Theatre
Volpone
Ben Jonson · 1606
Opening lines
Volpone
Good morning to the day; and next, my gold:
Open the shrine, that I may see my Saint.
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
Volpone, a rich Venetian without an heir, pretends to be dying: he coughs, claims to be crippled with gout, and his servant Mosca persuades each of the suitors that he will be the sole heir. In come the lawyer Voltore, the old miser Corbaccio and the merchant Corvino, who bring gifts to win the favour of the dying man: a piece of goldsmith's work, sequins, a pearl, a diamond. On Mosca's advice, Corbaccio agrees to disinherit his own son, and Corvino resolves to send his wife, Celia, to the sick man's bedside. The servant runs the game and ends up becoming intoxicated with it.
Context
The play was, by its author's own admission, written entirely in five weeks, performed at the Globe by the King's Men, probably in March 1606, then at Oxford and Cambridge, and printed in 1607. Its author was coming out of another affair: after the Gunpowder Plot, whose ringleaders he had dined with shortly before, he appeared before the Privy Council, agreed to find it a priest who would help it, without succeeding, and was cited the following year, with his wife, for refusing to attend church.
Who it is for
A comedy in five acts and in verse, the most often performed and best known of its author's plays.
Prizes and reception
It has remained in the repertoire, and in the twentieth century it was the most frequently staged play of its period after Shakespeare.
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