Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Ben Ionson: His Volpone, or the Foxe
Jonson, as a rule (i say as a rule, because there are exceptions which will be considered hereafter) - as a rule, then, Jonson does not gather up his threads, as many an expert playwright, with no whit of Jonson's genius, could gather them up. To write what an actor calls a good play, a play that will act, a man must have something in himself of the actor. I do not mean that he must strut upon the stage, but he must fathom the characters of men by emotion as well as by external observation; he must be able to assume at will, and to really feel, the passion of the king and the cardinal, the murderer and the saint. Players - if I may quote Hazlitt again-players are the only honest hypocrites. Their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
