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Jonson's Volpone and the 'Real' Antinous
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
When Ben Jonson dedicated Volpone 'To the Most Noble and Most Eqvall Sisters the Two Famovs Vniversities,' he offered to the scholars a play packed with learning. The most obviously erudite section, of course, is the entertainment of Nano, Androgyno, and Castrone. An equally curious bit of lore is placed in III.VIII, as Volpone, attempting the virtue of the faithful Celia, exclaims
I am, now, as fresh,
As hot, as high, and in as iouiall plight,
As when (in that so celebrated scene,
At recitation of our comoedie,
For entertainment of the great VALOYS)
I acted yong ANTINOVS; and attracted
The eyes, and eares of all the ladies, present,
T'admire each gracefull gesture, note, and footing.
(III.vii.157-164)
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1973
References
1 Ben Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson, 11 vols. (Oxford 1925-52), V, 16.
2 Herford and Simpson, V, 82.
3 Herford and Simpson, IX, 718.
4 Ibid.
5 Symonds, J. A., Shakspere's Predecessors in the English Drama (London, 1884), pp. 331–336.Google Scholar
6 Symonds, p. 335.
7 Symonds, ‘Antinous,’ Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, 3rd series (London, 1898), pp. 184-229.
8 Ibid., p. 228.
9 See Henderson, B. W., The Life and Principate of the Emperor Hadrian (London, 1923), pp. 273–278 Google Scholar, for a complete list of the ancient authorities.
10 Herford and Simpson, II, 11-16.
11 E. Cary, tr., Dio's Roman History (1925; rpt. Cambridge, Mass., 1955), pp. 445-447.
12 Herford and Simpson, XI, 601.
13 See the Introduction to D. Magie, tr., The Scriptores Historiae Augustae (1921; rpt. Cambridge, Mass., 1953), pp. xxiv-xxxii.
14 O. L. Dick, ed., Aubrey's Brief Lives (1949; rpt. Ann Arbor, Mich., 1957), p. 177.
15 Herford and Simpson, XI, 593-594.
16 Butler, H. E., tr., Propertius (Cambridge, Mass., 1912), p. 294.Google Scholar
17 See the Conversations, Herford and Simpson, 1, 147. Jonson's objections to Orchestra are primarily stylistic.
18 Bullett, G., ed., Silver Poets of the Sixteenth Century (1947; rpt. London, 1960), p. 320 Google Scholar.
19 Gregorovius, F., The Emperor Hadrian, tr. Robinson, M. E. (London, 1898), pp.131–132 Google Scholar, thinks that homosexuality is obvious in this instance, for ‘the emperor, indeed, was a thorough Greek in the vice of the East.’ Symonds, in a footnote to the privately printed A Problem in Greek Ethics: Being An Inquiry into the Phenomenon of Sexual Inversion Addressed Especially to Medical Psychologists and Jurists (London, 1901), p. 21 n, implies that Hadrian and Antinous were a late example of the particular problem. B. W. Henderson, p. 131, is less direct, although he furnishes suggestive contemporary reports. In Magnificent Hadrian, Sulamith Ish-Kishor (New York, 1935), pp. 197-199, judiciously appraises the evidence and sees a homosexual relationship. But Perowne, S. in Hadrian (London, 1960), pp. 155–157 Google Scholar, tries to vindicate Hadrian's moral orthodoxy, arguing unconvincingly, I think, that ‘considered calmly, all the evidence points in the other direction.'
20 B. W. Henderson, p. 133.
21 Perowne, p. 155.
22 See Robin, G., L'Enigme Sexuelle D'Henri III (Paris, 1964)Google Scholar, and Battifol, L., Le Sikle de la Renaissance (Paris, 1909), p. 245 Google Scholar.
23 It may seem that this is Mosca's plan, but in I.iv.139-140, the original idea appears to have been Volpone's.