Ben Ionson

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 are the only honest hypocrites. Their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.
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