Volpone Quotes

Question 1

Prologue

Answer 1

To mix profit with your pleasure

jests to fit his fable

Question 2

Volpone Act 1 Scene 1 p1

worships gold

Answer 2

‘Open the shrine that I may see my saint’

‘sacred treasure in this blessed room.’

‘The price of souls; even hell, …. / Is made worth heaven! ‘

Thou art virtue, fame, / Honour and all things else!

Question 3

Volpone and Mosca Act 1 Scene 1 p2

cunning purchase
riches

Answer 3

Volpone ‘I glory / More in the cunning purchase ….. / Than in the glad possession’

Mosca ‘You know the use of riches, and dare give, now… to me, your poor observer’

Question 4

Volpone Act 1 Scene 1 p3

cocker up
no wife

Answer 4

‘cocker up my genius and live free / To all delights’

‘I have no wife, parent, child, ally’

Question 5

Volpone Act 1 Scene 1 p4

cherry

Answer 5

‘Letting the cherry knock against their lips, /

And draw it by their mouths and back again

Question 6

Nano Act 1 Scene 2

Answer 6

Half-rhyme ‘transmigration’ with ‘fashion’ shows poor taste

Question 7

Volpone and Mosca Act 1 Scene 3

Voltore

Answer 7

Volpone ‘Pray him to come more often’

Volpone ‘Your love / shall not be unanswered’

Mosca ‘swim in golden lard, / Up to the arms in honey

Question 8

Mosca and Corbaccio Act 1 Scene 4 p1

Answer 8

Mosca ‘colour of his flesh like lead’
Corbaccio ‘Tis good’

Corbaccio ‘This makes me young again, a score of years’

Question 9

Mosca, Combacio and Volpone Act 1 Scene 4 p2

mine
your worship
oh I shall burst
What a rare

Answer 9

Corbaccio ‘Mine own project’

Mosca ‘Your worship is a precious ass’

Volpone ‘Oh, I shall burst! / Let out my sides, let out my sides’
Volpone ‘What a rare punishment / Is avarice to itself

Question 10

Mosca and Volpone Act 1 Scene 5 p1

weeping
rob churches
bold English

Answer 10

Corvino ‘‘Las, good gentleman! How pitiful the sight is!’
Mosca ‘the weeping of an heir should still be laughter / Under a visor’

M: ‘stifle with him rarely with a pillow’
C: ‘I pray you, use no violence’
C: ‘Nay, at your discretion’

‘better than rob churches’

‘bold English ……. dare let loose / Their wives to all encounters!’

Question 11

Mosca Act 1 Scene 5 p2

Celia

Answer 11

Blazing star of Italy!’ ‘A beauty ripe as harvest!’

‘Bright as your gold! And lovely as your gold!’

‘She’s kept as warily as is your gold’

Question 12

Sir Politic & Peregrine Act 2 Scene 1

spider
ignorant

Answer 12

‘The spider and the bee oft-times / Suck from one flower’

‘ignorant of nothing’ (about Sir Pol)

Question 13

Volpone Act 2 Scene 2 p1

Mountebank

Answer 13

‘Most noble gentlemen’

Uses classical allusions and rhetorical questions

‘These turdy-facy-nasty-paty-lousy-fartical / rogues’

Question 14

Volpone Act 2 Scene 2 p2

Mountebank

Answer 14

‘six-pence it will cost you’ ‘value of the thing, ….. a / thousand crowns’

‘Lady, I kiss your bounty (to Celia)

Question 15

Volpone and Mosca Act 2 Scene 4 p1

angry Cupid
conscience

Answer 15

‘But angry Cupid, bolting from her eyes, / Hath shot himself into me like a flame’

‘I’m bound in conscience, / …..To your release of torment’

Question 16

Volpone and Mosca Act 2 Scene 4 p2

gulled
flatter

Answer 16

‘But were they gulled / With a belief that I was Scoto?

‘I have not time to flatter you, we’ll part; / And as I prosper, so applaud my art’

Question 17

Corvino Act 2 scene 5

strike
backwards

Answer 17

‘strike / this steel into thee with as many stabs’ as eyes that look on her

‘Have this bawdy light damned up’

‘I will keep thee backwards’

Question 18

Corvino Act 2 Scene 6

mine

Answer 18

‘Mine own free motion’

Question 19

Corvino Act 2 Scene 7

blubbering

Answer 19

‘What, blubbering?’

Question 20

Mosca Act 3 Scene 1 p1

I fear
success
skip

Answer 20

‘I fear I shall begin to grow in love – / With my dear self’

‘Success has made me wanton’

I could skip / Out of my skin, now, like a subtle snake’

Question 21

Mosca Act 3 Scene 1 p2

Parasite
wise world
belly
mosca selling himself

Answer 21

‘Your parasite / Is a most precious thing, dropped from above’

‘Almost / All the wise world is little else in nature / But parasites or sub-parasites.’

‘to please the belly and the groin’

‘your fine, elegant rascal’

Question 22

Bonario Act 3 Scene 2 p1

baseness
St Mark
repent

Answer 22

B: ‘thy baseness / ….. thy sloth / ….Thy flattery? / Thy means of feeding?

M: ‘St Mark bear witness ‘against you, ‘tis inhuman’

B: ‘I do repent me that I was so harsh’

Question 23

Mosca Act 3 Scene 2 p2

Bonario irony
Mosca to Bonario suffer

Answer 23

(aside) ‘This cannot be a personated passion’

‘And I do suffer for you, sir. My heart / Weeps blood, in anguish - ‘

Question 24

Volpone Act 3 Scene 3

hell
my loathing

Answer 24

‘second hell’ (arrival of Lady Would-Be)

‘my loathing this / Will quite expel my appetite for the other:’

Question 25

Lady Would-be Act 3 Scene 4 p1

neck
curl

Answer 25

‘shows not my neck enough’

‘Is this curl / In his right place?’

Question 26

Volpone Act 3 scene 4 p2

female grace
The sun

Answer 26

‘your highest female grace is silence’

‘The sun, the sea will sooner both stand still, / Than her eternal tongue’

Question 27

Volpone Act 3 Scene 5

wanton

Answer 27

‘like your wanton gamester at primero’ (waiting for Celia)

Question 28

Mosca Act 3 Scene 7

horns

Answer 28

‘Did e‘er man haste so for his / horns’

Question 29

Corvino Act 3 Scene 7 p1

honour
pious

Answer 29

‘Honour?…./ There’s no such thing in nature – a mere term / Invented to awe fools’

‘A pious work, mere charity, for physic,’

Question 30

Celia Act 3 Scene 7 p2

kill me

Answer 30

‘Sir, kill me rather. I will take down poison, / Eat burning coals, do anything’

Question 31

Corvino Act 3 Scene 7 p3

rip
disgrace

Answer 31

‘drag thee hence home by the hair; /
cry thee a strumpet though the streets; rip up / Thy mouth unto thy ears, and slit thy nose’

‘Will you disgrace me thus?

Question 32

Mosca and Celia Act 3 Scene 7 p4

Mosca What woman can
Celia With such ease

Answer 32

Mosca
‘What woman can, before her husband? /
Let us depart, and leave her here’

Celia ‘with such ease, / Men dare put off your honours’

Question 33

Volpone Act 3 Scene 7 p5

Corvino heaven
Corvino paradise

Answer 33

‘never tasted the true heaven of love’

‘He would have sold his part of paradise for ready money’

Question 34

Volpone Act 3 Scene 7 p5

flattering Celia like Satan
base husband

Answer 34

‘Why art thou ‘mazed, to see me thus revived? /
Rather applaud thy beauty’s miracle’

‘Thou hast in place of a base husband found/ A worthy lover;’

Question 35

Volpone & Celia Act 3 Scene 7 p5

Volpone heads of parrots
Celia resisting
Volpone does not change tack

Answer 35

‘The heads of parrots, tongues of nightingales, / the brains of peacocks,’

‘I, whose innocence / Is all I can think wealthy, or worth th’enjoying… / Cannot be taken with these sensual baits’

‘Thy baths shall be the juice of Jùly flowers’

Question 36

Volpone Act 3 Scene 7 p6

conscience

Answer 36

Volpone conscience ‘Tis the beggar’s virtue’

Question 37

Celia Act 3 Scene 7 p7

Celia responses to Volpone
any part
punish
eating leprosy

Answer 37

Celia
‘If you have…any part that yet sounds man about you’

‘punish that unhappy crime of nature, / Which you miscall my beauty - flay my face’

Asks for Volpone to cause an ‘eating leprosy, / E’en to my bones and marrow’

Question 38

Volpone and Bonario Act 3 Scene 7

yield
foul
free
fall

Answer 38

‘Yield or I’ll force thee’

‘foul ravisher, libidinous swine!’
‘Free the forced lady, or thou diest, imposter

‘Fall on me, roof, and bury me in ruin, / Become my grave that wert my shelter. Oh! / I am unmasked, unspirited, undone!
Betrayed to beggary to infamy -

Question 39

Mosca Act 3 Scene 8

Answer 39

‘Will you be pleased to hang me? Or cut my throat?’

Question 40

Lady Would-Be Act 4 Scene 3

Lady Would-Be to Peregrine

Answer 40

‘Pray you, sir, use me. In faith, / The more you see me, the more I shall conceive, /
You have forgot our quarrel.’

Question 41

Act 4 Scene 4 Mosca

Is the lie

Answer 41

Mosca

‘Is the lie / Safely conveyed amongst us?’

Question 42

Act 4 Scene 5

Voltore on Celia in court
Corbaccio on Bonario
Avvocato on Celia and Bonario

Answer 42

Voltore on Celia in court
‘This lewd woman’

Corbaccio on Bonario
‘Monster of men…viper’

Avvocato on Celia and Bonario
’’Tis pity two such prodigies should live’

Question 43

Volpone and Mosca Act 5 Scene 2

Self-congratulation

Answer 43

Mosca
‘This is our masterpiece. We cannot think to go beyond this’

Volpone
‘rare a music out of discords’

Volpone
‘Like a temptation of the devil’

Question 44

Act 5 Scene 5 - Celia on heaven

Act 5 Scene 7 p1 - Bonario on heaven

Answer 44

Celia
‘O heav’n, how just thou art!’

Bonario
Heaven could not long let such gross crimes be hid’

Question 45

Act 5 Scene 7 p2
Corbaccio on Bonario

Avocatore on Mosca - interventions undermining court

Mosca and Volpone - hubris

Answer 45

Corbaccio says Bonario has a ‘forked tongue’ (similar to Mosca to Voltore on ‘forked counsel of lawyers)

Avocatore
‘A proper man’, ‘A fit match for my daughter’, ‘Sir, are you married’

Mosca - ‘Will you gi’ me half?, Volpone - ‘First, I’ll be hanged’

Question 46

Act 5 Scene 7 p3

Punishments

Answer 46

Mosca - to be ‘whipped’ and be ‘perpetual prisoner’
Volpone’s - ‘lie in prison cramped with irons / Till thou be sick and lame indeed’
Voltore - banished from ‘thy profession’ and ‘our state’
Corbaccio - confined to a ‘monastery’
Corvino - ‘rowed round about Venice…wearing a cap with fair long ass’s ears instead of horns’

Question 47

Epilogue - Volpone asking audience to condone his art

Answer 47

‘If not, fare jovially, and clap your hands’

Similar to Mosca Act 2 Scene 4 ‘as I prosper, so applaud my art’

Question 48

Act 5 Scene 7 p4

Volpone - revealing himself

Answer 48

‘I am Volpone’

‘reverend fathers, we can all hope nought / but a sentence’

Question 49

Volpone disguises

Answer 49

Act I - dying old man
Act II - mountebank
Act III - dying old man, wants to make love to Celia in 'changéd shapes'
Act IV - dying old man
Act V - court messenger