might be called an itemizing approach to discourse.” (56)

     That the new commercial classes took to the itemizing 
approach can be documented from many quarters. Its novelty 
and oddity provided hilarity on the Elizabethan stage. Ben 
Jonson’s Sir Politick Would-Be in Volpone  is a would-be 
Machiavel, and Jonson naturally links the new statecraft with 
the new techniques of visual observation and organization of 
action:

               I do love
          To note and to observe: though I live out, 
          Free from the active torrent, yet I’d mark 
          The currents and the passages of things, 
          For mine own private use; and know the ebbs 
          And flows of state.