MACMILLAN MASTER GUIDES VOLPONE BY BEN JONSON MICHAEL STOUT M MACMILLAN EDUCATION © Michael Stout 1988 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended), or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place, London WClE 7DP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First edition 1988 Published by MACMILLAN EDUCATION LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG212XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Typeset in Great Britain by TecSet Ltd, Wallington, Surrey British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Stout, Michael Volpone by Ben Jonson.-(Macmillan master guides). 1. Jonson, Ben. Volpone I. Title II. Jonson, Ben 822'.3 PR2622 ISBN 978-0-333-42166-6 ISBN 978-1-349-08868-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-08868-3 iii CONTENTS Acknowledgements v 1 Ben Jonson: life and background 1 2 Jonsonian comedy 2.1 Humours 6 2.2 Didactic and moral purpose 7 2.3 The unities 8 2.4 Jonson's scatological jokes 9 2.5 The comic world of Volpone 10 3 Synopsis and scene by-scene summary 3.1 Synopsis 11 and commentary 3.2 Summary and commentary 13 4 Meaning of the play 93 5 Technical features 5.1 Characterisation 97 5.2 Imagery 103 5.3 Language 108 5.4 Setting 110 5.5 Division into acts 111 5.6 The Unities 112 5.7 Notes on producing the play 112 6 Critical examination of a passage 115 7 Critical reception 121 Revision questions 125 Further reading 126 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Cover acknowledgement: Portrait of Ben Jonson, after Abraham van Blyenbirch vi To my family 1 BEN JONSON LIFE AND BACKGROUND Ben Jonson was born in 1572, a month after the death of his clergyman father. His mother subsequently married a master brick layer. Jonson was a pupil at Westminster School where he received an education in the classics under William Camden and developed a passion for scholarship which lasted all his life. He later acknow ledged his debt to his old headmaster in an epigram addressed to him, which stated: Camden, most reverend head, to whom I owe All that I am in arts, all that I know. The revival of interest in classical literature was one of the most important features of Renaissance humanism and a grammar school boy of Jonson's time would have received a thorough education in ancient Greek and Latin. This grounding in the classics influence-d all his writing, which is full of borrowings from and allusions to Greek and Roman literature. Volpone was influenced by the comedies of Aristophanes, by Roman comedy, by the satires of Juvenal, and the song addressed to Celia by Volpone was adapted from a lyric by Catullus. The future playwright did not continue his education at university as he might have expected to do, but was forced to work for his stepfather as an apprentice bricklayer after leaving Westminster School at the age of seventeen in 1589. He did not enjoy this experience and volunteered to fight in Flanders. Later he claimed to have challenged and killed one of the enemy in hand to hand combat, stripping him of his weapons and armour. He was married to Anne Lewis in 1594 but the marriage was not a particularly happy one, for he later described his wife as 'a shrew but honest'. They had two children who died in infancy. Jonson felt their loss keenly and mourned them in epitaphs. A third child, a son, died two years before his father. 2 He began his theatrical career as an actor with a group of strolling players. In 1597 he completed the play The Isle of Dogs, which had been started by Thomas Nashe. This is the first recorded instance of his play writing and it was commissioned by Philip Henslowe for his company. Because of the play's content, the dramatist was jailed for sedition and all copies of the play were destroyed. This was the first of many scrapes with the law. He was released from Marshalsea prison after only two weeks. (Jonson later expressed a highly criticial attitude to the law, and to lawyers in particular, in Volpone.) His most serious brush with the law came in 1597 when he killed fellow actor Gabriel Spencer in a duel. He was imprisoned in Newgate for manslaughter and only escaped execution by claiming benefit of clergy. This was an ancient legal right, previously enjoyed by the clergy, but later extended to those who could prove they could read, by which they were exempt from the death penalty. Jonson was branded on the thumb (a mark which stayed with him all his life), all his possessions were confiscated, and he was released. During his time in prison he was converted to Roman Catholicism. This was not a judicious move at the time because of the legislation aimed specifically at Catholics. They were forbidden to take degrees at Oxford and Cambridge unless they first took the oath recognising the supremacy of the Crown in matters of religion, and were discriminated against in other ways in public life. In addition, Catholics were viewed with extreme suspicion in Protestant England, and were considered a subversive influence. Anti-Catholic hysteria reached a climax after the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 (an event hinted at in Volpone), just one year before the play's first performance. Jonson and his wife were charged with recusancy in 1606, (refusing to attend their local parish church). In 1610 he prudently returned to the Church of England. Shakespeare knew Ben Jonson and acted in his play Every Man in His Humour when it was performed by the Lord Chamberlain's Company in 1598. In the following year Every Man Out of His Humour appeared at the Globe. He followed this with Cynthia's Revels, (1600), and The Poetaster (1601), which poked fun at the style of Marston and initiated the 'War of the Theatres' in which Jonson and his contemporary playwrights mocked each other in their plays. Dekker's play Satiromastix was an answer to Jonson and ridiculed both Jonson, in the figure of Horace, and his friend, the poet Drayton. The first of his surviving tragedies Sejanus was acted in 1603 by Shakespeare's company at the Globe. (The tragedies were not popular at the time and are rated less highly by modern critics than his comedies.) From this time on most of the playwright's income derived from the masques he wrote for King James and his court, starting with the Masque of Blackness performed in 1605. From the beginning of his 3 reign James aroused the antagonism of the House of Commons with his belief in the superior rights of the king over the Commons. This conflict was the major constitutional crisis of the time and was eventually to lead to the English Revolution, when his son Charles I was overthrown and executed by the victorious Parliamentarians. In his dealings with Parliament James arrogantly insisted on the divine right of kings. The masque was a genre which reinforced this exalted concept of the godlike and God-given powers of the King. The King and his Court actually appeared in their semi-divine roles. Masques were presented at Court and not to a public audience. Their cost was enormous as they called for elaborate sets, complex stage machinery and exotic costumes, all of which were designed by Jonson's collaborator, Inigo Jones. They attracted a great deal of criticism from those outside the Court on grounds of extravagance and they were also criticised on grounds of immorality. Inigo Jones's costumes for the female characters in the Masque of Blackness were considered too revealing. Masques also increased antagonism to wards the monarchy because of their ideology of the divine authority of the King, and because they exemplified Court culture, which was not shared by the rest of the country. This gulf between Court and country was one of the causes of the English Revolution. Despite his humble social background, Ben Jonson must be considered pro-monarchy and a conservative in his active support of Stuart political ideology. In his plays he frequently attacks the rising merchant class, but in Volpone itself the one unqualified hero is Peregrine, who is described as a traveller, while Sir Politic Would-Be, who is a knight, is ridiculed as a fool. We must therefore beware of over-simplifying his beliefs. It seems likely that the dramatist had his audience in mind, and for a Court audience, which he would have had for his masques, was quite happy to provide support for the monarchy, while in his citizen comedies, which were performed in the public theatres, his subject matter was often the citizens and city of London, where opposition to the monarchy centred. Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones were collaborators and rivals for the next twenty-five years in the court masques. Jonson quarrelled with Inigo Jones and, although originally they fell out over whose name should appear first on the title pages of the court masques on which they collaborated, he also believed that the words were more important than the visual elements. He wrote a long poem 'An Expostulation with Inigo Jones' in which he derided Jones's contribu tion to the masque. Jonson's particular original contribution was to invent the anti-masque which preceded the masque and added drama and variety to what was in essence a static and formal glorification of the monarchy. In 1605 the dramatist was in prison again for his part in writing Eastward Ho! His two collaborators Marston and Dekker were 4 gaoled and he volunteered to join them. The play mocked the Scots, and King James, who was Scottish himself, was not amused. They were all shortly released. Volpone was first performed in 1606 at the Globe Theatre and then at Oxford and Cambridge. Jonson speci fically dedicates the play to the two universities in his epistle to the play in the edition printed in 1607. His dramatic career continued with The Silent Woman, performed at Whitefriars Theatre in 1609. This was followed by The Alchemist in 1610 at the Globe. Bartholo mew Fair appeared at the Hope Theatre in 1614, and in 1616 The Devil is an Ass at Blackfriars. Unlike most of the dramatists of his time Jonson ensured that his works were published. It is obvious that he took his own writing seriously and expected others to do the same. Most of his plays appeared in book form shortly after their first performance. In 1616 he took the unusual step of publishing nine of his plays, two collections of his poetry and several masques in one volume: a folio entitled The Works of Benjamin Jonson. Although his supposed pretentiousness was mocked by some of his fellow writers, the publication of the folio established him as the foremost man of letters in England and King James awarded him a pension which was paid for the rest of his life. In 1618 Jonson undertook a walking tour to Scotland. While there he stayed with William Drummond who recorded their conversations together. Conversations with Drummond provides us with a character portrait of the playwright as well as a record of some of his remarks and facts about his personal life which we would not otherwise know. In 1619 he received an honorary degree from Oxford University which must have pleased him. Ben Jonson had a capacity for friendship as well as for making enemies. His wide circle of friends included the poet and dean of St Paul's, John Donne, who wrote some verses in Latin commending V olpone. A group of loyal younger friends who called themselves 'the Sons of Ben', included the Cavalier poets Robert Herrick and Thomas Carew. In 1603 Jonson formed the Mermaid Club which met for conversation and to drink the wine for which the Mermaid Tavern was famous. In 1623 Jonson's library was destroyed by fire and in the same year he paid tribute to Shakespeare in the Folio edition of Shakespeare's plays: 'To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author Mr. William Shakespeare: And What He Hath Left Us.' Charles I came to the throne in 1625 and Jonson and Inigo Jones collaborated in ever more lavish masques until they fell out and the dramatist ceased to write them. Today we tend to think of Charles I as a great patron of the arts, but the growing opposition to him did not see it that way. The building of the Banqueting House under James I, and its ornate decoration under Charles, as well as the exorbitant expense of the masques that were held there, increased criticism of the king and his Court. The gulf between Court and country widened ominously.