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Volpone, Herr Von Fuchs, and Les Heritiers Rabourdin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

George W. Whiting*
Affiliation:
The Rice Institute

Extract

The fact that Jonson's Volpone is the source of Les Héritiers Rabourdin is known, but the precise relationship of the French play to the English original and to the German adaptation, Herr von Fuchs, has not been examined. A comparative study of these three plays reveals some interesting similarities and contrasts.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1931

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References

page 605 note 1 Zola acknowledged that the idea of his play was taken from Volpone (Emile Zola, Théâtre Paris, n. d. i, vi–vii); see also William Archer, The Old Drama and the New (Boston, 1923), p. 85; and Richard Oehlert, E. Zola als Theaterdichter … (Berlin, 1920), i, 75.

page 605 note 2 Op. cit., pp. vi, ii.

page 605 note 3 i, i, p. 138.

page 606 note 4 On this point see Ben Jonson, ed. Herford and Simpson (Oxford, 1925), ii, 54; and Emile Legouis, A History of English Literature (New York, 1926), i, 285.

page 606 note 5 Le Naturalisme au Théâtre (Paris, 1912), p. 23.

page 606 note 6 This was written in 1793, and, after being refused production, was printed in 1798, with the title Ein Schurke über den andern oder die Fuchsprelle (H. Lüdeke, Ludwig Tieck und das alte englische Theater Frankfurt am Main, 1922, p. 28).

page 607 note 7 As Lüdeke points out, there is remarkable agreement between Tieck's version and Coleridge's criticism of Volpone (op. cit., pp. 154–5).