Volpone: Ay me, I have ta’en a grasshopper by the wing!

Lady Politic Would-Be: Burnt silk and amber. You have muscadel

Good i’ the house—

Volpone: You will not drink, and part?

Lady Politic Would-Be: No, fear not that. I doubt we shall not get

Some English saffron, half a dram would serve;

Your sixteen cloves, a little musk, dried mints;

Bugloss and barley-meal—


In Ben Jonson’s Volpone Nano the Dwarf sings some verses, in Act 2, scene 2, extolling an elixir that has remarkable medicinal and amatory properties: