Jonson

“Ha’ you heard better language, sir?”

Venice, 1606. In the crowd, Peregrine and Sir Politic Would-be are listening to Volpone’s medicine show.

Poughkeepsie, New York, November 14, 1902: the Poughkeepsie Eagle-News reports.

As to me and you, you shriveled, salad-eating artisan: of course our language is irregular and subject to weakening drains. In 1902 we couldn’t say “pregnant,” and shortly after that era our words were re-herded into an even tighter propinquity.

But after all, words have never in themselves made the weak strong or the sick well. We do hold that magic in our mouths, but it isn’t a spell to be spoken. Its power is pre-vocable: a watersound of wet chemistry at its work.

Open your body wide to that language and listen. Help it help yourself to it. Immunize.

Surcharge: 25 centimes for unemployed Louis Pasteur

Footnote: take your medicine

 *

Sources:

Ben Jonson, Volpone, ed. Philip Brockbank. 1968; New York: Norton, 1992. The illustration by Audrey Beardsley (not in this edition) shows Volpone saying, “Hail the world’s soul, and mine!”as he begins his morning prayer to his gold.

The advertisement “‘Tis the Genuine” has been photoshopped from the online original at https://www.flickr.com/photos/library-company-of-philadelphia/6857386818/  On this site, the text explains:

“Advertisement for the Antikamnia Chemical Company established around 1890. Depicts the skull-headed company icon ‘Funny Bones,’ wearing glasses, attired in a suit, and holding an “AK” tablet in his hand, and shrugging. Antikamnia (opposed to pain) was a toxic and addictive medicine often mixed with codeine and quinine. Funny Bones was designed by pharmacist and doctor Louis Crucius.”