s or the orphan’s tears

Should wash your pavements, or their piteous cries

Ring in your roofs, and beat the air for vengeance.

VOLP: Right, Mosca; I do lothe it.

MOS: And besides, sir,

You are not like a thresher that doth stand

With a huge flail, watching a heap of corn,

And, hungry, dares not taste the smallest grain,

But feeds on mallows, and such bitter herbs;

Nor like the merchant, who hath fill’d his vaults

With Romagnia, and rich Candian wines,

Yet drinks the lees of Lombard’s vinegar:

You will not lie in straw, whilst moths and worms

Feed on your sumptuous hangings and soft beds;

You know the use of riches, and dare give now

From that bright heap, to me, your poor observer,

Or to your dwarf, or your hermaphrodite,

Your eunuch, or what other household-trifle

Your pleasure allows maintenance.

VOLP: Hold thee, Mosca,

[GIVES HIM MONEY.]

Take of my hand; thou strik’st on truth in all,

And they are envious term thee parasite.

Call forth my dwarf, my eunuch, and my fool,

And let them make me sport.

[EXIT MOS.]

What should I do,

But cocker up my genius, and live free

To all delights my fortune calls me to?

I have no wife, no parent, child, ally,

To give my substance to; but whom I make

Must be my heir: and this makes men observe me:

This draws new clients daily, to my house,

Women and men of every sex and age,

That bring me presents, send me plate, coin, jewels,

With hope that when I die (which they expect

Each greedy minute) it shall then return

Ten-fold upon them; whilst some, covetous

Above the rest, seek to engross me whole,

And counter-work the one unto the other,

Contend in gifts, as they would seem in love:

All which I suffer, playing with their hopes,

And am content to coin them into profit,

To look upon their kindness, and take more,

And look on that; still bearing them in hand,

Letting the cherry knock against their lips,

And draw it by their mouths, and back again.—

How now!

[RE-ENTER MOSCA WITH NANO, ANDROGYNO, AND CASTRONE.]

NAN: Now, room for fresh gamesters, who do will you to know,

They do bring you neither play, nor university show;

And therefore do entreat you, that whatsoever they rehearse,

May not fare a whit the worse, for the false pace of the verse.

If you wonder at this, you will wonder more ere we pass,

For know, here is inclosed the soul of Pythagoras,

That juggler divine, as hereafter shall follow;

Which soul, fast and loose, sir, came first from Apollo,

And was breath’d into Aethalides; Mercurius his son,

Where it had the gift to remember all that ever was done.

From thence it fled forth, and made quick transmigration

To goldy-lock’d Euphorbus, who was killed in good fashion,

At the siege of old Troy, by the cuckold of Sparta.

Hermotimus was next (I find it in my charta)

To whom it did pass, where no sooner it was missing

But with one Pyrrhus of Delos it learn’d to go a fishing;

And thence did it enter the sophist of Greece.

From Pythagore, she went into a beautiful piece,

Hight Aspasia, the meretrix; and the next toss of her

Was again of a whore, she became a philosopher,

Crates the cynick, as it self doth relate it:

Since kings, knights, and beggars, knaves, lords and fools gat it,

Besides, ox and ass, camel, mule, goat, and brock,

In all which it hath spoke, as in the cobler’s cock.

But I come not here to discourse of that matter,

Or his one, two, or three, or his greath oath, BY QUATER!

His musics, his trigon, his golden thigh,

Or his telling how elements shift, but I

Would ask, how of late thou best suffered translation,

And shifted thy coat in these days of reformation.

AND: Like one of the reformed, a fool, as you see,

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