The Review of English Studies, May 1995 v46 n182 p153(21)

Jonson and the neo-Classical rules in 'Sejanus' and 'Volpone.' Faley-Hills, David.

Abstract: The adherence of English playwright Ben Jonson to the neo-classical rules of the neo-Aristotelian school is examined through two of his works. For the neo-classicists, drama had to contain the unity of place, time and action and had to be strictly constrained by moral decorum. Tragedy, for them, had to contain characters who either belonged to the nobility or royalty. Comedy, on the other hand, could depict more common situations involving caricatures of the common people.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1995 Oxford University Press

Jonson's contributions to the public stage between the production of Poetaster in 1601 and the first performance of Volpone in early 1606 were Sejanus, first performed at the end of 1603, and his third share in Eastward Ho. No professional Elizabethan dramatist could earn a living at such a rate, but the reasons for this unproductiveness are not hard to seek. Poetaster ends, in the printed copy, with a defiant defence of his 'long-watch'd labours', a farewell to comedy, and a determination to retire to write a tragedy that will 'strike the ear of time'.(1) We know that Jonson was looking for patronage at this period, which he found first with Robert Townsend (with whom we hear him 'scorning the world' in February 1603), then with the learned and wealthy Robert Cotton, and lastly, and most grandly, with the King's cousin, Esme Stuart, Lord d'Aubigny,(2) to whom Sejanus is dedicated. At the houses of these wealthy men Jonson had both the leisure and the books he needed to achieve the full revolution from Henslowe hack to rare Ben Jonson, 'Safe from the wolves black iaw, and the dull asses hoofe'. Sejanus, loaded with erudition as it is in the 1605 quarto, is clearly the result of that transformation, but so too, in its way, is Volpone. For Jonson was not only reading classical history in this period, he was getting up to date with the latest critical fashions. Both the address 'To the Readers' of Sejanus and the prologue to Volpone make it clear that he has been reading the 'best' neo-classical critics and in both plays making some attempt to put their precepts into practice.

Exactly who these critics were we cannot at this distance in time be entirely certain. We know something of his critical reading from the books that were in his library(3) and his occasional references, but our knowledge here is fragmentary. The reference to the unities of time and place in the prologue to Volpone, however, points to the neo-classical Italian theorists, for although Sidney had referred to the unities in the Defence of Poetry, Jonson's application of them in Volpone is closer to their origins in Castelvetro's Poetica d'Aristotele than to Sidney's rather muddled account, which seems to be incorrectly deriving them directly from Aristotle.(4) Both the prologue to Volpone and the address 'To the Readers' of Sejanus suggest that Jonson is adopting precepts not directly from the Poetics, but indirectly via the mediation of the more independent-minded Italian Aristotelians such as Castelvetro and the Ferrarese dramatist Giambattista Giraldi Cinthio. J. C. Scaliger, whose vast Poetices libri septem was once thought to have been in Jonson's library,(5) was, in contrast, much less concerned with dramatic art as such. Some doubts have been expressed by Herford and the Simpsons about Jonson's ability to read Italian, in the light of Drummond's remark in the Conversations that 'he [Jonson] neither doeth understand French nor Italianne'.(6) The Jonson editors admit, however, there is evidence that he translated some verses of Parabosco from Italian and they also demonstrate at some length that in Discoveries he follows the Italian of Machiavelli's Il Principe in detail(7) (it was not translated into English until 1640). Several books in French and Italian are known to have been in his library, including the works of Petrarch, whose sonnets he discusses (dismissively) with Drummond. Drummond also records that they discussed Ronsard's Odes.(8) The nomenclature of Volpone and some considerable incidental use of Italian vocabulary in the play also suggest some knowledge of Italian. In any case a Latinist of Jonson's competence could quickly have acquired sufficient Italian to read the critical texts. One suspects that Drummond was failing to detect Jonsonian ironies.

'Sejanus': The Address 'To the Readers'

The address 'To the Readers' prefacing the 1605 quarto of Jonson's Sejanus is a characteristic Jonsonian combination of the robust and the defensive. Jonson describes it as 'three or four short, and needfull Notes'.(9) The second paragraph of these notes starts with his apologizing that all the neo-classical niceties have not been fully observed. He has failed to observe the unity of time and there is no proper chorus, but then (characteristically turning apology into attack) he argues that he has yet to find anyone in modern times who has satisfactorily handled the chorus: 'no, not they who have most presently affected Lawes'. In his accustomed manner he blames modern audiences for their inability to accept 'the ould state, and splendour of Dramatick Poemes'. The full discussion of these matters he intends to leave, however, for the publication 'shortly' of his observations on Horace's Art of Poetry (a work that was accidentally burnt before it reached the public). The paragraph ends with a robust claim that in spite of his neglect of some formal neo-classical requirements, the play none the less conforms, in essence, to the best (neo-classical) standards: 'In the meane time, if in truth of Argument, dignity of Persons, gravity and height of Elocution, fulnesse and frequencie of Sentence, I have discharg'd the other offices of a Tragick writer, let not the absence of these Formes be imputed to me . . .'(10) It would seem to be Jonson's intention here to summarize those essential qualities that he considered made for authentic tragedy, qualities that concern the spirit more than the letter of tragedy.

In his recent biography of Jonson, David Riggs argues that this passage stems directly from section 6 of the Poetics in mentioning four out of the 'five' elements Aristotle claims to be essential for tragedy.(11) Aristotle actually lists the six (not five) elements as: 'plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle and song'.(12) Quite apart from the fact that Jonson omits the last two 'essential' items (not simply 'the last') he also qualifies each of the others in ways that are either non-Aristotelian or un-Aristotelian. 'Argument' (i.e. plot), for instance, is heavily qualified as 'truth of argument', which Procter rightly glosses as 'historical accuracy',(13) a requirement that is laboriously exemplified in the scholarly respect for sources in Sejanus. Jonson specifically defends his careful annotation of the sources as showing 'my integrity in the Story'.(14) The view that plots taken from history were preferable to fictitious plots in tragedy is strongly argued, against Aristotle, by Castelvetro in his comments on section 9 of the Poetics:

Percioche la favola delle predette due posie [epic and tragedy] non simplicemente dee contenere attione humana, ma magnifica anchora e reale, e se dee contenere attione reale seguita che contenga attione avenuta e certa, e d'un re, che sia stato, e che si sappia the sia stato, conciosia cosa che non ci possiamo imaginare un re che non sia stato ne attribuirgli alcuna attione, e quantunque sia stato e si sappia che sia stato non possiamo attribuirgli attione che non gli sia avenuta.(15)

(Since the plot of the two aforementioned kinds of poetry does not consist simply in human action, but action that is also splendid and royal, and as it must show royal action, it follows that it must show action that has definitely happened and that of a king who has existed and whom one knows to have existed, since we cannot imagine a king who never existed, nor attribute any action to his non-existence, and even when he has existed and we know that he has existed, we cannot attribute actions to him that he never performed.)

However dotty this reasoning might now appear, it found considerable favour with its contemporaries (Giraldi argues along similar lines, if less forcefully). It led to a preference for historically accurate over fictitious plots in defiance of Aristotle's preference in section 9 of the Poetics for fiction over history: 'poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history; for while poetry is concerned with universal truths, history treats of particular facts.'(16) This is the line taken by Sidney, and also by Jonson's fellow-classicist George Chapman who proclaims the Aristotelian point of view in his letter to Sir Thomas Howard prefacing The Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois: 'And for the authentical truth of either person or action, who (worth the respecting) will expect it in a poem, whose subject is not truth, but things like truth? Poor envious souls they are that cavil at truth's want in these natural fictions . . .' Interestingly, Jonson seems to have changed his allegiance around this time from the vatic view of poetry that the passage in the Poetics seemed to support and that both Sidney(17) and Chapman professed, for a more down-to-earth attitude to poetry. In the speech of Lorenzo Junior in the first version of Every Man in his Humour, for instance, poetry is said to hate 'to have her dignitie prophand | With any relish of an earthly thought'.(18) This speech is duly suppressed in the revised version of the play of around 1605 and a new prologue is added that stresses the importance of 'deedes, and language, such as men do use . . . When she would shew an Image of the times'.(19) The Neoplatonic, vatic view of poetry is still in evidence in Poetaster of 1601 where Ovid is made to speak in praise of 'sacred poetry' (I. ii. 231f.). Presumably this dramatic change of allegiance was not unconnected with the views Jonson would have found in Castelvetro:

Aristotele non haveva opinione che la poesia fosse dono spetiale di dio conceduto ad uno huomo piu tosto che ad un altro, come e il dono della profetia e altri simili privilegi non naturali e non communi a tutti. Et senza dubbio intende anchora che nol faccia apertamente di riprovare quella opinione che alcuni attribuiscono a Platone, che la poesia sia infusa negli huomini per furore divino. La quale opinione ha avuta origine, e nascimento dall'ignoranza del vulgo e e stata accresciuta, e favorata dalla vanagloria de poeti per queste ragioni e in questa guisa.(20)

(Aristotle was not of the opinion that poetry was a special gift of God granted to one man rather than another, as is the gift of prophecy and other similar supernatural privileges that are not shared by everyone. But undoubtedly he intends rather flatly to reject that opinion that some attribute to Plato, that poetry is breathed into men by a divine madness. Which opinion had its origin and birth in the ignorance of the vulgar and has been cultivated and favoured by the vanity of poets for these reasons and in this manner.)

It is very clear that Sejanus represents this neo-classical viewpoint.

The other terms of the Sejanus address are also heavily qualified. Aristotle says little about 'persons' in tragedy, remarking principally that tragic characters should be good, true to type, lifelike and consistent, and also better than average,(21) whereas Castelvetro is concerned with the rank (or 'dignity') of the characters of tragedy.(22) Jonson's phrase 'fulnesse and frequencie of Sentence' is also neo-Senecan, not Aristotelian, meaning (as most modern editors agree) 'the sententia of the rhetoricians: aphorisms'.(23) It is not (as Rigg would have it) an equivalent of Aristotle's 'thought', which is explained as 'the ability to say what is possible and appropriate in any given circumstances', i.e. to make the characters lifelike.

One of the problems in trying to decide exactly how Jonson is using these terms, however, is that they do not all seem equally applicable to the play. 'Truth of Argument' is obviously of particular importance to the play, for the elaborate annotations of Sejanus in the first quarto are intended to demonstrate how strictly Jonson has kept faith with the historical evidence. On the other hand, some of the other items seem rather less appropriate to the play. 'Dignity of Persons' is in some ways a rather perverse description if applied to many of the play's characters, including the two leading characters, Tiberius Caesar and Sejanus, as the play itself is at some pains to point out. We can take the initial entry of Tiberius as an example of just how undignified he and Sejanus are. Tiberius enters to a scene that is essentially comic (I. 375-83):

TIBERIUS. [one kneels to him]

Wee not endure these flatteries, let him stand; Our empire, ensignes, axes, roddes, and state Take not away our humane nature from us: Look up, on us, and fall before the gods.

SEJANUS. How like a god, speaks Caesar!

ARUNTIUS. [aside] There, observe!

He can indure that second, that's no flattery. O, what is it, proud slime will not beleeve Of his owne worth, to heare it equall prais'd Thus with the gods?

Even without Aruntius' intervention, it is immediately clear that Tiberius' humility is a sham and that we are in the presence of a crook and his accomplice; that far from the solemnities of tragedy we are being treated to the comedy of bold effrontery. Nor is this scene untypical; it establishes the pattern for a play where the leading characters are knaves and their henchmen fools. There is not much that we should normally think of as 'dignity of Persons' here. If we compare the entry of the principal figure with Shakespeare's tragic entries the contrast is striking: whether it is Lear's processional entry, Othello's authoritative first appearance, the announcement of Macbeth's heroic deeds, or even the first appearance of the enigmatic Hamlet.

Similarly Jonson's phrase 'gravity and height of Elocution' does not seem entirely happy as a description of the play's language. It is possible that we are meant to take 'gravity' by itself, but the absence of a comma before 'and' suggests that it is intended as a qualification of 'Elocution'. That the language has all Jonson's best force, clarity, and precision cannot be denied, but we too often hear the voice of mockery, even of scurrility, to agree very readily to Jonson's terms. It is significant, for instance, that Sejanus' mockery of the physician's professional duties and of his female clients aptly accords with both Sejanus' character and the general tone of the play (I. 304-10):

Why, sir, I doe not aske you of their urines, Whose smel's most violet? or whose seige is best? Or who makes hardest faces on her stool? Which lady sleepes with her owne face, a nights? Which puts her teeth off, with her clothes, in court? Or, which her hayre? which her complexion? And, in which boxe she puts it?

It is not easy to equate such phrases as 'dignity of Persons' or 'gravity and height of Elocution' with such a passage. That the play employs the sententiousness considered an essential part of the Senecan tradition (Herford and the Simpsons annotate it extensively) is only saying that Jonson in this is following in the footsteps of the author of Titus Andronicus and many another Senecal tragedian.

The impression one gets of this passage from the address 'To the Readers' is not that Jonson is trying to give an accurate account of the play he has actually written, so much as summarizing, and perhaps adapting, a description of tragedy that he finds acceptable and wishes to identify himself with. The habit he evinces in Discoveries, of jotting down passages from writers he approves of and assimilating them to his own use, makes it quite possible that he is here paraphrasing rather than attempting an original description of tragedy. To understand how Jonson is using these terms we need a more extended context than he provides, for the play itself fails to throw adequate light on the passage. Just such a context can be found in Giambattista Giraldi's Discorso sulle comedie e sulle tragedie, published in Venice in 1554, where we find each of these terms Jonson uses discussed in considerable detail.

There is, as far as I know, no direct evidence that Jonson knew the Discorsi, but Giraldi's reputation extended throughout Europe in the sixteenth century. His collection of stories Gli Hecatommithi had been drawn to Shakespeare's attention round about 1603 when he was looking for the plot that was to become Othello. This was about the same time that Shakespeare was engaged in the staging of Sejanus as one of the principal actors. Shakespeare became interested enough in Gli Hecatommithi to use it again for his next play, Measure for Measure, in the preparation for which he may also have read Giraldi's play Epitia.(24) Giraldi was one of the most famous of the Italian neo-classical tragedians (H. B. Charlton describes Orbecche as 'the most famous play of the century'(25)) and it seems reasonable to assume his plays were known in England along with such critical prefaces as the prologues to Orbecche and Altile and the apology for Didone. The Discorsi were known to Samuel Daniel, who made use of the Discorso intorno al comporre dei romanzi in his Defence of Rhyme (1602);(26) it seems likely that Sir John Harington read the work in preparing his translation of Orlando Furioso(27) and Sidney echoes it in the Defence of Poetry.(28) Published with the Discorso dei romanzi, the Discorso sulle comedie e sulle tragedie is, by the standards of Renaissance critical commentary, surprisingly readable - certainly if we compare it with Castelvetro's turgid prose. One of the earliest (possibly the earliest(29)) of the extended Renaissance discussions of Aristotle's Poetics, the Discorso is the work of an accomplished man of the theatre and has many interesting asides on staging, on audience response, and on his own and others' plays. The discourse is in the form of a letter of advice to an aspiring playwright and pupil, Giulio Ponzoni, who is addressed affectionately as 'Messer Giulio' throughout. It takes much of its argument from the Poetics, considerably modified, however, by reference to Horace's Ars poetica and by an independent consideration of particular plays. Like most of the Italian theorists, Giraldi shows much robust independence, remarking at one point that the judicious writer should not take so much notice of the ancient authors as to imitate their vices, adding 'as Trissino does in some parts of his Sofonisba'.(30) Whether or not Jonson had read the Discorso, there are many matters raised there that became central to the Jacobean debate between those clinging to the eclectic native tradition and the new classicists, of whom Jonson was one of the more vociferous. There is one passage in particular that has a marked similarity to the excerpt we are examining in the address 'To the Readers' of Sejanus.

Giraldi has just been discussing two kinds of tragedy, those with happy and those with unhappy endings, the latter of which he calls 'mixed' ('mesta'), explaining that, unlike the Greeks, Seneca never writes tragedies with happy endings. At this point he is prompted to an aside on the superiority of Seneca over the Greek dramatists:

E ancora che Seneca tra i Latini non abbia mai posta mano alle tragedie di fin felice, ma solo si sia dato alle meste con tanta eccellenza quasi in tutte le sue tragedie egli avanzo (per quanto a me ne paia) nella prudenza, nella gravita, nel decoro, nella maiesta, nelle sentenze, tutti i Greci che scrissero mai, quantunque nella elocuzione potesse essere piu casto e piu colto ch'egli non e (vizio dell'eta nella quale egli scrisse, perche gia la lingua latina cominciava insieme con l'imperio romano a cadere dalla sua purita e dalla eccellenza sua).(31)

(And although Seneca among the Latin authors never attempted tragedies with happy endings, yet he attempted the mixed kind only, with such excellence, that in almost all his tragedies he surpassed all the Greeks who ever wrote (as it seems to me) in prudence, gravity, decorum, majesty, sententiae, although in elocution he might have been more pure and cultivated than he is (a vice of the age in which he wrote, because already the Latin language, like the Empire of Rome, was beginning to fall off from its purity and excellence).)

As in Jonson's address, Giraldi is here summarizing in general terms those qualities which he feels describe tragedy at its best; qualities which, with one exception, he finds exemplified in the tragedies of Seneca. Jonson does not mention Seneca in the address 'To the Readers', but, as Herford and the Simpsons show,(32) makes extensive use of Seneca in Sejanus itself. Giraldi's description of tragedy coincides closely and obviously with Jonson's at some points, for they both single out 'gravity' ('gravita'), 'Elocution' ('elocuzione'), and 'Sentence' ('sentenze'), while 'dignity of Persons' might well translate 'decoro', more especially (as we shall see) because, in defining 'decoro' more fully later in the discourse, Giraldi discusses 'decoro delle persone',(33) which could as well be translated 'dignity of persons' as 'decorum of persons'. John Florio in Queen Anna's New World of Words (1611) gives only the meanings 'comeliness, grace, decorum, beauty, grace in comely doing or speaking' for 'decoro', but Battaglia's Grande Dizionario (1961) gives ample evidence for the meaning 'dignity' during the Renaissance period (s.v. Decoro 2 sm. 1-3, 2, which gives 'alta dignita, prestigio'). All the terms of Jonson's description except one are thus covered in short space and several become subject to extensive discussion in later parts of the Discorso. There is no reference to 'truth of Argument' at this point in Giraldi's treatise, but in the course of the work there is considerable (if somewhat contradictory) discussion of the importance of basing tragedy on historical fact. Jonson, on his side, fails to mention both 'prudenza' (which Florio gives as 'prudence, wisdome . . . sage knowledge') and 'maiesta' (defined by Florio as 'maiestie, royall auctoritee, soveraigntie, lordly supremacie'). Both these qualities, however, are discussed in the Discorso primarily in their relation to character, and more especially the need for tragic figures to be serious and grave and to be of royal or noble stock: in this context both these terms are therefore subsumed in the phrase 'dignity of Persons'.

If we look further afield in the Discorso, we find that Giraldi gives a much fuller account of most of the terms he uses in this passage. He deals at some length, as I have remarked, with the much discussed question of 'truth of argument', the importance to tragedy of dealing accurately with historical fact. In using Aristotle's Poetics as the basis for much of his discussion of tragedy, Giraldi reminds his readers that Aristotle, in discussing plot ('favola'), regards it as 'the soul of tragedy'.(34) The plot (he says) is equally important to comedy, but there is the important difference that whereas the plots of comedy are fictitious, those of tragedy are taken from history ('quella della tragedia si pigli dalla istoria, e quella della comedia si finga dal poeta').(35) After a somewhat tortuous discussion of the difficulty of putting on stage imaginary characters who are supposed to be illustrious and famous (a problem, we saw, that greatly exercised Castelvetro, with equally opaque results(36)), Giraldi finally decides in this passage that after all tragedy can deal in fictional characters and that he has the authority of both Aristotle and Horace for saying so ('nondimeno io tengo che la favola tragica si possa cosi fingere dal poeta, come la comica).(37) This is not Giraldi's last word on the matter, however, for he later returns to the subject of plots in discussing the poet's ordering of his material. At this point he argues that while the tragedian takes his characters from history (adding in the margin 'for the most part'), none the less he has the right to alter the order of events and manipulate them to reveal the general truths that the events illustrate.(38)

Appresso non e tenuto il poeta servare tutti i nomi che l'istorico ha usati in descrivere la azione; ma solo que' due o tre senza i quali non si potrebbe conoscere l'azione: il resto de' nomi sono in sua mano.

(It is not necessary for the poet to preserve all the names that the historian has used in describing the action, but only the two or three without which it would not be possible to recognize the action: the rest of his naming is in his hands.)

Generally, Giraldi seems to believe it usual, but not essential, to base tragedy on historical fact. Jonson would seem to be adopting the stricter view, as advocated by Castelvetro, for his tragedy. Nothing more clearly indicates Jonson's neo-Aristotelian leanings than the contrast with Chapman mentioned above, and that these theoretical differences had important practical consequences can be seen in the contrast between Chapman's truly heroic tragic heroes (such as Bussy) and Jonson's.

In the latter part of the Discorso Giraldi deals with the other terms used in his praise of Seneca. In his later discussion of 'sentenze' he gives the word a much wider meaning than sententiae. Florio's dictionary illustrates something of the wide semantic range of the word in Italian (as in English): 'a sentence, a verdict, an award, a decree. Also an opinion, a meaning, an advice. Also a wittie or sententious saying.' For Giraldi it becomes a synonym for diction, but diction as it reveals the particular nature of the character using it.(39) Giraldi does, however, explain that this is the meaning he is giving the word 'in this part' ('in questo luogo') and it seems more likely he is using it in its more restricted meaning of 'aphorism' in the passage on Seneca, for Seneca is hardly notable for the range of his diction. When Giraldi returns to the praise of Seneca in a later passage, however, he remarks on the vivacity of his language ('vivacita delle sentenze').(40) Giraldi is perhaps using the word in a narrower sense of 'saw' or 'saying' in a passage where he is discussing the various uses of 'sentences' in tragedy and comedy,(41) as he certainly is in a later reference to 'sentenze morali'.(42) While Horne, therefore, is not entirely correct to say that Giraldi does not discuss the term in the Discorso sulle comedie e sulle tragedie, he rightly points out that it is in the Discorso dei romanzi that he provides a full definition:(43)

un modo di parlare convenevole al costume, tolto dalla comune vita, e dalla comune opinione degli uomini, il quale eficacissimamente mostra o quello ch'e stato, o che e, o che deve esser nella vita umana con acconcia varieta: e queste sono nelle tragedie molto frequenti, come quelle che a mettere l'azione, gli affetti, i costumi, il terribile, il miserabile negli occhi degli spettatori son fuori d'ogni credenza attissime.

(a mode of speaking in accordance with tradition, drawn from common life and the common opinion of men, which shows efficaciously and with suitable variety, either what has been, or what is, or what ought to be in human life: these are very frequent in tragedies as an unbelievably effective means of presenting action, feeling, customs, the terrible, and the pathetic before the eyes of the spectators.)

There is some explanation here of Jonson's use of 'fulnesse and frequencie' to qualify 'Sentence'. Jonson would seem to be using the term in its narrower sense, for his play (as Herford and the Simpsons point out(44)) abounds in sententiae that are marked by inverted commas in both the first quarto and (to a lesser extent) the folio.

Interesting light is thrown on Jonson's phrase 'dignity of Persons' (as also on the phrase 'law of persons' in the prologue to Volpone) by Giraldi's discussion of decorum towards the end of his discourse. He advises his friend Giulio that decorum applies both to speech and to characterization: it is important to make the young speak like the young, the old like the old, and you must have regard to the rank ('qualita') and status of the character: 'A young man of the people will speak very differently from a young prince' ('altrimenti favellera un giovane del popolo, a altrimenti un giovane reale').(45) Tragedy again demands a different range of speech from comedy, but in any case, the writer should avoid obscurity of language and the kind of affectation you get among the Spanish (this is amusingly illustrated). Language ought to be 'naked, clear, pure and, in brief, without ornamentation and reprehensible smoothness' ('nudo, chiaro, puro, e per dir breve senza questo sconcio e biasimevole liscio').(46) As regards 'dignity of persons' ('decoro delle persone'), it should be the aim of the playwright to keep the virtuous woman out of comedy, because it deals mostly with low-life characters ('di persone di lasciva e di disonesta vita').(47) Tragedy, on the other hand, must show characters who are great, magnificent, royal, confining itself to representing only a few who might be of low birth, but none the less respectable ('persone grandi, magnifiche, reali, cavatene alcune poche le quail quantunque sian basse, sono nondimeno oneste').(48) The women of tragedy must be 'grave, prudent and good-mannered' ('gravi, prudenti e accorte') using moral sentences ('sentenze morali') in their speech, and 'full of sense . . . because they always move among the great and the serious . . . unlike lesser women who are occupied with running their households and looking after children and conversing only with the humble and vulgar'.(49) It is true (he adds) that Aristotle says that there is no such thing as a prudent woman, but he says this in comparison with men, and we all know that no woman can compete with a wise man in wisdom, prudence, and gravity. For Giraldi (as with Castelvetro) rank is central to the concept of 'dignity of persons' and the phrase in the Sejanus address could best be explained as referring to the exalted rank of the principal persons of the drama. The word 'maiesta' is occasionally used in the course of the Discorso, as for instance when Giraldi is describing with enthusiasm a particularly splendid performance of his own play Orbecche in his house, the production of which he praises for achieving the greatness and majesty ('quella grandezza e quella maiesta') suited to the subject ('favola').(50) In any case the stress on the importance of kings and regality in tragedy would naturally lead to the requirement that tragedy should be majestic both in its language and in its depiction of character. 'Prudence' we also find associated with the characters of tragedy. When he comes to sum up the qualities of a wise man he uses two of the terms accorded to Seneca: 'quel senno, quella prudenza, quella gravita che conviene all'uomo savio' ('that wisdom, that prudence, that gravity necessary to the wise man').(51) Much of Giraldi's discussion of character stems directly from section 15 of the Poetics, though necessarily adapted to include comedy. Jonson's comedy, at least from Volpone to Bartholomew Fair, is conspicuous for the absence or near-absence of virtuous women, while Sejanus avoids low-life characters. In Giraldi's terms Sejanus probably does exhibit 'dignity of persons'.

Jonson would surely have approved Giraldi's exhortation to nakedness, clarity, and purity of style, for he strove for this in his poetry: 'Truth, and the Graces best, when naked are'.(52) In referring to 'elocution' both writers are concerned with style. The meaning of 'elocuzione' is defined by its immediate context in the Giraldi passage. Seneca shows a falling off from the purity of style of his predecessors of the Augustan golden age (Battaglia gives examples from the sixteenth century of the meaning 'Arte di esprimersi (oralmente o per scritto) in modo chiaro' under 'Elocuzione 1'). Similarly in England in the Renaissance period 'elocution' could mean 'oratorical or literary expression of thought: literary "style" as distinguished from "matter"' (OED Elocution 1) as it clearly does in the example given from the preface to Habington's Castara (1634): 'For how unhappie soever I may be in the elocution, I am sure that the Theame is worthy enough' (Poems, edited Allott (Liverpool, 1948), 5, 26-7). Webster, who is usually thought to be echoing the Sejanus preface in his own address 'To the reader' of The White Devil, uses the expressions 'height of style, and gravity of persons' as his examples of the critical laws (White Devil, edited Brennan (London, 1966), 5). Jonson's phrase 'gravity and height of Elocution' would seem to mean something like 'serious and exalted style'.

It is finally impossible to be certain if the relationship between these two texts is anything more than a function of their shared interest in neo-classical theory. The terminology they share belongs to a whole tradition. That similar assumptions, moreover, can lead to remarkably similar responses can be illustrated from the end of Giraldi's treatise, where he warns Giulio to avoid in comedy the obscenity playwrights introduce to attract the vulgar.

si vede che questi che a' nostri tempi introducono e zanni ed altre sciocche persone per mover risa, sono lontani da quello che alia regolata comedia si conviene, e cercano di piacere piu che a' giudiziosi alla vil plebe.(53)

(we see that those who in our time introduce clowns and other foolish persons to make people laugh are removed from the man who is constrained by well-regulated comedy, and seek to please the vulgar herd rather than the judicious.)

This might well remind the English reader of Jonson's scorn of those who exploit their comedies for cheap laughs as described in the Volpone prologue. Yet we can be sure that Jonson had not read that particular passage, because it is an interpolation into the Ferrara copy of the Discorsi. Both Jonson and Giraldi are simply reflecting the neo-classical scorn of the popular traditions. None the less the similarities taken together are striking. One further possible connection is that Giraldi was one of the earliest of the Aristotelian critics to advocate a unity of time in addition to unity of action.(54) By the time of Volpone Jonson had progressed from observing merely the 'strict lawes of time' to 'The lawes of time, place, persons he observeth, | From no needfull rule he swerveth' - a graduation perhaps, in this instance, from Giraldi to Castelvetro? This stricter view of the unities in Volpone now needs to be examined.

The Needful Rules in 'Volpone'

In the prologue to Volpone, Jonson boasts that the play conforms to the requirements of the 'best critics'. He has, he says, been mindful of the needful rules, which may be synonymous wholly or in part with those described in the previous line as 'the lawes of time, place, persons'. Here, as I have said, Jonson implies that the best critics are the neo-Aristotelian Italian critics, for it was Lodovico Castelvetro who first fully articulated the unities of time and place to which Jonson refers. Commenting in his Poetica d'Aristotele (1570) on Aristotle's comparison of Tragedy and Epic and in particular the assertion that 'tragedy tries, as far as possible, to keep within a single revolution of the sun'(55) Castelvetro has this to say:

la tragedia . . . conviene havere per soggetto un' attione avenuta in picciolo spatio di luogo, e in picciolo spatio di tempo, cio e, in quel luogo, e in quel tempo, dove e quando i rappresentatori dimorano occupati in operatione . . .(56)

(a tragedy . . . must have as its subject an action that has occurred in a small spatial area and in a short space of time, that is, in that place and in that time where and when the actors are occupied in the acting . . .)

Here he confines himself to tragedy, but elsewhere implies that the rules apply to all drama, also mentioning that the time represented should never exceed twelve hours,(57) a rule that Volpone observes strictly.(58) The third rule that Jonson mentions, that of 'persons', is taken by some modern editors to mean the unity of action,(59) the only one of the 'three unities' that has the unequivocal authority of the Poetics. Johanna Procter, however, in her note on the line(60) points out that Jonson does not observe strict unity of action in the play (the Would-be plot, for instance, is outside the main action) and suggests that the 'law of persons' refers to a rule governing the presentation of character, as indeed Jonson's phrase would seem to imply. Miss Procter interprets the 'law of persons' as: 'that only changes or development of character which could credibly take place within the time scheme of the play should be allowed'.

Castelvetro's view of the unity of action is, in fact, considerably more relaxed than Aristotle's and there is nothing in Jonson's practice in Volpone that would run counter to Castelvetro's theory on this subject. Castelvetro opposes Aristotle's dogmatic utterances in section 8 of the Poetics,(61) by an appeal to actual examples:

Hora cio che ragiona Aristotele in questa particella della singolarita della favola e per conseguente della singolarita dell'attione e da essere considerato e inteso sanamente. Percio che noi troviamo in ogni tragedia e comedia bene ordinata e atta a rendere maggiore diletto non una attione sola ma due, le quali alcuna volta non paiono havere tutta quella dipendenza l'una dall'altra seconda necessita o verisimilitudine, che potrebbono havere, e per aventura si potrebbe rappresentare ciascuna di loro seperatamente. Egli e vero che l'una dell' attioni pare principale, e l'altra accessoria e pare che l'accessoria serva alla principale in rendere La felicita o la miseria maggiore. Et quantunque si potesse mostrare cio con essempi assai ci contenteremo di mostrarlo con due, cio e con l'essempio della favola della tragedia d'Hercole il Fortennato d'Euripide o di Seneca, e della favola della comedia dell'Andria di Terentio.(62)

(We must now consider Aristotle's reasoning in this section concerning the unity of the plot and consequently the unity of the action and understand it wisely. For we find not one action but two giving pleasure in all well-made and fitting tragedies and comedies, and these plots sometimes do not appear to have quite that interdependence that would seem to be dictated by necessity or verisimilitude, and perhaps even could be presented quite separately from each other. It is true that one of the actions appears as the main plot and the other as subordinate serves the main in making the happiness or misery greater. And though one could demonstrate this with many examples we shall confine the illustration to two: that of the plot of Hercules of Euripides and Seneca and that of the plot of Terence's Andria.)

In a later summary of his position Castelvetro goes further in expressing a preference for diversity of action against unity on the grounds that variety is more pleasing than uniformity:

Ma perche il piu, e la diversita delle cose piacenti generano maggiore diletto, che non fa la singolarita e la conformita d'una cosa piacente, non ha dubbio, che maggiore si trarra di vedere piu e diversi animali piacenti, che non si trahe da vederne uno, e similmente non ha dubbio che non si tragga maggiore diletto ascoltando una favola contenente piu e diverse attioni, che quella, che ne contiene una sola . . .(63)

(But because abundance and diversity of pleasing things generate greater delight compared to the unity and uniformity of a single pleasing object, there is no doubt that it is more attractive to see more and differently pleasing animals than it is seeing one, so similarly, there is no doubt that we get greater delight listening to a plot that contains many and different actions than one which only contains a single action. . .)

At the end of his commentary Castelvetro expresses an even stronger preference for multiple plots:

ma ci dobbiamo ricordare che habbiamo mostrato che non si puo far tragedia a comedia, che sia lodevole, laquale non habbia due attioni, cio e, due favole, quantunque l'una sia principale, e l'altra accessoria.(64)

(but we must remember that we have demonstrated that no praiseworthy tragedy or comedy can be written without two actions, that is, two plots, though one is the principal and the other subordinate.)

In these terms Volpone can be seen to be well within the limits of Castelvetro's tolerance, for the Would-be plot, although separate from the main action (and often discarded in modern performances) is none the less an accessory of the main plot, both in relating to the central character and acting as a contrast to the theme of the main action by showing foolishness in place of vice. Jonson's practice, therefore, seems to be consistent with Castelvetro's theories of the three unities of place, time, and action.

The difficulty remains that Jonson's phrase 'law(s) of . . . persons' does not easily equate with the idea of the unity of action, especially as quite distinct rules governing characterization, as we have seen, were promulgated in neo-classical theory. Castelvetro's discussion of plot ('favola') and action ('attione') is concerned to stress the distinction between action and plot on the one hand and characters ('persone') and behaviour ('costumi') on the other. In general he has comparatively little to say on character in the Poetica. Like Aristotle, he insists on the primacy of action, though he admits that action cannot be shown without character:

Non si fa attione se non ci sono persone che la facciano, ne le persone, che la fanno sono senza costumi, liquali costumi spetialmente si scoprano nel fare l'attione. Adunque per mezzo delle persone in quanto operano, i costumi entrano in tragedia come parte accessoria e dipendente dalla favola . . . i costumi, poi che sono accessori della favola e dipendendo da quella e servano a quella, sono introdotti nella tragedia per la favola come per fine, e non la favola e introdotta nella tragedia per gli costumi.(65)

(There is no action if there are no people to carry it out, nor are the people who act without behaviour, which behaviour necessarily reveals itself in doing things. So by means of the characters with which it operates, behaviour enters into tragedy as accessory to and dependent on the plot . . . behaviour, since it is an accessory of the plot, is dependent on it and serves it; it is introduced into tragedy for the purpose of the plot, the plot is not introduced into tragedy for the sake of the behaviour.)

Character is a subordinate consideration to plot and because plot dictates what the characters do, the rules governing characterization are largely subsumed by the rules governing the action:

adunque i costumi, avegna che non sieno parte dell'attione, ma compagnia inseperabile, e scoprentisi insieme con l'attione non si deono potere giudicare essere parte seperata dall'attione, poiche senza essi non si fa l'attione.(66)

(so then behaviour, though not part of the action, accompanies it inseparably, and because it reveals itself through the action, it ought not to be considered as something separate from action seeing that action would not be possible without it.)

Although Castelvetro follows Aristotle in seeing character as subordinate to action, his commentary also necessarily deals with those parts of the Poetics where Aristotle discusses characterization. In commenting on the opening sentences of section 2 of the Poetics, for instance, Castelvetro characteristically interprets Aristotle's division of characters into 'good' and 'bad' in terms of social rather than moral behaviour, insisting that tragedy and comedy are distinguished by the social rank of the characters they depict.

la nobilta o lo stato reale, e la vilta o lo stato privato constituiscono la differenza della poesia per cagione della materia, la quale nobilta o vilta non si discerne per bonta, o per malvagita, ma si discerne per portamenti, i quali portamenti se sono informati di convenevolezza scoprono la nobilta, e se sono informati di sconvenevolezza scoprono la vilta.(67)

(noble or royal rank and plebeian or private rank constitute the difference in the kinds of poetry, which nobility or baseness is not a question of good and evil, but is demonstrated in the deportment which expresses itself as civility, while baseness expresses itself in incivility.)

Comedy must deal with private persons, while tragedy depicts nobility, and preferably royalty. Elsewhere Castelvetro has a little more to say about the characters of comedy in commenting on section 5 of the Poetics.(68) The subject of comedy is human baseness ('turpitudine humana'), but should confine itself to baseness that makes us laugh and that is the result of stupidity rather than vice and that is neither painful nor harmful ('piggiori secondo quella maniera de vitii che fa ridere quale e la sciocchezza dell'animo o la bruttezza non nociva').(69) This is the view of comic baseness advocated in the prologue to the revised version of Every Man in his Humour where Jonson says he is depicting follies, not crimes. Castelvetro's view of characterization in comedy fits Every Man in his Humour much better than it fits Volpone. The fact, however, that Jonson apologizes for transgressing 'comic law' by insisting on a fiercely judgemental ending to Volpone in his dedication to the two universities that prefaces the play (l. 110) suggests that he has had Castelvetro in mind, even though on this occasion he is rejecting his advice.

Although Castelvetro's rules of time, place, and action are adhered to, then, Volpone does not reflect Castelvetro's views on the characters appropriate to comedy. As Jonson's guidance is said to come from more than one 'best critic', however, we can turn again to the other critical text we examined in the discussion of Sejanus to see whether Giraldi's attitude to characterization is any closer to Jonson's practice here.

In the Discorso much of what Giraldi has to say on character decorum ('decoro delle persone') is certainly pertinent to Volpone. Like Castelvetro, Giraldi has Aristotle's Poetics as his inspiration, though he is even more independent-minded in arguing from practice and example, as befits a successful practising playwright. He discusses characterization at some length both in considering behaviour ('costumi') and characters ('persone'). Quoting Aristotle's four requirements for characterization in tragedy, Giraldi expands the second, that 'the portrayal should be appropriate',(70) into a distinction between what is appropriate in tragedy compared to comedy:

E tanto voglio ora che mi basti aver detto del costume, il quale, non solo dee esser considerabile nelle tragedie, ma nelle comedie ancora, quantunque diversamente si consideri in questa e in quella: perche come egli e nella tragedia sulle persone grandi e reali, cosi egli e nella comedia sulle popolaresche e su le civili, cioe su padri e madri di famiglia, su figliuoli, su servi e sovra altre condizioni di persone di questa maniera, alle quail tutte sono da essere dati i convenevoli costumi, come si mostrera . . .(71)

(And I now think that I have said enough about behaviour, which should not only be a consideration in tragedies, but in comedies as well, however differently one should consider the two: because while tragedy deals with great and royal persons, comedy deals with the vulgar and the bourgeois, that is, with fathers and mothers within the family, their children, servants and with other kinds of people like that, all of whom must be given suitable behaviour as I shall demonstrate in its right place.)

Giraldi's discussion of characterization develops and extends Aristotle's view of character decorum as expressed in section 15 of the Poetics: 'the portrayal [of character in tragedy] should be appropriate. For example, a character may possess manly qualities, but it is not appropriate that a female character should be given manliness and cleverness.'(72) This preference for type over individual is developed more elaborately by Giraldi for both comedy and tragedy. The words given to a character, he says, must be appropriate to the type of person he or she is, it is essentially a matter of decorum ('la parte e tutto su il decoro').(73) An army captain ought to be bold and valiant, a woman timid and unassuming. It will be inappropriate if a captain is made cowardly and timid and the woman bold and fierce and an example of bad practice, because it would be unnatural in both cases: this is vicious and without decorum and is regarded as a bad custom, that is, inappropriate and as a custom unfitting for the character introduced:

se il capitano s'introdurra codardo e timido, e la donna ardita e feroce, sara cio fuori del convenevole, ed esempio di mal costume; perche sara fuori della natura dell'uno e dell'altro: il che e vizioso e senza decoro, e si piglia per costume reo, cioe per cosa non atta, e per abito non convenevole alia persona introdotta.(74)

Euripides is taken to task both for allowing Iphigenia to change in the course of Iphigenia in Aulis from timid to bold and in Alceste for making the heroine braver than her husband as well as for showing the baseness of the son in being unwilling to die for his father.

Characterization in comedy, no less than tragedy, must be governed by both moral and aesthetic decorum. The language of comedy must be simple, plain, familiar, and suitable to ordinary people ('semplice, puro, famigliare e convenevole alle persone del popolo').(75) Just as the language spoken by characters is subject to the principle of decorum, so is the type of character itself. Virtuous women ought not to appear in comedy, for instance, because comedy deals with characters who are wanton and dishonest ('persone di lasciva e disonesta vita').(76)

Oddly enough this stress on the typical is defended in the name of verisimilitude and towards the end of his discourse Giraldi adjures the young man he is addressing to make sure that his characterization is realistic:

vi voglio soggiungere una regola universale, la quale seguendo nelle comedie e nelle tragedie, mai non vi lascerete in queste parti portar fuori del convenevole. E questa e, ch'avvertiate che le persone introdotte nella scena, non facciano o dicano quello nel pubblico che verisimilemente non farebbono e non direbbono in casa; e che teniate certo che quello che in onesta azione sarebbe vituperoso a fare in casa, sia anco vituperoso nella scena.(77)

(I wish to suggest to you a universal rule, following which in comedy and tragedy will never allow you to stray from what is fitting in this regard. And this is, that you make sure that characters introduced on to the stage neither do nor say in public what realistically they would not do or say at home; and that you make certain what in a true situation would be disapproved of at home would also be disapproved of on the stage.)

Clearly what prompts Giraldi's concern for typicality is the need for moral clarity of the kind that Jonson, too, insists on in his address to the two universities. There is a puritanical, moralizing strain in Giraldi largely absent from Castelvetro's commentary.

The idea that character should be illustrative of types or categories rather than exhibit the complexities of real people is also fundamental to Jonson's practice in Volpone, which marks a significant shift both from the historical portraiture of Sejanus and from the greater naturalism of earlier humours comedy such as Every Man in his Hum our. Jonson describes the behaviour and characterization of the latter in his retrospective prologue as:

. . . deeds and language such as men doe use: And persons, such as Comoedie would chuse, When she would show an image of the times And sport with humane follies, not with crimes.

and the prologue ends by commending the 'men' of his comedy in contrast with the 'monsters' of others. Here Jonson seems to be recognizing in his earlier work a more naturalistic attitude to character. It is worth remarking, incidentally, that the distinction between 'deeds' and 'actions' here is that between Giraldi's terms 'costumi' and 'azioni'. The use of naturalistic language in comedy, too, is in accord with Giraldi's attitude to the language of comedy. It is true, of course, that Jonson's theory of humours characterization shows a marked tendency towards typicality well before the writing of Volpone. The beast fable nomenclature of Volpone, however, is a good indication of the further shift towards a more consistent typicality.

Jonson's practice in the characterization of Volpone conforms quite closely to Giraldi's precepts. Jonson's characters are conceived in terms of caricatures which emphasize salient qualities, the characters are rogues and fools, mostly of bourgeois origin (Volpone's rank might be thought exceptional here, but he is hardly princely). Decent women, rare in Jonsonian comedy generally, are only minimally represented in the colourless Celia, who is, however, fittingly defenceless and in need of protection. More important still, Jonson exhibits in Volpone that concern with moral turpitude that distinguishes Giraldi's view of the drama from Castelvetro's. Jonson's practice is in full accord with Giraldi's moral emphasis and he has successfully exhibited 'decoro delle persone'.

1 Ben Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford and P. and E. Simpson (Oxford, 1925-52), iv. 324, 1. 229. All Jonson quotations are from this edition, unless otherwise stated.

2 See D. Riggs, Ben Jonson, a Life (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1989), 92.

3 Ben Jonson, i. 250-71; xi. 593-603.

4 See G. G. Smith (ed.), Elizabethan Critical Essays (Oxford, 1904), i. 197. Jonson may also be including among the 'best critics' he was following Jean de la Taille, whose Art de la tragedie (1572), briefly and unusually for a French commentator as early as this, mentions unity of place along with the more usual unity of time (see L. E. Kestner and H. B. Charlton, introd. to the Poetical Works of Sir William Alexander (Edinburgh and London, 1921), i, p. cxxvi).

5 Ben Jonson, xi. 601.

6 Ibid. i. 134.

7 Ibid. xi. 248-9. Mario Praz, 'Machiavelli and the Elizabethans', Proceedings of the British Academy, 14 (1928), 79 comments: 'Ben Jonson had a direct acquaintance with Machiavelli's writings, as it appears from his Discoveries, from passages of the unfinished Fall of Mortimer and from occasional use of Machiavelli's terminology in two passages of Sejanus.'

8 Ben Jonson, xi. 600.

9 Ibid. iv. 350, 1. 4.

10 Ibid., ll. 18-22.

11 Riggs, Ben Jonson, a Life, 99.

12 'Aristotle on the Art of Poetry', Classical Literary Criticism, trans. T. S. Dorsch (Harmondsworth, 1965), 39. All references to Aristotle's Poetics are to this edition.

13 The Selected Plays of Ben Jonson, vol. i, ed. J. Procter (Cambridge, 1989), 8 nn. 19-20.

14 Ben Jonson, iv. 350, ll. 28-9.

15 Lodovico Castelvetro, Poetica d'Aristotele, Vulgarizzata et Sposta, 1570 (fac. edn., Munich, 1967), [104.sup.v] (sig. Dd[4.sup.v]). The pagination is faulty and the signature reference is therefore added. I have silently expanded contractions throughout. The translations are mine.

16 Poetics, 43-4.

17 See my short article 'Sidney and Poetic Madness', N&Q NS 38 (1991), 24-6.

18 v. iii. 329-30 (Ben Jonson, iii).

19 Prol. 21, 23 (ibid.).

20 Castelvetro, Poetica d'Aristotele, [35.sup.v]-[36.sup.r] (sigs. K[3.sup.v]-K[4.sup.r]).

21 Poetics, 51, 52.

22 Castelvetro, Poetica d'Aristotele, [20.sup.v] (sig. F[4.sup.v]).

23 The Complete Plays of Ben Jonson, ed. G. A. Wilkes (Oxford, 1981), ii. 234 n. 17. See also Ben Jonson, ix. 592 n. 20; Selected Plays of Jonson, ed. Procter, 8 n. 21; Sejanus, ed. P. Ayres (Manchester, 1990), 51 n. 17.

24 See M. Doran, Endeavors of Art (Madison, Wis., 1954), App. 3, pp. 385-9; G. Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (London, 1958), where a summary of Epitia is given as a 'possible dramatic source'. For the provenance of Giraldi's Hecatommithi in England see S. Jayne, The Library Catalogues of the English Renaissance (Los Angeles, 1956), 54.

25 Charlton, introd. to Poetical Works of Sir William Alexander, p. lxxiii.

26 Elizabethan Critical Essays, i, p. lxxxii; ii. 458 n. 360, 16.

27 See J. W. H. Atkins, English Literary Criticism: The Renaissance (1947; repr. London, 1968), 193, 344.

28 Elizabethan Critical Essays, i. 390 n. 170, 10-15.

29 See the discussion of the dating in P. R. Horne, The Tragedies of Giambattista Cinthio Giraldi (Oxford, 1962), 25-8.

30 References are to Scritti Estetici di G. B. Giraldi (Milan, 1864). I have used this edition in preference to the only early edition, that of 1554, because it records marginal glosses added (seemingly) in Giraldi's hand in the copy of the 1554 edition once held in the Biblioteca Ariostea of Ferrara. I have not, however, been able to trace this copy in spite of the most courteous help of the library staff (which I here gratefully acknowledge), but I have checked all quotations from the 19th-cent. edition against the available copy of the 1554 edn. in the Biblioteca Ariostea. This reference is to Discorsi, ii. 93: 'che non dee giudizioso scrittore dar tanto riputazione alla autorita degli antichi che voglia anco imitare i lor vizi; come veggiamo aver fatto il Trissino in qualche parte della sua Sofonisba.' The translations are mine.

31 Discorso, ii. 33.

32 Ben Jonson, ix. 606 (II. 150-6), 607 (II. 170-2, 174), 625 (IV. 492; v. 7), 629 (v. 392-4).

33 Discorso, ii. 103.

34 Discorso, ii. 12: 'La favola . . . e detta da Aristotile anima della tragedia . . .'

35 Ibid. 13.

36 Castelvetro, Poetica d'Aristotele, [104.sup.v] (sig. Dd[4.sup.v]).

37 Discorso, ii. 14.

38 Ibid. 46.

39 Ibid. 68-9.

40 Ibid. 95.

41 Ibid. 98.

42 Ibid. 104.

43 Horne, Tragedies of Giraldi, 30.

44 Ben Jonson, iv. 335-6.

45 Discorso, ii. 95.

46 Ibid. 102.

47 Ibid. 103.

48 Ibid. 103.

49 Ibid. 104-5.

50 Ibid. 109.

51 Ibid. 105.

52 Ben Jonson, viii. 158, 'An Epistle to Master John Selden', 4.

53 Discorso, ii. 119.

54 Elizabethan Critical Essays, i. 398 n. 197, 6. Discorso, ii. 10-11, 'e l'una e l'altra [i.e. comedy and tragedy] finge l'avvenimento della sua azione nello spazio di un giorno, ovvero di poco piu. (E se in questo spazio di tempo non si finisse l'azione, sarebbe ella noiosa, perche ove la epopeia non e astretta a spazio alcuno di tempo . . . nondimeno la tragedia e la comedia hanno il tempo determinato di un giorno o poco piu, il qual poco passa nell'altro giorno.') (both [comedy and tragedy] conceive the events of their action in terms of one day's duration, or a little more. (And if the action should not be finished in this space of time, it would be faulty, since, whereas the epic is not confined in duration of time . . . yet tragedy and comedy have their duration determined as one day or a little more, which small extra amount of time continues into the next day).) The sentence in parentheses is an added marginal gloss to Giraldi's text.

55 Poetics, 38.

56 Castelvetro, Poetica d'Aristotele, [60.sup.v] (sig. Q[4.sup.v]).

57 Ibid. [96.sup.v]-[97.sup.r] (sigs. Bb[2.sup.v]-Bb[3.sup.r]).

58 Ben Jonson, ix. 682.

59 See e.g. Volpone, ed. D. Cook (London, 1962), 19; Ben Jonson, Three Comedies, ed. M. Jamieson (Harmondsworth, 1966), 464, where the 'laws of time, place, persons' are described as 'the unities'.

60 Selected Plays of Ben Jonson, ed. Procter, 439.

61 Poetics, 42-3.

62 Castelvetro, Poetica d'Aristotele, [98.sup.v] (sig. Bb[4.sup.v]). The pagination is faulty here.

63 Ibid. [279.sup.v] (sig. Bbbb[3.sup.v]).

64 Ibid. [381.sup.r-v] (sig. Eeeee[1.sup.r-v]).

65 Ibid. [178.sup.v] (sig. Zz[2.sup.v]).

66 Ibid. [80.sup.v]-[81.sup.r] (sigs. X[4.sup.v]-Y[1.sup.r]).

67 Castelvetro, Poetica d'Aristotele, [20.sup.v] (sig. F[4.sup.v]).

68 Poetics, 37-8.

69 Castelvetro, Poetica d'Aristotele, [50.sup.v] (sig. O[2.sup.v]).

70 Discorso, ii. 70. The reference is to section 15 of the Poetics, 'The characters of tragedy', ed. cit. 51-2.

71 Ibid. ii. 71.

72 Poetics, 51.

73 Discorso, ii. 91.

74 Discorso, ii. 91.

75 Ibid. ii. 96.

76 Ibid. ii. 103.

77 Ibid. ii. 118-19.