Volpone, or The Fox -

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Résumé :
This is the most thoroughly investigated edition of Volpone to date, based on a wider collation of the 1607 quarto and 1616 folio versions than was previously possible. It calls into question several accepted textual conclusions. The introduction sets Volpone in the context of Jonson's career at the time of writing and introduces new material on its relation to the Reynard beast epic and the commedia dell' arte. Ambiguities in the play are discussed with reference to two Renaissance perversions of the myth of the Golden Age. Particular attention is paid to the rhythmic effects of the play in performance, especially interweavings of the main plot and subplot. Fresh suggestions are made about the play's opening and its controversial conclusion in the light of experiments that have been made in performance since Volpone 's stage revival in 1921. The modernized text is accompanied by full commentary, notes and illustrations. The appendices include a discussion by John Cutts of the original music, passages translated from the original sources and analogues, and a full record of the play's modern stage history, its many adaptations, and its transformations into opera, musical comedy, film and television....

Biographie:
Benjamin Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 - c. 16 August 1637[2]) was an English playwright and poet, whose artistry exerted a lasting impact upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours. He is best known for the satirical plays Every Man in His Humour[3] (1598), Volpone, or The Fox (c. 1606), The Alchemist (1610) and Bartholomew Fair (1614) and for his lyric and epigrammatic poetry. He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I.[4]
Jonson was a classically educated, well-read and cultured man of the English Renaissance with an appetite for controversy (personal and political, artistic and intellectual) whose cultural influence was of unparalleled breadth upon the playwrights and the poets of the Jacobean era (1603-1625) and of the Caroline era (1625-1642)
In midlife, Jonson claimed that his paternal grandfather, who 'served King Henry 8 and was a gentleman',[7] was a member of the extended Johnston family of Annandale in the Dumfries and Galloway, a genealogy that is attested by the three spindles (rhombi) in the Jonson family coat of arms: one spindle is a diamond-shaped heraldic device used by the Johnston family.
Jonson's father lost his property, was imprisoned, and suffered forfeiture under Queen Mary; having become a clergyman upon his release, he died a month before his son's birth.[8] Jonson's mother married a master bricklayer two years later.[9][10] Jonson attended school in St Martin's Lane.[3] Later, a family friend paid for his studies at Westminster School, where the antiquarian, historian, topographer and officer of arms, William Camden (1551-1623) was one of his masters. In the event, the pupil and the master became friends, and the intellectual influence of Camden's broad-ranging scholarship upon Jonson's art and literary style remained notable, until Camden's death in 1623.
On leaving Westminster School, Jonson was to have attended the University of Cambridge, to continue his book learning but did not, because of his unwilled apprenticeship to his bricklayer stepfather.[5][9] According to the churchman and historian Thomas Fuller (1608-61), Jonson at this time built a garden wall in Lincoln's Inn. After having been an apprentice bricklayer, Ben Jonson went to the Netherlands and volunteered to soldier with the English regiments of Francis Vere (1560-1609) in Flanders.

Sommaire:
Introduction 1. The text 2. The play 3. Critical appreciation 4. Stage history Volpone, or The Fox Appendices A. The music (by John P Cutts) B. Source materials and analogues C. Modern productions and adaptations D. Collations of 1607 Quarto and 1616 Folio Index to the annotations