51

Chapter 2. JONSON:

If Shakespeare was able to allude to our world as a stage and to man as an actor who must play many parts during his lifetime, too continues the analogy when he says, in his Discoveries, "I have considered our whole life is a play."! While both Shakespeare and Jonson make extensive use of the analogy, it is interesting to note the difference in their perceptions of man as an actor.

In Shakespeare's it is often a situation of disorder that drives a character to assume a false identity, as has been illustrated in the Introduction. The playing of roles frequently proves successful in contributing to a movement towards the restoration of the state of order. 's "antic disposition" serves a positive purpose. He is able to wander freely and discover information not otherwise open to access and thus discover the truth about his uncle. However, the deceitful strategies of characters like Edmund (in ) and Claudius (in Hamlet) are condemned. Thus Shakespeare's attitude to role playing is complex and, where the objective is positive, tends to be understanding, humane and sympathetic.

Ben Jonson's plays seem to reveal, however, a more simplistic view of dissembling. In his scholarly expose of "the anti-theatrical prejudice" discernible almost world-wide, Jonas Barish shows how Ben Jonson clearly harbours "elements of deep suspicion toward theatricality as a form of behaviour in the world" to an extent surprising in a man of theatre.^ The assumption of a false identity or demeanour is considered an act of unequivocal deceit and condemned. Nevertheless, in the plays, Jonson seems to show a duality of vision. On the one hand there is a definite contempt

1 Ben Jonson, quoted by Leo Salingar, "Comic Form in Ben Jonson", Dramatic Form in Shakespeare and the Jacobeans ^Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1986) 168.

2 Jonas Barish, The Anti-theatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982) 133. 52 shown for those of his characters who engage in play acting (which he perceives as an expression of their falseness). Yet, on the other hand, there remains, quite incontestably, the virtuoso ability (surely proclaiming the joy of the "maker") with which he creates these role players.

Whether in or in Volpone (1606) it is greed that leads the characters to play roles in order to garner more wealth. Deceit is their method and material gain their goal. Their dissembling is deliberate and quite devoid of any nobility of purpose. Excessive greed has made beasts of men and the anti-acquisitive attitude that Renaissance inherited from the values of the medieval church makes Jonson deplore this.^

"Mischiefs feed / Like beasts till they be fat and then they bleed." (V. vii. 150 - 51).^ As the animal imagery suggests, it is only after the fattened beasts bleed that a state of order can again be ushered in. While the beasts feed off their victims and while innocence (Celia) and filial loyalty (Bonario) are denied there is appalling disorder seen in vice-infested Venice. Order is restored only after the mischief- mongers are apprehended and punished. It is only then that a sense of credibility can be re-established for virtue. Thus, in a sense, Ben Jonson also seems to point to a state of disorder when he presents multiple examples of disguise and dissimulation, for it is this corrupt world (which generates the urge to dissemble) towards which his attack is aimed. He is a satirist par excellence whose vision of the post-lapsarian world is one in which images of deception proliferate.

3 L.C. Knights, Drama and Society in the Age of Jonson., (1937; Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1962) 168-91.

-t Ben Jonson, Volpone, ed. David Cook (1962; : Methuen, 1966) 182. This edition is used throughout. AU further references to this text are indicated by act, scene and line numbers given in parentheses. 53

Though both are great dramatists of the same period, the genius of Shakespeare and that of Jonson isjworlds apart. Shakespeare's drama often encourages an identification by the audience, an emotional involvement. On the other hand, Jonson's art is characterized by its critical attitude. David Cook refers to Jonson's style of writing as "highly stylized, highly disciplined, formalized."^ The characters, far from being round creations that we can imagine stepping off the stage and walking out into the real world, are, instead, flat characters displaying the few traits relevant to their maker's intentions in the action of the play. As Eliot says, Jonson was not trying for the third dimension.*^ Thus the audience is never meant to take the character for real, to suspend his disbelief, as it were, nor to identify or empathize with them. Jonson's objective is to unfold a scenario where his actors demonstrate the action while members of the audience react critically and unemotionally to what they see. It is hardly surprising that George Parfitt introduces a comparison with the Theatre of the Absurd and the theatre of distancing or alienation^ or that Robert Brustein mentions Brecht's Jonsonian phase in The Theatre of Revolt.^ Michael Scott also iterates that a certain alienation effect is achieved by Jonson's balancing of satiric caricature with dramatic illusion.'' The nearest literary neighbours of Jonson's plays are the comedies of Moliere and the Restoration age in which we are invited to laugh at (rather than with) the majority of the characters.

5 David Cook, Introduction, Volpone. by Ben Jonson (1962; London: Methuen, 1966) 13.

6T. S. Eliot, "Ben Jonson". The Sacred Wood (1920; London: Methuen, 1974) 119.

^ George Parfitt, Ben Jonson: Public Poet and Private Man (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1976) 140.

8 Robert Brustein, The Theatre of Revolt (Boston: Little, Brown & Co.. 1964).

9 Michael Scott, Renaissance Drama and a Modem Audience (London: Macmillan, 1982) 55. 54

Yet Sackton'sio contention that in order for tlie audience to feel the need to review their own moral position as a result of their witnessing the play, it is necessary for them to feel some degree of closeness or sympathy for the characters is also valid. Jonson creates characters who are either fools or criminals but succeeds in endowing them with such vitality and such a degree of commitment to what they do (as this analysis will show) that we cannot help but feel something for them. It is "the vitality of the rogues" that draws our "partial sympathy", 'i

Thus there is a definite degree of self-reflexive consciousness in Jonsonian drama that the character is an actor demonstrating some aspects of life according to the vision of the playwright. The audience is to react to this in an analytical manner. M.C. Bradbrook speaks of the undeniable detachment of Jonson's audience. She also refers to the "animals" in Volpone as creatures that are viewed like caged animals in a zoo.'^ Hazlitt goes so far as to refer to Jonson's characters as "machines" in comparison with Shakespeare's "living men". 13 f^g of humours is eminently suited to this self- conscious analytical system. Though the notion of humours in the human body is an old one belonging to the world of physiology and takes into account only four specific humours (or secretions) in the body which are responsible for equilibrium or lack of it, Jonson uses the concept in a broader, more psychological sense. His characters are examples of the presence of an excess of one or another humour or, in other words, of personalities with one markedly strong trait.

10 Alexander H. Sackton, quoted by S.L. Goldberg, "Folly into Crime: The Catastrophe of Volpone". Jonson: Volpone. ed. Jonas Barish (London: Macrtullan, 1972) 161.

11 S.L. Goldberg, "Folly into Crime" 169.

12 M.C. Bradbrook, The Living Monument: Shakespeare and the Theatre of his Time (Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1976) 31.

13 William Hazlitt, quoted by Anne Barton, Preface, Ben Jonson, Dramatist (Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1984) x. 55

This form of characterization is close to caricature and thus lends itself to an unemotional critical viewing.

The purpose of comedy, as Jonson saw it, is clearly to make us laugh. It was not in triumph but with regret that he attacked Shakespeare's drama for its intermingling of sentiment and melancholy in the comic genre. Ben Jonson's comedy is undoubtedly didactic and follows Sidney's definition: "Comedy is an imitation of the common errors of our life, which [the dramatist] represents in the most ridiculous and scornful sort that may be; so as it is impossible that any beholder can be content to be such a one."*'' Thus in Jonsonian comedy we are shown only those aspects of character that are to make us laugh. If the characters are 'flat' it is easier for us to laugh and condemn.

Elaborating on the theatre situation, Peter Womack makes the valid point that the laughter of the audience is penetrative. It is heard: it reaches the actors on stage, thus influencing the timing and pointing of the representation. It is "imperious". The actor must wait for the laughter to die down before he can go on to the next line. This "arrests the disappearance of the 'actor' into the 'character'" since it reminds him that he is in "the business of raising, controlling and reacting to laughs". Richard Schechner also comments on the importance of laughter to the process of performance. When "the performers hear the audience laughing, they perform as a response".'"' Laughter clearly signals appreciation of the actors' histrionic abilities, thus implicitly encouraging and endorsing the pact between the play-makers and the play-players, to use Samuel Selden's terminology. i*^ Silence in the theatre, says

!'• Sir Philip Sidney, quoted by David Cook, Introduction, Volpone 16.

15 Richard Schechner. Performance Theory (1977; New York: Routledge, 1988) 244.

16 Samuel Selden, Theatre Double Game (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969) 14. 56

'submissive" and "consenting" and allows the "fiction" 'to dominate the auditorium and develop its meanings srms." Thus the comic form, since it seeks to raise ourages a consciousness in the actors that they are an action rather than living it.

suggests earlier, the actor-audience connection was a L the Elizabethan/Jacobean theatre context. The crude 3se times was hardly conducive to an illusionistic type There are many levels of communication effective ily in the theatre. Womack mentions three - the writer- nce link, the dramatis persona-dramatis persona md the actor-audience communication. The last was ilpable interaction. 17 Thus both audience and repertory )nsciousness of their participation in the experience of I game in which they were all co-players. ggatt focuses on the shared traits of both dramatist and e points out, in his comprehensive study of Jonson's genre gamut of work, Ben Jonson: His Vision and His I Jonson's characters are often seen creating secondary Dne with his universe of gold, Subtle and Face with their rose with his noiseless world are some examples. Again, >erius retreats to the island of Capri and creates a vhich he has absolute power. There is the energy of the J that merits applause but since nature is perverted in lade creations, the creativity is seen as unhealthy. The freedom is eclipsed by the inversion of the "natural" I Leo Salingar and Anne Barton suggest an Aristophanic for this recurrent theme of the creation of parallel

;k, Ben Jonson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986) 63 - 64, 31.

;ggatt, Ben Jonson: His Vision and His Art (London: Methuen, 1981) 57 worlds. Salingar cites examples of the plays of Aristophanes (like Plutusl in which an almost manic creativity is seen to succeed in the making of an alternative sphere of existence, i'^ Apart from his fondness for gold, Volpone also shows an obsession with role playing and creates a world that Bernard Suits might almost call a veritable Utopia of play on his own terms in his villa. Those willing to participate in his play-world attend his "theatre" in the role he casts them in.

It is worth noticing the parallel between Ben Jonson, dramatist, and his characters who create such worlds. Both are, of course, artists and creators and they freely make use of theatrical terms and analogies. In Catiline, for example, Cicero speaks of the excesses of the conspiracy in terms of the drama: It so far exceeds All insolent fictions of the tragic scene! (III. 663 - 65). In Volpone too Mosca and his master are concerned with their "play" and "act"; they deal in disguise and speak about their "art" and "applaud" each other (II. ii. 38).

The characters in Volpone are, of course, Jonson's puppets but they are also puppet-masters in as much as they manipulate other characters and both play roles themselves and dictate roles to their victims. Volpone is both producer-director of his play and the prime actor. His bed with the curtains is like a miniature stage upon the larger stage. Volpone, inert in bed, elicits play-acting from the characters who come to watch him in his enactment. Thus Voltore, Corbaccio, Corvino and the Would-be's are the audience watching Volpone's virtuoso performance but they too are actors when they react to Volpone in the manner indicated favourably by Mosca.

'^ Salingar, Dramatic Form in Shakespeare and the Jacobeans 158. Anne Barton, Ben Jonson. Dramatist 113 - 14. 58

There is a continuous movement of "shape-shifting"^" among these characters, with Volpone playing the dying childless magnifico they are ingratiating. With Mosca they are clever schemers. Corvino is the jealous, obsessively possessive husband who would incarcerate his wife rather than let the world glimpse her beauty. Corbaccio, veiy old himself, fancies himself a comparatively young man in the seemingly decrepit Volpone's presence. Voltore, confident "with/his courtroom skills, thinks he is wily enough to outwit the magnifico.

In Volpone Jonson presents a plot depicting men playing the roles of animals. Appropriately they are given the names of the animals whose characteristics they embody: Volpone the fox, Mosca the fly, Voltore the vulture, Corbaccio the old crow and Corvino the raven, not to forget Sir Pol the imitative parrot (and his talkative wife) and Peregrine the hawk. The action of the play comprises the interaction of these players. Volpone is a play with a very strong focus on the theme of role playing.

In fact, as Alvin Kernan shows convincingly, the idea of playing is the central theme of the play and other minor themes and images "feed into this master image". Kernan mentions the concept of man as homo ludens and shows how well this is applicable to Volpone and Mosca.^i Both reveal a great joy in their playing of games, switching roles, changing scenarios, improvising, turning in convincing performances. Even the art of preparing the set and perfecting the make-up required for a role is given a gleeful attention. Volpone and Mosca are truly dedicated master artists who find even more fun and fulfillment in the act of playing a role rather than in counting the proceeds at the box office, as it were. It is true that the games undertaken by the master-servant pair are

20 Leggatt, Ben Jonson 14, 24.

2' Alvin Kernan, "From Introduction to Volpone*. Jonson: Volpone. ed. Jonas Barish (London: Macmillan, 1972) 181. 59 consciously and deliberately aimed at acquiring wealth from credulous fools whom they can gull. In this sense their games do not qualify for inclusion in the sort of play categorized by Huizinga, Caillois and Suits, all of whom reiterate the disinterestedness of play. However, Volpone reveals the real truth at the heart of the exercise when he says Yet I glory More in the cunning purchase of my wealth. Than in the glad possession, since 1 gain No common way... (1. i. 30 - 33).

Volpone prides himself on his briUiant strategy, his ability to create wealth without resorting to the vulgarity of trade, entrepreneurship, farming, without investing in merchant ships, banks or mills. Magician-like, he practically spins it out of thin air, or rather out of sheer imaginative cunning. He displays a sort of ludic agon, a testing of his own creative slyness, as well as an urge to defeat formidable adversaries. The triumph arising from the ability to generate wealth by mere craftiness is well nigh intoxicating. The same feeling is reiterated when he exults almost fiendishly: Why this is better than rob churches yet (I. i. 552).

He goes to the extent of declaring that his pleasure in the "game" is greater than if he "had enjoyed the wench: / The pleasure of all woman-kind's not like it" (V. i. 27 - 28). Thus it is the role-playing that is the real source of their t)leasure - even more than the booty they gain. This corresponds to the definition of the true player given by Suits, one to whom the game is more important than the gain involved. David Bevington refers to them as true satirists doing what satire is supposed to do: expose folly and make the victims suffer.22

22 David Bevington, "The Major Comedies", The Cambridge Companion to Ben Jonson, ed. Richard Harp and Stanley Stewart (Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2000) 76. 60

However, their real pleasure lies in proving their ability to hoodwink their victims.

Indeed, the game's the thing wherein we catch the conscience of Volpone. He is practically rhapsodic when he talks of the unholy joy in "letting the cherry knock against their lips" (I. i. 89) and when they feel it on their lips, "to have it ravished from their mouths" (V. i. 85). As Kernan aptly notices, role playing gives them the sense of a god-like power.23 It is almost as if they can transcend their human limitations and contend with the gods themselves. Mosca is thrilled with the realization that he can now overcome the limitations of human flesh and be "here, and there, and here, and yonder, all at once" (III. i. 27). Mosca wonders whether Volpone was "daunted" (V. i. 56) during his role as dying man in the courtroom in Act IV for he has noticed, with the critical eye of the director, that Volpone was sweating excessively, perhaps suspiciously. But Volpone's joy is perhaps the greater for the risk he took and he is able to insist that he "had much ado / To forbear laughing" (V. i. 53 - 54) in pure enjoyment. While watching Mosca's interaction with Voltore in the game they have concocted, Volpone says, "Who would / Have lost this feast?" (V. i. 236, for this sense of fulfillment is verily the food of the gods as far as he is concerned. It is worth noticing that Volpone is not undone by greed but by his desire for ever more exciting ludic pleasure.

Peter Womack's interpretation (based on the study of Rabelais by Mikhail Bakhtin) tracing the carnivalesque elements in Volpone reveals the happy abandonment in the "playing" of Volpone and Mosca who choreograph several enactments within their larger game of gulling dupes and milking them of their riches. The entire set-up in the magnifico's mansion is false - like the sets for a play. Volpone's house has been made into a court where the inversion

23 Keman, "From Introduction to Volpone" 181. 61 typical of the carnival is evident. Suitors are chosen for their stupidity. Volpone delights in presenting a gross fagade - his face is covered with an ointment that oozes, his cheeks are like an old wall, his nose flows like a common sewer. There is no disgust but rather the sort of open glee in bodiliness that Mikhail Bakhtin finds in pre- Renaissance literature as typified by the writing of Rabelais.^^ During the course of the play we have the reversal of the roles (typical of the carnival) of master and servant when Mosca dons the robes of a rich man and Volpone wears the uniform of a humble employee of the Senate House. Also, the innocent Celia and Bonario are pronounced culprits by the authority figures who matter and set the tone for the response of society, the avocatori, while those who prey and prostitute are sympathized with as persons of injured merit.

Alvin Kernan initiates a comparison between the play within the play in Hamlet and those in Volpone. There are at least three such instances. Volpone's enactment of a mountebank's role is the most obvious such instance. So successful is he in his portrayal that Celia is completely taken in and offers to buy the powder he is touting, thus giving him what he seeks: a gHmpse of her beauty. The courtroom drama in Acts IV and V is another example of a miniature play within a play (or rather, a play within a play within a play - since it is a performance within Volpone's larger enactment of an ailing magnifico) incorporating brilliant improvisation and spontaneous acting. Of course, the greater play within the play - Volpone's impersonation of a dying man - commands our primary interest.

During the Jacobean period the stage was certainly not a sacrosanct area reserved for the actors. Members of the audience were allowed to and did climb up and sit on the stage. In scenes like the staging

24 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (1965; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1968) 20-22. 62 of "The Murder of Gonzago" in Hamlet this situation can be seen as an especially piquant one: members of the theatre audience mingle with actors/characters who are, for that scene, members of another audience watching a play performed by some of their fellow actors/characters. In Volpone too we have multiple actions presented simultaneously. In Act I, for instance, the bed is designed to be the centre of attention since Volpone lies there. The bed - it is easy to imagine a great four-poster with elaborate curtains - is the sort of massive bed a man of Volpone's status would have. It becomes "the stage-within-a-stage where Volpone is performing the role of invalid for the benefit of his visitors".^^ Womack conjectures that the bed is upstage and that Mosca is likely to bring each visitor downstage "to put him through his paces". Thus he shows how the stage is "split" into two zones, each of which functions as "auditorium" to the other's "stage". While the visitor watches Volpone's superlative performance of dying invalid, Volpone too watches the visitor playing the role of concerned well-wisher.

When Volpone enacts the role of mountebank a part of the stage again becomes a stage-within-a-stage. The theatre audience watches a crowd of onlookers watching Volpone's performance. We also have Peregrine and Sir Politic watching the audience that waits to witness Scoto's act. In such "crowd" scenes it is likely that the theatre audience perched on the stage would be indistinguishable from the actor audience, thus blurring distinctions between auditorium and stage even further. The courtroom with its inherent arrangement of "performers" and "spectators" also easily lends itself to be seen as another instance of a stage within a stage.

Alvin Kernan notices that, while Volpone and Mosca are consummate players who are "always acting", we do also see them in the wings, as it were, where they confer, discuss the finer points of

25 Womack, Ben Jonson 61. 63 their art and congratulate each other.^^^ As players they are also concerned about the success of their roles. Volpone wonders if his make-up was sufficient (after the mountebank enactment) and Mosca can both praise and be hypercritical (as when Volpone breaks into a sweat). Between visitors Volpone rises from his bed to praise Mosca: "Excellent, Mosca! / Come hither, let me kiss thee" (1. i. 296 - 97). In Act V Volpone is so enamoured of Mosca's histrionic ability when he pretends that Volpone is dead and that he himself has been named heir that he wishes he could transform him into a Venus with whom he could meld. The stage directions indicate that the audience is to see Volpone "springing up" (I. i. 296), thus reminding them that he is only acting the part of an invalid. When Volpone praises Mosca's interaction with Corbaccio, he is bursting with laughter, again a tremendous contrast with the image of a dying man. Mosca's servile reply - Alas, sir, 1 but do as I am taught; Follow your grave instructions; give the words; (1. i. 438 - 39). - is yet another act (as we are to discover later). Thus even when Volpone stops acting, Mosca does not. Volpone, however, does not realize this.

Both Enck and Armstrong take special notice of the furs that the "ailing" Volpone is covered in.^'' They are, after all, the natural covering of an animal and serve to point ironically to the fox-like qualities of the man. The furs are placed on Volpone to give the impression that he is cold, close to death and also to conceal his healthy body. Yet, in a way, the furs do not cloak the man so much as reveal, expose or rather emblematize his true nature - that of a

26 Keman, "From Introduction to Volpone" 180.

27 John J. Enck, "From Jonson and the Comic Truth", Jonson: Volpone. ed. Jonas Barish (London: Macmillan, 1972) 134.

William A. Armstrong, "Ben Jonson and Jacobean Stagecraft", Jacobean Theatre, ed. John RusseU Brown and Bernard Harris (NP) 58. 64 fox. Similarly Volpone's simulated diseases could be seen to point to the parallel of a genuine moral sickness.

It is significant that the preparation of the actor for his role is presented on the stage, emphasizing the identification of Volpone's bedchamber as a theatre. The audience watches while the lively and vigorous man is transformed by the sleight of hand of the clever director into an ailing invalid. Clothes, as Enck mentions, are, of course, the mainstay of the theatre where disguise is concerned. The long nightgown and nightcap bespeak the bedridden invalid, the furs laden upon him indicate how cold his blood runs. Volpone and Mosca are verily men of theatre. Not only does Mosca not let Volpone forget the ointment for the eyes that makes his eyes flow and look rheumy, but he also remembers to renew the ointment during an "interval" in their act. After Mosca prepares the actor, it is up to Volpone to enact his role convincingly. Volpone puts on a grand performance in the style of Stanislavsky-^^ that suspends the disbelief of each of his visitor-spectators. He "feignfs]" (I. i. 214) a cough, palsy, apoplexy, gout and pthisic. His success is to be measured by the fact that his "pla}^ has run "this three year" (I. i. 217) and not one member of his audience has yet ceased to attend.

Volpone and Mosca support each other's roles. Volpone pretends to be deaf and speaks with the weak voice of a dying man while Mosca repeats his visitors' comments to him and his words to them. The three fortune seekers respond to Volpone with their own hypocritical acts as concerned friends. Mosca's asides make it clear that he is well aware of the insincerity of Voltore, Corbaccio and Corvino. When Voltore says he is sorry to see Volpone "still thus weak" (1. i. 236), Mosca speaks to the audience in an aside telling them that in actuality Voltore wishes he were "weaker"(I. i. 236).

28 Both Enck and Keman use the comparison with Stanislavsky. Enck describes Volpone as one who "throws himself into creating his role with the ardor of one of Stanislavsky's disciples" (140) while Keman speaks of Mosca as a critic with "all the professional perfectionism of a Stanislavsky" (177). 65

Meanwhile Mosca plays a composite role. He is both loyal servant to Volpone (in the tradition of Roman comedy) and, at the same time, pretending well-wisher of the legacy hunters. It is only later that Volpone and the theatre audience realize that Mosca's identity as a faithful servant has been but a superficial role, that he is at least as wily as Volpone and his cleverness and ingenuity is all on his own account. It is interesting to see how Mosca changes the script where each of his victims is concerned. He juggles his several roles most adroitly. He tells Voltore that his master has already made his will in his (Voltore's ) favour. He advises Corbaccio to enact a clever drama. If he were to disinherit his own son and name Volpone his heir, Volpone would surely appreciate this gesture of love and reciprocate in kind, naming Corbaccio his heir in return. Corbaccio accepts the suggestion, although he repeatedly insists that it had already occurred to him. It was, according to him, "Mine own project" (I. i. 410), "my invention" (I. i. 418). Thus Mosca, able director of action, spawns multiple roles. He hands out roles to his victims, like Madame Irma in Genet's The Balcony. His greatest triumph is their acceptance and perpetration of those roles on command. When Corbaccio tells Mosca "I know thee honest" (I. i. 424), both Mosca and the theatre audience can but react with laughter. Mosca shares his scorn for Corbaccio with the audience in his asides, "You do lie, sir" and "Your knowledge is no better than your ears, sir" (I. i. 424 - 25). Thus Mosca maintains a dynamic and direct relationship with the audience. However, even the theatre audience is in for a surprise. They are to discover, in due time, that Mosca is a more complex player than they had thought him. Indeed, the audience has yet to realize that Mosca's role playing operates on more levels than they have given him credit for. Even his identity as devoted servant is just a deceitful role and will be the cause of the ultimate fall of Volpone. 66

When Corvino comes to visit, Mosca encourages him to believe Volpone so deaf that even shouted words of abuse are inaudible to him. When Mosca joins Corvino in yelling his insults into Volpone's ears, it is perhaps the real Mosca who speaks, all unbeknown to Volpone.

If Volpone is the producer of his play, Mosca certainly deserves to be recognized as a director given independent charge to supervise and attend to each minute detail and nuance. Mosca has Volpone's confidence to "follow his grave instructions" and "give them words" (I. i. 438 - 39). While Volpone's consistent acting must be applauded, his skill is surpassed by Mosca who, throughout the play, keeps exchanging one role for another and also simultaneously commands the play-acting of his victims. Following Mosca's cue, Volpone's act changes subtly for each of the hopeful visitors. For the first he is weak, for the second he is paralyzed and for the third he is virtually dead. His outstanding quality is his amazingly Protean versatility. From humble servant to confidant and adviser concerning costume and stance to wily agent of legacy hunters to adversary who dares beat his master at his own game - this is the range of roles undertaken by Mosca.

Mosca is a player at heart, a natural who delights in improvisation and changing situations. His skill with wardrobe and make-up is incredible. Not a single visitor ever suspects that Volpone is not what he is made up to appear. It is he who dresses Volpone for his part almost ceremoniously. It is as if "the play" is their daily ritual of their worship of Mammon. It is he who remembers, with the make­ up man's sense of responsibility, that the ointment for the eyes is to be put in or renewed so that Volpone can be convincing as an old man perilously close to death. In all Volpone's acting attempts it is Mosca who prepares the scene. If the mountebank scene appears to be Volpone's personal triumph, then the courtroom scene is entirely orchestrated by Mosca. Like the song and dance routine presented 67 by Nano, Androgyne and Castrone that is composed and directed by him, the courtroom scene also is entirely of Mosca's making. It is all the more admirable because not only does Mosca start with a situation that goes against them but has also to allocate roles and extract convincing performances from the several actors on the spur of the moment. It is indeed a skilled director who can squeeze the desired performance from his actors while they are "live" on stage. There is no prepared script, as it were, such as the freaks had been given in advance.

Mosca is the Renaissance man of many talents. He is a man of theatre: actor, composer, choreographer and director, as well as make-up man and wardrobe master. Mosca's handling of the courtroom scene is so successful that he manages to turn the tables on the accusers and the virtuous Celia and Bonario end up being perceived as the villains of the piece. In Mosca too is found that joy in play-acting that is seen in Volpone. In Act III his excitement over the success of his role playing knows no bounds: I can feel a whimsy in my blood. I know not how. Success hath made me wanton. I could skip Out of my skin now, like a subtle snake, I am so limber. (III. i. 3 - 7). Mosca constantly reinvents himself through his ever changing repertoire of roles. His ability to play roles is the secret of his (near) success.

The second role that we see Volpone enact is that of a mountebank. Womack calls this temporary role an "inverted variant"^'^ of his permanent role as a theatrical invalid. The irony that Volpone's near-permanent role is that of a dying man and his temporary role is that of a quack who claims to have a cure-all in his pocket adds an interesting dimension to his play acting. The presentation of Volpone

29 Womack, Ben Jonson 140. 68 as a gleeful actor of different roles is significant in that it eschews the possibility of the perception of the protagonist as a mere hoarder of wealth.

The practical purpose of the mountebank enactment is to catch a glimpse of Celia but Volpone clearly relishes the opportunity for performance which it gives him. In his lust for Celia Volpone shows greed of yet another sort. Celia is described again and again as a precious possession. She is as "lovely as your gold" and "kept as warily" (1. i. 575, 579). Just as the miser locks up his gold, so too has Corvino locked up his wife jealously. Again, Volpone's joy lies not only in the hope of attaining, savouring and, finally, owning this priceless thing of beauty but in managing to cleverly break through Corvino's security systems, to outwit him and win first a sight of his meanly guarded wife, and then a taste of her. Volpone's role playing as a mountebank once more confirms the ludic element, the joy in "playing" a part so skillfully that the entire audience is fooled into believing him to be what he claims to be. It is significant that he plays the part not of a fictitious person but of an apparently well- known seller of potions who had visited the city but eight months earlier. Volpone seems to relish the risk: surely he could be recognized as an imposter. It is this sense of challenge, of adventure, of danger that drives him out to savour the taste of the peculiarly piquant experience.

Volpone's speech is long and detailed and evidently both well rehearsed and excellently enacted. The special fluency of Volpone's invocations has been remarked upon and has won a comparison with Marlowe's poetry. This speech stands apart as the only one in prose and is outstanding for its glib confidence: O, health! health! The blessing of the rich!...Aesculapian art. (II. i. 207-37). The fraction of the speech mentioned above includes only four full stops! It fairly oozes confident salesmanship. The stuff of which 69 comedy is made indeed! Still, it is convincing enough to tempt Celia to try for the extra prize that the first buyer of the powder will win. In this Volpone's mission is accomplished: his role-playing succeeds in bringing her to the window. Volpone has caught sight of the "merchandise" and longs to lay claim to it. Corvino's rage best reveals how unusual has been Celia's reaction. For the moment she forgets his jealousy and the decorum her husband requires of her. So enchanted is she by Volpone's spiel that she exposes herself at the window.

In his speech Scoto says that he has not wasted his time playing "balloo" (II. i. 289) Indeed, the game Volpone is playing is far more sophisticated than the ball game of yesteryear.^o In Volpone we have a master actor and strategist indeed! Creaser admires the "gusto and delighted authenticity" of his performance.^i At the completion of the set piece, Volpone is exultant at his success as an actor. He asks Mosca: "But were they gulled / With a belief that I was Scoto?" Mosca's reply is encouraging: "Sir, / Scoto himself could hardly have distinguished." (II. ii. 34 - 35, 36).

Peter Womack shows how another character in the play, Corvino, recognizes Scoto as presenting a play within a play: he objects to being cast as Pantalone (the jealous lover) in this commedia dell arte scenario. Also, he objects to the mountebank, that Flaminio (the stock lover in disguise), casting Celia in the role of his Franciscina (the young romantic heroine of the play). He objects to Celia's unwitting participation in the play: "Before a multitude / You were an actor..." (II. iii. 39 - 40). At another time he refers to her "crocodile" tears (III. ii. 318). It is a fascinating situation in which

30 Robert E. Jungman gives a detailed description of the ball game referred to as "baUoo" in "Ball Playing in Jonson's Volpone", Notes and Queries 41.1 (March 1994): 64.

31 John Creaser , "Volpone: The Mortifying of the Fox" , Essays in Criticism 25 . 3 (July 1975): 337. 70 two types of theatre seem to confront each other. ^^ Corvino is portrayed as the typical jealous Latin lover whose rage is disproportionate and obsessive.

Though the player's skill is undoubtedly masterly, yet there is a definite descent, as Alexander Leggatt notices, from the grandeur of the world Volpone has created in his bedroom. The quack is a "lightweight" figure, far removed from the well-endowed magnifico turned virtuoso artist and presiding deity of a false but glittering world. For that matter, both Volpone's disguises in the play (that of the mountebank and that of the commandator) belong to low life. However, what is important is not the social stratum he momentarily enters but the fact that his multiple play acting establishes him more as a player than as a merely wily and greedy man out to exploit the Roman custom of captatio in Jonson's Venice.

The special oil he touts parallels the gold he eulogizes in his opening speech. Certainly the speech endorsing the oil is as long, elaborate and extravagant in its claims as is the famous opening speech on gold as Volpone's saint or even his god. He displays the same fluency and dramatic qualities. Once more it is the principle of alchemy that forms the basis of the argument. Just as, in Act 1, gold was attributed amazing life giving properties, so too is the oil a sort of panacea that can cure all ills. Both are tools used to create wealth. Still, Leggatt notices that the role of the quack demeans the magnifico and the panacea being touted is a "trivial, miniaturized form" of the idea that in the opening scene does have a definite "imaginative power". There is a dwindling of his creative powers.^^ However, the ruse is as successful as the earlier one in practical terms.

^2 Womack, Ben Jonson 139.

33 Leggatt, Ben Jonson 26. 71

Womack speaks of the mountebank scene as the frankest display of the carnival theme in Volpone. He sees the mountebank as at least as much performer as dubious seller of "cures", so that it is a toss- up whether we should concentrate on the skill of his spiel or the virtues of his potions. Apparently Scoto was known in England not so much as a seller of medicines but as a street juggler and performer of card tricks. Thus Jonson shows two roles overlapping each other in the composite image of Scoto: he is both a street entertainer and a quack with a gift of the gab. As Womack discerns: "The reconciling factor, as Bakhtin argues, is laughter.''^'* Of course the privileged theatre audience is already aware that he has indeed "little or nothing to sell" (II. i. 195 - 96).

The mountebank's presentation is a fine example of popular theatre. The mountebank's spiel is given an extension of comic entertainment, as it were, by the songs sung by his assistant Zan Fritada (Nano in disguise). This is entertainment geared for the masses. Volpone presents a perfect pastiche of the street performer's act. Both in his elaborate speech and in the songs is found a typical debasement of classical learning and legend. Zan Fritada is overly familiar with the use of the names of Hippocrates, Galen and Paracelsus and Volpone name-drops quite shamelessly. The Cardinals of Montalto and Fernese, and the Duke of Tuscany and such have been Scoto's clients, he would have us believe.

Sir Pol's reactions show us how utterly mesmerized he is by the Volpone's eloquence. The shrewd magnifico maintains a stately dignity in his act. "Mark but his gesture: I do use to observe / The state he keeps in getting up." (II. i. 153 - 54). Volpone shows a fine turn of dramatic talent, for he declares, early in his speech, that he has "nothing to sell, little or nothing to sell", thus taking the crowd by surprise and arresting their attention. He goes on to explain.

34 Womack, Ben Jonson 138. 72 cleverly, that he cannot make the potion fast enough, so quickly does it sell. He has certainly researched his part well for he talks glibly of the various disorders it can cure.

Just as it is lust for Celia that prompts Volpone to don the guise of a mountebank, so also the same desire transforms him from an invalid into a hot-blooded young man. The theme of shape shifting comes to the forefront in Volpone's address to Celia. She witnesses his changing of form. She is brought in to lie with a dying old man (who is bound to be quite definitely impotent) but, once she enters the confines of his world, he leaps out of bed and appeals to her in the form of a lusty young man urging her to join him on a carnal journey interspersed with roles and disguises enroute. ...my dwarf shall dance, My eunuch sing, my fool make up the antic, Whilst we, in changed shapes, act Ovid's tales: Thou like Europa now and I like Jove, Then I like Mars and thou like Erycine; So of the rest, till we have quite run through And wearied all the fables of the gods. Then I will have thee in more modern forms, Attired like some sprightly dame of France, Brave Tuscan lady or Spanish beauty; Sometimes unto the Persian Sophy's wife; Or the Grand Signor's mistress; and for change. To one of our most artful courtesans, Or some quick Negro or cold Russian; And I will meet thee in as many shapes. Where we may, so, transfuse our wandering souls Out at our lips, and score up sums of pleasures, (III. ii. 417 - 33).

Volpone invokes the versatility of Proteus: in their lovemaking he and Celia will be Jove and Europa, Mars and Erycine: "everyone but 73 themselves''35. It is a determined effacement of self and donning guise after guise as a means of sustaining their sensual excitement. It is significant that, in attempting to lure Celia, the greatest temptation he can think of offering her is the chance to change her identity, to step into other roles, other beings. He seems to echo Kurt Reizler's notion of man's playing as his greatest victory over his general dependence, finiteness and his servitude to things.^^ He cannot even imagine that this opportunity to transcend human limitations through role playing could fail to seduce Celia's imagination. In the sheer length of Volpone's speech Leggatt sees an attempt to reduce Celia to an acquiescing appendage, one who would allow the essence of her identity to be diluted and costumes piled upon her. Leggatt goes on to comment on the sterility of Volpone's artificially simulated self-enclosed world. It is a jadedness that prompts him to seek a string of costume-created personae to enliven his empty existence. He speaks contemptuously of the "fancy dress" Volpone craves as a source of excitement.

However, Celia is appalled, unwilling to abandon her real nature and adopt identities alien to her being. The vision of multiple roles, be they majestic and divine, holds no fascination for Celia. Her reaction to Volpone's (to her) disgusting proposition is to offer to destroy the image of herself that has so attracted him. She wills the gods to ruin the fagade that has seduced Volpone, wishing for the annihilation of her beauty.

Critics have seen in Volpone an "over-reacher" and admired the poetic lyricism of his aspirations. Certainly the poetry does soar in Marlovian style. Not only Bamborough, but also so influential a critic as T.S. Eliot has found it proper to compare Jonson with

Leggatt. Ben Jonson 25.

^^ Kurt Reizler, quoted by R. Rawdon Wilson, In Palamedes' Shadow: Explorations in Play. Game and Narrative Theory (Boston: Northeastern U P, 1990) 10. 74

Marlowe. However, Volpone's tendencies are unproductive, ever wasteful: he asks Celia to "dissolve and drink....wear and loose them" (III. ii. 391 - 96). As Andrew Kennedy shows in his study of dialogue in Volpone, Volpone's verse rhetoric is in the style of 's "hubristic hyperbole" and seeks to overwhelm Celia rather than speak to her.37 He hopes that the majestic image he presents to her will sweep her off her feet. However, Celia is concerned only with the reality and deals in anything but appearances.

The immortal CatuUian song "Come, my Celia", classically inspired, is another set piece. It is another part of the play that is to be clearly recognized as performance, thus reminding the audience of the theatrical nature of the enactment they are watching. In spite of the best Jonsonian lucidity in the poetry, it is clear that the singer still operates at the level of low deceit - Cannot we delude the eyes Of a few poor household spies? (III. ii. 374 - 75).

From a high point of lyricism, Volpone descends to the nadir of fright and despair when Bonario barges in to rescue Celia. He has been caught with his mask off. All his aspirations depend on the success of his role playing. "I am unmasked, unspirited, undone" (III. ii. 476), he moans. Once his play acting has been exposed he is indeed, it would appear, lost, "betrayed" to "infamy" (III. ii. 376) as he laments to Mosca.

The only two characters who refuse to partake of the eagerness to play roles are Celia and Bonario. It is ironic in the extreme, then, that Celia is called a "chameleon harlot", a "hyena" (IV. ii. 183 - 84) (also known for its mimicry) and a crocodile (III. ii. 318) (who supposedly manufactures tears on tap); she is accused of being an

37 Andrew J. Kennedy, Dramatic Dialogue : The Duologue of Personal Encounter (Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1983) 141. 75 adulteress wearing the "visor" (IV. ii. 63) of virtue. "Only Bonario and Celia, of all the creatures in the play, never ape others, never change their shapes, never act contrary to their essential natures. And in the unnatural state of Venice it is chiefly they, the unchanging ones, who are attacked as hyenas and chameleons."^^ However, in spite of their obvious virtue, they come across as dull and weak. In spite of Mosca's eulogy on Celia's beauty and Volpone's own lyrical address to her, Celia remains a lacklustre figure. By comparing himself and Celia to the very gods Volpone has raised Celia to a divine level. But still it is her ineffectuality and weakness that strikes us. Rather than fight, retaliate or conquer, Celia can only think of self-destruction - that too she begs Volpone to effect for her. She asks him to ...flay my face, Or poison it with ointments, for seducing Your blood to this rebellion; rub these hands With what may cause an eating leprosy. E'en to my bones and marrow; anything That may disfavour me, save in my honour" (111. ii. 450 - 55).

Bonario does act, it is true. He challenges and attacks Volpone and Mosca with his sword and swears he will bring the villains to justice. But Mosca shows himself much stronger and is able to manipulate the "show" at the courtroom so that the judges dismiss the evidence produced by Celia and Bonario. Huizinga has shown that the law court is like a theatre and the participants in the legal procedures are like actors putting on a show. The wigs, gowns, the seating arrangements for the bar, the bench and the spectators are definitely an example of man's penchant for playing and imitate a theatrical experienced^ This particular courtroom is even more committed to (another kind of) "playing", what with Voltore using it

38 Barish, "The Double Plot in Volpone" 111-12.

39 J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (1949; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980) 76 - 84. 76

as an arena in which to play his games. Celia and Bonario lack the vitality of the role playing characters. If "conscience" is "the beggar's virtue" (III. ii. 409), then, possibly, the ability to dissimulate is what makes kings of men. Bradbrook dismisses Celia's "anaemic virtue"^o and Anne Barton pronounces Bonario as "priggish"^! while a theatre critic speaks of their "virtuous stupidity".^^ For MacCarthy, Celia is "insipidly meek" while Bonario is "colourless".'^^ Also, critics like J.A. Symonds'''' and G. Gregory Smith^^ have found Bonario's presence in the gallery less than credible, thus simultaneously reducing the character's credibility too. It is a commonplace to state, as Sir (director of more than one production of Volpone on the English stage) has, that there are no virtuous characters in the play. Henry Popkin's comment on that statement - "I assume that he takes Celia and Bonario to be too stupid to count at all in the moral scale."^6 - could be presumed to speak for the majority.

However, Coleridge's suggestion that Jonson ought to have made Celia a niece or ward of Corvino's and Bonario's lover exposes his utter failure to understand the nature of Jonsonian comedy. Romantic comedy was never Jonson's style. Ian Donaldson's report of W.B. Yeats's pleasure in witnessing a performance of Volpone shows a far more "informed" appreciation. Yeats was moved to speak of the great suffering of these two young people joined not in love

"•0 M.C. Bradbrook, The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy (London: Chatto and Windus, 1962) 145.

''I Barton, Ben Jonson, Dramatist 105.

"•^ Anonymous, 'Volpone at the Festival Theatre Cambridge" in Jonson: Volpone, ed. Peter Davison (London: Macmillan, 1986) 221.

'•s Desmond MacCarthy, "Volpone Revived", Jonson: Volpone. ed. Jonas Barish (London: Macmillan, 1972) 226.

''•' J. A. Symonds, Ben Jonson (London: Longman's, Green St Co., 1886) 86.

'•s G. Gregory Smith, Ben Jonson (London: Macmillan, 1919) 111.

'^^ Henry Popkin, "Volpone in Sir Tyrone's Best Style", Jonson: Volpone. ed. Jonas Barish (London: Macmillan, 1972) 234. 77 but merely in innocence.'^^ Celia and Bonario may not move us as individual characters but if the cause of justice does, then Jonson's purpose is served. It is a sobering thought that Jonson perceives goodness and virtue, all too often, as weak and helpless in his vision of the universe. The weak delineation of Celia and Bonario seems to indicate a lack of interest on the part of the author. Jonson's energy and preoccupation is all in the repertory of players.

On the other hand the characters who play roles are fascinating in their myriad colours and tones. Salingar has referred to Mosca the fly as "the mobile demon of equivocation". He is a spark so volatile that he has "no position in space" nor any discernible identity at all. Not even Puck or Ariel could perform better than Mosca. Salingar pays him the ultimate compliment when he says that "poetically Mosca deserves to outmanoeuvre his patron", thus implying that he is Jonson's most inspired creation in Volpone. He compares Mosca to Face in The Alchemist: like Face, Mosca is "a being that is a non- being because it is incessantly something else"."*^

Reviewer after reviewer has spoken of the tremendous potential of the role of Mosca and many critiques of the actors' display reveal that Mosca has indeed stolen the show. Desmond MacCarthy's very intelligent criticism of the revival of Volpone at the Westminster Theatre in 1938 mentions the agility, gusto and "mephisto-gaiety" of 's interpretation of Mosca. He certainly fathoms the heart of the play when he focuses perceptively on the nature of both Volpone and Mosca as "self-delighting artists in iniquity*"^^ who glory far more in "the cunning purchase of [their] wealth / Than in the glad possession" (I. i. 31 - 32). In 1952 T. C. Worsley takes note of 's excellent performance in "the play stealing part of

•<7 Ian Donaldson, n^olpone". Essays in Criticism 22 (1972): 217.

•** Salingar, Dramatic Form in Shakespeare and the Jacobeans 169 - 171.

'•s MacCarthy, "Volpone Revived" 223 - 224. 78

Mosca". Quayle was entirely convincing in his "oily, sly and smooth" depiction of "a Zeal-of-the-Lord Puritan with a touch of Uriah Heep, with drooping back, rubbing hands, meek knees and a most insinuating voice".^o It should be recognised that, in the creation of the roles of Volpone and Mosca, Jonson has bequeathed to the actors' repertory two golden opportunities to excel.^^

Mosca is Volpone's right hand man. He looks to continuity and is also allowed to comment on the performance like a critic would. Our pleasure in Volpone's play acting is enhanced because we are allowed to witness his own enthusiastically articulated joy between acts.

We have the opportunity of listening to Mosca's soliloquy in Act III scene i. He confesses himself a parasite with a very special talent for role playing. He describes himself as a "natural", an especially gifted actor. He is a fine elegant rascal who can "rise and stoop almost together" (III. i. 23 - 24). He is the parasite par excellence and can "change a visor swifter than a thought" (III. i. 29). There is a tremendous demonstration of an unholy glee experienced in the playing of this game. I can feel A whimsy in my blood. I know not how, Success hath made me wanton. I could skip Out of my skin now, like a subtle snake, I am so limber. (III. i. 3 - 7). The fiendish evocation of the image of the snake speaks for Mosca's delicious consciousness of his wrong-doing but "skip", "limber" and "wanton" speak for the obvious joy experienced nevertheless.

50 T.C. Worsley, The Fox", Jonson: Volpone. ed. Jonas Barish (London: Macmillan, 1972) 231 - 232.

51 Ronald Bryden, "^iew-haUoo Volpone", Jonson: Volpone, ed. Jonas Barish (London: Macmillan, 1972) 238. Bryden wonders why Sir did not ever take up this play for, according to him, Volpone's title role too is one of the great opportunities in British drama and would have befitted his abilities. 79

Though he is aware of the reptilian nature of his chosen role, he is also simultaneously conscious of his high achievements. This is indicated by his choice of the images of the swallow, arrow and star to describe himself. He is ...your fine, elegant rascal, that can rise And stoop almost together, like an arrow; Shoot through the air as nimbly as a star; Turn short, as doth a swallow; and be here. And there, and here, and yonder, all at once - (111. i. 23 - 27).

He is not your mundane earth-bound parasite but belongs to the more rarefied atmosphere inhabited by swallows and the like. And, like the swallow, "turn short" (against his master) is just what he does - when he gets the chance. Barish says that "His contempt for ordinary parasites suggests that there is a hierarchy of counterfeits, ranging from those who are deeply and essentially false (like himself) to those who practise falsity out of mere affectation, who are, so to speak, falsely false."^^ The soliloquy is successful in communicating to us the "gusto" of this great artist - a dedicated and complete involvement in his art. Mosca is the ultimate expression of the parasite and also the type of the joyous player.

Ian Donaldson notices that Mosca seems to imply "complicity" with the audience, indicating that "we" belong to the same terrestrial sphere. Donaldson compares the world he invokes to that evoked in Genet's The Balcony - a world of thieves, prostitutes and pimps, where nobody is better than his neighbour. Mosca seems to divide the world in terms of adroit and clumsy rather than good and bad.^^ After enacting three subtly different roles as adviser / well wisher / agent to Voltore, Corbaccio and Corvino, Mosca changes his demeanour more dramatically to convince Bonario of his own

52 Barish, "The Double Plot in Volpone" 105.

53 Ian Donaldson, "Volpone: Quick and Dead", Essays in Criticism 21 (1971): 125 -26. 80 honesty. So pathetic is Mosca in his act as misjudged humble servant that Bonario is convinced that it could not be a "personated passion" (III. i. 68). Bonario believes himself guilty of wrongly condemning Mosca as an assistant / appendage to Volpone's cunning. Mosca explains his "obsequy" (III. i. 55) so convincingly that Bonario is persuaded to give him a hearing, thus falling into Mosca's elaborately conceived web. In response to Bonario's initial scorn Mosca has been able to improvise and generate a role that wins his confidence. Even when "wounded and bleeding" after being attacked by Bonario, Mosca still retains his mask. He is abject in his apology to his patron: O, that his well-driven sword Had been so courteous to have cleft me down Unto the navel ere I lived to see My life, my hopes, my spirits, my patron, all Thus desperately engaged by my error. (III. ii. 480 - 84). But as soon as Corbaccio comes knocking, this man of theatre promptly begins to spin a yarn fit for a melodrama and entirely convincing to Corbaccio. Thus, the show goes on! Volpone's "witty mischief (V. i. 230) is indeed "the soul of the piece" as G. Gregory Smith has so unerringly pointed out.S'*

Mosca is absolutely justified in calling the courtroom scene "our masterpiece". His manipulation of his characters in this play within a play and his quite brilliant, nay inspired improvisation on the spur of the moment is positively \ pure genius. Mosca plays the meticulously demanding director who has coached his actors precisely and well. Corvino, Corbaccio and Voltore have learned their lines and know their parts. Is the lie Safely conveyed amongst us? Is that sure? Knows every man his burden? (IV. ii. 3-5)

s'' Smith, Ben Jonson 111. Mosca has carried his management of deception skills to a new high. Volpone, appropriately, gives Mosca the credit when he says, "Thou hast played thy prize, my precious Mosca." (V. i. 32). Mosca's invention is the result of dire necessity. In a situation of desperation he succeeds in turning the tables completely. Mosca is able to establish a set of lies as the truth and the innocent are indicted as the culprits in the crime. Mosca has made so "rare a music out of discords" (V. i. 35), to quote his own beautiful statement, that the audience is bound to appreciate his theatrical performance and cunning before sorrowing at the injustice being perpetrated .

At the climax of the play Volpone is caught shedding his invalid's robes and romancing Celia. When Bonario rescues her and vows to make Volpone's crime public, it appears that Volpone has finally been unmasked indeed and that the game is up for the fox and his parasite. Though Volpone is caught 4n flagrant delec^ by Bonario, Mosca is quick witted enough to save the situation by spontaneously creating another play - his masterpiece - to safeguard his patron and make the innocent victims, Celia and Bonario, appear to be the culprits in the case. Mosca's unparalleled ability to feign and to improvise saves the day. By his fine sense of dissembling he is able to convince Corbaccio that his son is angry with him for being disinherited. Not only is Bonario supposed to have lied when he claiigis^ that Volpone tried to rape Celia but he is said to have threatened his father too. Appearances - for Volpone is back on his couch - convince Corbaccio that Volpone must be innocent. Voltore enters, overhearing Mosca's assurance to Corbaccio that "1 am only yours" (111. ii. 509). He is infuriated and believes he has caught Mosca being duplicitous. But, again, Mosca is more than a match for Voltore. He is able to convince him, skillful dissembler that he is, that the entire plot to disinherit Bonario and make Volpone the beneficiary has been implemented purely for Voltore's good, that he 82 may inherit two fortunes instead of one. Voltore, ashamed of his suspicions, is forced to "ciy thee mercy, Mosca" (III. ii. 538).

Mosca successfully ropes in all the three birds of prey as actors in his farce. Act IV scene ii reveals him at his dissimulating best, keeping three hungry creatures at bay with clever words and empty promises. That each believes he is Volpone's favoured heir speaks much for Mosca's acting talent.

Brilliant director that he is, Mosca recognizes his actor's talent and harnesses it profitably. While he pulls the strings the courtroom does indeed become a place of play, albeit hardly the "sacred and separate" place of disinterested play described by Huizinga. Play has become grossly corrupted with Mosca and the players on his team breaking every rule in the book. Instead of honest and learned arguments by lawyers playing a legitimate game of contest in a court of law, we have Voltore deliberately mis-stating the case because of his own self-interest in the matter. The wigs and flowing robes worn by the judges do provide the trappings of the spectacle of the game but the costumes fail to transform the judges in the way Huizinga takes for granted: they remain the petty, corrupt men they are. The "verbal battle" and "contest of wits" goes resoundingly in favour of the dissemblers.^^ Of course, it is not only this peculiar instance in which the game of law is subverted. Jonson surely also incidentally points to the sort of corruption that is typically to be found in the working of the legal system. Thus the idealistically conceived notion of a fair contest between two opposing factions and the delivery of an impartial and just verdict is all too often corrupted by human failings, personal interest and sheer incompetence and is left, finally, to downright chance. In this way alea is seen to enter the arena of

55 Huizinga, Homo Ludens 77, 84. 83 agonistic play, as demonstrated by Roger Caillois.^f' A disillusioning degree of contamination enters the game of law by way of the intrusion of worldly and personal materialistic concerns.

Mosca makes excellent use of Voltore's oratorical abilities when he asks him to defend Volpone in the rape charge. Voltore declares Celia to be a seasoned adulteress finally caught in the act with Bonario, a "lewd woman that wants no artificial tears to help the visor she has now put on" (IV. ii. 62 - 63). Having procured the greedy Corvino and Corbaccio's assent to this perversion of fact, Voltore is able to claim Corvino and Corbaccio as witnesses who will corroborate his statements regarding Celia's character and Bonario's unnatural attitudes that led to his reluctant disinheritance by his father. The avocatori believe that Bonario sought to murder his father and that, unable to kill him, he lashed out at Volpone and wounded both him and Mosca. Not only is the truth belied and falsehood venerated as truth but also a complete fiction is accepted as fact. Celia and Bonario, both far removed from any sort of role playing, are deemed to be master actors. Lady Would-Be plays the wronged wife when she claims (upon Mosca's direction) that Celia is the "chameleon harlot" who baited her husband, a "stranger", with her "loose eyes" and "lascivious kisses" (IV. ii. 173 - 4, 183). Celia and Sir Pol have been sighted in a gondola together, insists Mosca, harping on a spontaneous lie that he had concocted in a flippant moment to merely get rid of Lady Would-Be from his master's house.

As witness after witness adds his mite, the avocatori are forced to concede that "these proofs are strong" (IV. ii. 189). When Volpone is carried into the courtroom in his invalid guise, his appearance is the clinching evidence. When Voltore suggests sarcastically that "perhaps he doth dissemble" (IV. ii. 209), Bonario's reply in the affirmative sounds weak in the presence of the apparently dying old

56 Roger Caillois, Man. Play and Gaines, trans. Meyer Barash (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1961) 19. 84 man dressed, as usual, perfectly for his role. Mosca carries off the act swimmingly with the aid of his dedicated and determined repertory of actors.

Volpone enjoys the spectacle and can hardly "forbear laughing" (V. i. 54). But this has been entirely Mosca's show. Volpone is merely brought in as a piece of evidence. He neither scripted it nor was able to watch it. Moreover, Mosca criticizes him for sweating and taunts him for having been afraid. Volpone's ludic spirit yearns to outdo Mosca in their game. It is in this competitive spirit that he decides to spontaneously create a game entirely of his own making.

Just as Volpone is left agape when Mosca takes centre stage, giving instructions to his duped actors, so too does Volpone give directions to the dwarf and eunuch without discussing his idea with Mosca beforehand. Mosca is inveigled into the game in which he must pretend that Volpone is dead and gone, leaving him heir to his grand fortune.

As expected the news travels apace and the birds of prey gather, each prepared to hear the glad tidings of his inheritance. Volpone has armed Mosca with a will in writing to authenticate the false enactment. When they realize they have been gulled, Volpone is at hand - an audience of one - to witness the performance of his brainchild like any eager author on the first night. He peeps from his hiding place and his joy is unmatched as he watches the heir- apparents find their hopes dashed. In the author's eyes Mosca, now the leading man, has acquitted himself splendidly. When the act is done, he emerges from behind the curtains and embraces Mosca. But this considerable achievement is not enough for the master plotter. He longs to witness the effects of his clever manipulation at even closer hand. 85

Volpone would have done well to have taken Mosca's prudent evaluation of their situation seriously. "Here we must rest;" says Mosca, "this is our masterpiece: / We cannot think to go beyond this." (V. i. 30). But the "gamester" (V. iv. 26) in him can have no rest. He must needs double the stakes each time and roll the dice and play on. For Volpone, inveterate game player that he is, there can be no end to the game. There have been serious critical objections, especially after the Restoration, to Jonson's presentation of Volpone's decision to pretend to be dead.^^ As Womack says, "It goes against the cunning of the fox to jeopardize a source of income for the sake of a joke."^** However, quite clearly, the "mistake" is essential to the structure of the play. It marks the beginning of the downfall of the player who, intoxicated with many successes, lowers his guard, makes a rash move and overplays his hand. It is worth noting that Mosca makes no contribution to this decision. It is Jonson's sense of poetic justice that ensures that Volpone himself is entirely responsible for this last fatal play. Of course, Mosca seizes every chance to build upon Volpone's mistake and very soon "it is summer" (V. iv. 79) with him while he struts about in his patron's robes and presents himself at the Scrutineo as the dead magnifico's heir. However, C. H. Herford also places some of the blame on Mosca, saying his "limber" mood is responsible for his reckless sharing of Corbaccio's design with Bonario, thus contributing to the final downfall.^^

Another interesting explanation is offered by Terry Eagleton. He calls attention to the presence of the "centrifugal" force in Jonson and his

5^ It is interesting to see how some directors have made an effort to make the scene more credible, at least on stage. In the 1964 production of the play, Sir Tyrone Guthrie showed Volpone having a celebratory drink too many before deciding to announce his own death. Popkin, "Volpone in Sir Tyrone's Best Style" 234.

5** Womack, Ben Jonson 67.

55 C.H. Herford, "Introduction to Volpone". Jonson: Volpone. ed. Jonas Barish (London" Macmillan, 1972) 73. 86 creature, Volpone. Jonson, in the sheer pleasure of his art, wishes to concede to the demands of comedy, of laughter and thus conjures up this twist in the plot to cater to the needs of the audience. Also, on the second level, Volpone's clever scheming with its "centripetal" design is out-weighed momentarily by the wild outswinging centrifugal force of the sheer joy of play acting.^o Volpone's desire to be able to watch his own play in progress leads to the unwise decision to pretend to have died. Until this point Volpone has had the pleasure of writing the script but, since he is also the main actor playing a dying man static in bed, he has never had the pleasure of watching his brainchild in process. The image of Volpone peeping from behind a curtain is one endued with a child-like glee. He cannot abstain from opting to join the audience at least for a while. The extent of his pleasure in watching his own play is revealed by the dire risk he is willing to take. His casual declaration that "my recovery shall recover all" (V. i. 237) is far too dismissive and exposes the obvious fact that his joy in theatrical role playing has outweighed prudence.

It is Mosca who provides the idea and the costume to enable Volpone to participate in the play staged, once more, in the courtroom. When Mosca slips into the secondary role once more as Volpone's clarissimo, he is still, at another level, the creator of these roles and the director of this enactment. The role of a commandator or a sergeant of the court is another "lightweight" role, even more so than that of the mountebank. Having entered the courtroom as a near-corpse in Act IV, Volpone is anxious to take a more active part this time round. He longs to actually interact with his dupes and experience his one-upmanship in a closer encounter. Mosca is as good as his word and does indeed provide the sergeant's costume for Volpone to don. As soon as the ecstatic Volpone leaves his mansion to play the commandator's role in order to mingle with the dupes,

60 Terry Eagleton, Introduction, Ben Jonson. by Peter Womack vii. 87

Mosca sheds the role of loyal servant and declares to the audience his intention to force Volpone "to come to composition" with him, or else he will leave him "to languish in his borrowed case". In fact, "to cozen him of all were a cheat / Well placed", that is, well deserved, says Mosca (V. iii. 16 - 17). Since Volpone grew careless, he must pay for his lapse. His too great enjoyment ("sport" - V. iii. 18) in the game, coupled with a too casual attitude to the outcome of the game ("my recovery will recover all") is about to cost him his game. Mosca finds himself in an unexpectedly strong position and determines to exploit it. Volpone displays what R. Rawdon Wilson calls "the typical arrogance of gamewrights"^i by failing to realize Mosca's growing ambition. A gamester to the very end, it is interesting that rather than display great greed, Mosca expresses his determination to play the game as cleverly as he can and take what advantage he can. Since he will needs be dead afore his time, 111 bury him, or gain by him. I'm his heir. And so will keep me till he share at least. To cozen him of all were but a cheat Well placed: no man would construe it a sin: Let his sport pay for 't. This is called the Fox-trap. (V. iii. IS­ IS).

Mosca uses the word "cheat" quite unabashedly. Cheating is, after all, the nature of the game Volpone has been playing with the coptafio-players. Like the typical cheat that Huizinga mentions, he too is to be perceived as clever rather than culpably immoral. Huizinga speaks of the traditional valorization of mythological heroes who cheat in order to win a game. Mosca falls into the same category of cunning game players who are to be admired for their inventiveness.

61 Wilson, In Palamedes' Shadow 7. 88

Oblivious of Mosca's intentions, Volpone steps into the street to get his ludic fulfillment by heckling and needling the legacy hunters. Meanwhile Mosca, dressed now in rich robes, flaunts his new status by strutting around in their presence. Both the fox and the fly enjoy themselves hugely in the reversed roles so typical of the carnival. Though Mosca now has his own agenda that contradicts Volpone's, still, for the time being, they are united in their common desire to gloat after outwitting the trio. Thus their asides and veiled communications continue and they together bait the hapless losers.

Act V scene iv presents a scenario which is an inversion of the earlier action: "Master Mosca" (V. vi. 10) is richly dressed, Volpone in a lowly uniform. Just as Mosca spontaneously directs the action of the first "play" in the courtroom, Volpone now instructs Voltore. He assures Voltore that Volpone is still alive, that Mosca was only testing their loyalty and asks him to act as if he were possessed so that he can discount his earlier testimony as that of a crazed man. When Mosca enters they confuse the judges by the one insisting that Volpone is alive and the other equally persuasive about his death. Their role playing is now hilarious. Volpone the magnifico acts the part of court employee while the magnifico's servant proudly enacts the magnifico's role. In any game invincibility is impossible^^ and Mosca stands as good a chance of winning as the skill he can display. Simultaneously, by means of their asides to each other, they also negotiate with each other for the fortune. However, as Leggatt is convinced, the "rapid bargaining between Volpone and Mosca in the final scene is not just over Volpone's estate; it is a fight between two rival artists, each trying to end the play on his own terms." The element of play and fun is also definitely discernible. Finally it is significant that Volpone decides "to uncase" (V. vii. 85), to reveal his real identity even though it means he will be punished for the culpable nature of his dissembling. It is more important for

62 Wilson, In Palamedes' Shadow 7. 89

Volpone to win the game and to maintain his one-upmanship with Mosca than to keep his "substance" (V. vii. 119). When all is said and done, "the play's the thing" that counts. "Samson-like, he pulls down the whole construction of falsehood on the heads of victims and would-be victors alike, leaving himself supreme still amid ruins."^^ Mosca expects to win some advantage by cheating in the game created for Volpone's pleasure but his master, by turning spoilsport, ends the game itself. The uncasing satisfies the actor in Volpon^ He succeeds in upstaging Mosca and turning the power equation in his own favour once again. His declaration, "l am Volpone" (V. vii. 89), far from being an admission of defeat, has the ring of a theatrical and arrogantly defiant proclamation. It rings the death knell for any hopes Mosca has nurtured. By revealing himself, Volpone snatches victory from Mosca. The declaration is comparable with "1 am Duchess of Malfi still" and "Richard's himself again".6'^ Volpone establishes his own superiority by naming Mosca his "knave" and the dupes as fools and knaves. It is a moment of proud revelation. "In the Venice of the play, Volpone is outstanding not for corruption but for intelligence."f'S

As Brockbank points out, Volpone and Mosca are not struck down either by divine intervention, as Celia and Bonario would have it, nor by their creator's whim, nor yet by any servile consideration for conventional morality. "Jonson's art makes it imperative that they consume themselves with the very energies and fantasies that animate them."^^ This is poetic justice in the best sense of the expression. It is worth noting that the part played by the judges is merely mechanical. The two players expose each other while each

^3 Cook, Introduction, Volpone 34.

^•^ Leggattj Ben Jonson 28. es Creaser, n^olpone: The Mortifying of the Fox": 343.

^^ Philip Brockbank, 'From Introduction to Volpone". Jonson: Volpone 199. 90 trying to get the better of the other. The judges merely name the sentences each of them is to suffer. The "mischiefs" have fed "like beasts till they be fat, and then they bleed" (V. vii. 150 - 51) indeed.

Very grim sentences are passed against the culprits. The forms of torture mentioned indicate that Volpone's punishment would practically amount to a death sentence. William Empson is convinced that English audiences would (be expected to) react with horror at this uninspiring picture of a very harsh judicial system. The English were proud that their penal system did not include torture. They would hate to lose their exuberant protagonist to such a barbaric punishment. When Jonson allows Volpone to seek an alternative judgment from an alternative court, the audience, he seems to be acting on their behalf.^^

The would-be heirs to Volpone's fortune - the three birds of prey and Lady Would-Be are all willing to play the roles of concerned well- wishers while actually merely harbouring an interest in acquiring his wealth. They are willing to prostrate themselves before the old sick man lying beneath his furs. Lady Would-Be goes so far as to kiss his ointment covered skin, so repulsive even to gaze on. Each tries to outdo the others in gestures and performances that could be interpreted as real concern. Voltore the lawyer is a skilled performer by profession. In Jonson's cynical vision the lawyer is a man able to present lies as truth and truth as lies. He is the ultimate actor non pareil. In the portraiture of Voltore Jonson's well known contempt for lawyers rises to the surface. Mosca tells Voltore that he is the preferred heir apparent because of this brilliant ability to "turn, / And return", "make knots, and undo them" and "Give forked counsel" (I. i. 274 - 76). Under Mosca's excellent direction Voltore succeeds in dethroning the truth and instating untruth or, to use other terms, he is able to make appearance seem to be reality.

67 WiUiam Empson, "Volpone", Hudson Review 21 (1968): 666. 91

Corvino is seen in two utterly contrasting roles - as obsessively jealous husband and then, spurred on by avarice, he becomes pander to his own wife. Using the metaphor of game and play, Desmond MacCarthy speaks of Volpone and Mosca as an agile pair of matadors who are more than a match for each of the bulls who enter the arena in a single-minded search for wealth.^^

Possibly the one aspect of Volpone that modern audiences might find it difficult to relate to is the "fun" surrounding the freaks. Attitudes have changed in this last century and the crudity of the laughing reaction to physical deformity that Jacobeans would have taken for granted would be almost impossible after the nineteenth century. As MacCarthy says, "No philosopher, now, would define, like Hobbes, the essence of laughter as a joyful feeling 'so am not

It is suggested by Mosca that the dwarf, the eunuch and the fool, nature's freaks, are Volpone's own misbegotten natural children. Volpone's association with them, however dubious, does bring to him too a sense of their grotesqueness. The three sub-parasites, as Levin calls them, provide an ironical parallel to the three birds of prey, reflecting at a more innocent level the same obsequiousness and moral depravity. Their participation in Volpone's impersonation of Scoto reduces the stratagem to the level of absurdity at which they exist.^o By their nature they have no place in the mainstream of living and find a place only as circus type entertainers. Bakhtin includes dwarfs, giants, clowns, fools and jugglers and trained animals as typical elements of folk carnival type humour.^i They

68 MacCarthy, "Volpone Revived" 226.

69 MacCarthy, "Volpone Revived" 227.

^0 Harry Levin, "Jonson's Metempsychosis", Jonson: Volpone. ed. Jonas Barish (London: Macmillan, 1972) 88.

71 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World 4. 92 were considered forms of entertainment wherever they went and were eternally seen as in the process of performing, lacking any face beneath the mask of . Theirs is a simple play-acting in their capacity as professional entertainers. We learn that it is Mosca's creation that they simply sing and dance to in Act I. That Volpone can consider the revue "very, very pretty" (I. i. 153) only goes to expose his degenerate taste. The sketch traces the transmigration of Androgyno's soul from Apollo through various legendary heroes, animals and satiric types. That the soul of Apollo should find its final destination in the body of a freak - a hermaphrodite who earns his living as a comic entertainer - is certainly a pejorative comment on the grandeur of classical myth. The comic account, with its tone of "insulting familiarity", cuts the "the historic pretensions" of the heroes named "down to the scale of street farce". Menelaus is characterized as "the cuckold of Sparta", Pythagoras dismissed as a "juggler". Womack rightly labels the act as "a fool's pageant, a laughing world history of clowns and punks".7^ He shows how a delight in degradation is one of the typical characteristics of the carnival spirit. Harry Levin elaborates on the theme of metempsychosis that lies at the core of Volpone.^^ ^ is seen to be analogous to the transformation of base metals into gold in alchemy. It is also related to the shifting of shapes and the theatrical business of disguise or deception and, of course, the playing of roles.

The performance in Act 1 is a simple piece of entertainment intended by its immediate composer Mosca as light-hearted comic relief for Volpone before he enters into the serious "business" of the day. At another level it is drama of a lighter vein penned by Ben Jonson for the delectation of his patrons. It sets the tone of the play as one that is concerned with theatre and theatricality at every stage and at

^2 Womack, Ben Jonson 140.

^3 Levin, "Jonson's Metempsychosis" 88-96. 93 every level. On the same note the song praising professional fools that follows soon after contributes its own mite to the overall eulogy that the play pays to the ability to act, to play roles, to perform.

The subplot, often criticized for its tenuous link with the main plot, for its redundancy and its degeneration in tone, exposes the posturing of fools. It deals with Sir Politic Would-Be and Peregrine (both of whom are seen disguised in the final act) belong to the large group of "humours" for whom Jonson feels nothing but contempt. These are the poseurs corresponding to Moliere's fachewc. They are to be distinguished from the main players in Jonson's creation for they, unlike Volpone, Mosca etc, are not driven by "an inner compulsion". They merely "affect" a personality or strike a pose in order to satisfy their vanity and cut, supposedly, a fine figure in their milieu.'^'*

The roles played by the Would-Be's may not be immediately familiar to contemporary readers but would have been well understood by the Jacobean theatre-goer. The sub-plot echoes the main plot at the level of folly by the behaviour of the Would-Be's for whom knowledge (in Lady Would-Be) and information (in Sir Pol) is a method of self- advertisement and an attempt toward social prominence.^^ In Lady Would-Be Jonson presents the so-called blue stocking - the apparently unfeminine woman who prides herself on both her assertiveness and her knowledge. Her deluge of words, or her logorrhea (as R.D.V. Glasgow terms it) seems to divorce itself from any real intended meaning. It seems to form a merely farcical mask. Jonson seems to take as much pleasure as did Rabelais in pillorying the scholastics for their pretentious prattle."^^ She is the sort of

^'t Cook, Introduction, Volpone 23.

'•s Parfitt, Ben Jonson: Public Poet and Private Man 59.

76 R.D.V. Glasgow, Madness. Masks, and Laughter: An Essay on Comedy (London: Associated Uniyersity Presses, 1995) 75 - 76. 94 woman satirized by Juvenal and LibaniusJ^ Volpone finds her the veiy antithesis of desire. She is placed^^ carefully, with a maximum of dramatic irony, for when she enters the fox's lair Volpone's thoughts (nay, dreams!) have been entirely of the celestial Celia. Instead of Celia, he has to face Lady Would-Be. Her predilection for cosmetics underlines her preoccupation with appearances, implies her inability to assess reality and also contrasts her personality with that of Celia who needs no cosmetics and dislikes all forms of pretence and camouflage. Sir Politic is a person who fancies himself "in the know" of diplomatic manoeuvres and espionage and is a figure that would have been recognized by the Jacobean Londoners who frequented the theatre. Peregrine makes such easy prey of him that Sir Pol's near total lack of discernment and intelligence is fair game for laughter. However, the influential Jonsonian critics C.H. Herford and Percy Simpson cast a vote in his favour when they say that "A breath of lighter and more wholesome air from the old Humour-comedies enters with this quaintly refreshing personage and his associates."^'^ Peregrine is the pilgrim hawk who, as Jonson has written in one of his epigrams, "pursues the truth, strikes at ignorance, and makes the fool his quarry"."" The absurdity of Sir Pol's posturing acts as a foil that further shows up the extent that the fortune hunters are willing to go to satisfy their greed.

Peregrine, scornful to the hilt of Pol's posturing, compares him interestingly to a caricature from the English stage, saying that he would be thought to be an exaggeration if ever put on stage.

77 W. David Kay, Ben Jonson: A Literary Life (London: Macmillan, 1995) 89.

78 Peter Hutchinson, in Games Authors Play, mentions Montage or Collage as one of the games or techniques used to proyide implicit comment on a character or situation by placing it alongside another in order to deliberately and consciously generate inevitable comparison or contrast.

79 C.H. Herford, "Introduction to Volpone". Jonson: Volpone, ed. Jonas Barish (London" Macmillan, 1972) 75.

80 Brockbank, "Introduction to Volpone", Jonson: Volpone 213. 95

O, this knight, Were he well known, would be a precious thing To fit our English stage: he that should write But such a fellow, should be thought to feign Extremely, if not maliciously. (II. i. 56 - 60) Fact, he seems to imply, can be stranger than fiction. Sir Pol is proud of his familiarity with Venetian decorum. "1 knew the forms so well," he boasts (IV. i. 39) in the obsession with appearances that he shares with his wife. Deeply suspicious of appearances, Sir Pol tends to believe that everything is other than what it appears to be. He constantly delves beneath surfaces to a ridiculous extent.

A confusion of identity is carried to a ludicrous extent where even manifested gender cannot be taken as a sign of the real sex of the person. Lady Would-Be has been told that her husband has been seen in the company of a cunning courtesan in a gondola and is more than willing to believe that "she" is in disguise as the young man Peregrine who accompanies Sir Pol at that moment. Barish points out the blurring of identities when the clear-cut divisions between man and woman, man and beast, beast and beast are thus lost.81 It is through Lady Would-Be that Sir Pol is connected to the action of the main plot.

Perhaps the most ridiculous scene in the play is the one in which Sir Pol dives into his tortoise disguise to escape the police. The image of Sir Pol in his tortoise disguise has been called "the most striking stage picture in Jonson of a character in hiding".^2 However, Ian Donaldson provides a brief and telling history of the negative reception of this scene.

81 Barish, The Double Plot in Volpone" 112.

82 Leggatt. Ben Jonson 128. 96

Jonas Barish has shown how the theme of metamorphosis reaches a farcical climax in the tortoise scene and, while ironically reminding us of the various disguises and stratagems used by Volpone in the action of the play, also anticipates the uncasing of the fox. The use of the image of the tortoise also has some metaphorical significance. Both Sir Pol and Volpone, it is implied, were safe when they remained in their home environment - like a tortoise in its shell. Both are endangered when they leave their house and their country respectively. Since the tortoise was considered tongueless, the scene also seems to indicate that the game players have been too verbose or that they have overstepped their preserves. Perhaps Donaldson stretches it a bit too far when he seeks to rope in Lady Pol for a spot of preaching via the lesson of the tortoise. Since Venus was often picturized with a foot on a tortoise, Donaldson suggests that the ideal qualities of a woman - her silence and her domestic nature (the antithesis of Lady Would-Be's nature) - are indicated here.^^

Correct dramatist that he is, Jonson clearly ensures the "connectedness" of the subplot. By means of the subplot Jonson attempts to bring comic equilibrium to a play otherwise seen to be excessively serious and "dark" for the comic genre. Small doses of Lady Pol, Sir Pol and Peregrine are indeed therapeutic and effective in restoring the comic tone and the thread of laughter. Sir Pol's may appear to be redundant to the plot but the light-hearted satire against him ensures that the air of comedy continues to waft around the action.

Jonson makes perhaps his largest claim ever for the function of poetry in the preface to Volpone. After witnessing the experience of the play, we can wholeheartedly endorse Jonson's claim that he

*3 Ian Donaldson, "Jonson's Tortoise", Jonson: Volpone, ed. Jonas Barish (London: Macmillan, 1972) 192 - 193. 97 raised "the despised head of poetiy.^^ Yet this preface that speaks so seriously of the moral rectitude of good art introduces a play that certainly fulfills the expectations of comic art as Jonson saw them but also unabashedly and delightedly appeals to our baser natures by its boisterous humour and carnival elements. The dramatist has dealt with crimes to a greater extent than with follies and the punishments meted out have been severe but a vein of light comedy has also been maintained alongside the main action. Leggatt demonstrates the duality of tone that he believes to be a characteristic of Jonson's drama. He points out that the play "proclaims a stern moral purpose and then gives the villain the last word".8^ By bringing Volpone back on stage after he has been "led away" by the court officials, Jonson gives his joyously created character another chance, as it were. The return of a smiling Volpone in the epilogue is reminiscent of Face being allowed back into the household by Lovewit after all his misdemeanours. The audience would have clapped at the end of Act V because justice had been done in the manner acceptable in comedy. But the fact that the judges have shown themselves to be less than honest and also the severity of the sentence passed would have upset an English audience who prided themselves on the enlightenment of their penal code. Venice was associated firmly (in the English mind) with vice and corruption. Thus Volpone's reappearance (without the "irons" the judges have ordered) would have seemed like a smug denunciation of Italian (or more largely, Continental) injustice.

Although transgression is usually seen as negative in the social world, and transgression in the world of games amounts to an unpardonable breaking of near-sacrosanct rules, Bakhtin has shown that, in the context of play at carnival time, it acquires a positive connotation. The utterly free play of carnival tends to be

^'' Ben Jonson, Epistle Dedicatory, Volpone. ed. David Cook 58.

85 Leggatt, Ben Jonson 227. 98 closer to paidia (active, tumultous activity) rather than Indus (calculated, rule-governed play) .^^Since such play is creative, unrestricted and associated with a sense of abandon, transgression gains an aura of fun and daring. Besides, the carnival - that mode of play that is an implicit critique of the socio-cultural situation - typifies the turning of the world upside down, as Ian Donaldson has shown, thus making the breaking of rules and the flouting of authority very much part of the fun. It is against this background of carnivalesque fun that Volpone's side-stepping his judicial penalization can be seen as appropriate, right, and even necessary in order to communicate the continuance of the carnival spirit. In the irreverent spirit of the carnival, the verdict of the judges - the "establishment" - has been stood upon its head in a manner so simple that it is reminiscent of the lucid clarity of Jonson's best love poems. Else, the play would have ended on a falling note, signalling the end of carnival fun. Instead of presenting the serious resolution of the last act as his final word, Jonson chooses to leave his audience with its comic double (to use Bakhtin's expression) - the release and reinstallation of Volpone as the successful and admired actor in the epilogue.

As Bernard Suits says, any activity can be turned into a game.^^ Volpone turns his agenda of making fools of his coptatio-players into a most absorbing and dizzyingly entertaining game. At first his objective is to outplay those wily gold-diggers but later (as when he has his death announced) we find him playing against his own earlier achievements, trying to outdo himself. He is defined as the ultimate player. Also, given the fact that Volpone has demonstrated an unusual degree of gusto in his "playing" and proved himself a skilled artist to a degree that can only be called virtuoso, the

86 Caillois, Man. Play and Games 13.

*'' Bernard Suits, "The Detective Story: A Case Study of Games in Literature", quoted by Wilson, In Palatnedes' Shadow 18. 99 audience is likely to react with particularly substantial enthusiasm and "clap [their] hands" (V. vii. 157) in generous applause. The epilogue in Volpone should be taken as more significant than a traditionalist reading might normally indicate. Taking advantage of the audience's appreciation, Jonson quite blatantly allows Volpone to claim innocence - at least with regard to the immediate audience. He points out, slyly but persuasively, that he has not harmed any of the present company. (That the people he has harmed are, after all, representatives of the audience is quite another matter, of course!) Still, with an endearing humility (yet another act!) he places himself at their mercy. They are welcome to either "censure" (V. vii. 156) or praise him. Flattered by this show of deference and quite disarmed, the audience is inveigled into applauding.^s How cleverly has Jonson sought and effected the rescue of his convicted protagonist. By turning the right of the final verdict over to the audience he has secured the safe deliverance of his mischief-filled and law-flouting creation. It is almost as if the judgment of the avocatori had never been.

Thus the Epilogue changes the totality of the vision of the play. The tailpiece can be seen as a morally subversive epilogue in which the culpable protagonist is allowed to escape the confines of the world in which his retribution awaits him and is encouraged to audaciously solicit the approval of his audience. In this sense the epilogue is the cleverest game played by Jonson in Volpone. By a move that is close to sleight of hand he mobilizes his protagonist from the world of the stage (where he has been exposed, reviled and penalized) to the world of the audience. He is re-presented to his audience, shorn of his crimes and with only his attractive qualities attached to him. The audience is asked to remember him as a versatile actor and skilled game player and to applaud him for his excellent performance(s).

88 Empson, "Volpone": 666. Empson compares this to Peter Pan in which the dying Tinker Bell will recover, the audience is told, if they beUeve in fairies. "Clap if you do". Needless to say, the audience saves her every time. 100

They see him in his dual identity as character and actor and appreciate both for their spectacular performances. The fox rises phoenix-like, as it were, and reigns supreme once more in the theatre where he belongs. As Elizabeth Burns points out, the actor in his role and while taking his bow exemplify different levels of performances'* This difference is exploited by Jonson to win favour for his creation. R.B. Parker reports that , in his performance as Volpone, spoke the epilogue in his own person but with the make-up used for his role still on.'^o There is a piquant combination of the two levels of reality here which exactly echoes Jonson's intended use of the epilogue. Th 5^-/37 Volpone stands out amongst Jonson's plays as one that gives his players an equal standing as culpable wrong-doers and as admirable role players. As criminals found guilty in the dock they are adequately punished but, as delightfully inventive and skilled players (Glasgow describes them as "charismatic"'*•), they are applauded. Comparing Jonson to Balzac, MacCarthy comments that both writers "endow the vicious with such exuberant energy of intellect that we cannot but delight in their misdirected zest.""*^ Swinburne compares Volpone, Mosca, Face and Subtle to characters in Balzac too. "As even in the most terrible masterpieces of Balzac, it is not the wickedness of the vicious or criminal agents, it is their energy of intellect, their dauntless versatility of daring, their invincible fertility of resource, for which our interest is claimed or by which our admiration is aroused." "The qualities which delight us are virtues misapplied: it is not their cunning, their avarice or their

89 Bums, Theatricality 39.

90 R.B. Parker, quoted by Michael Scott, Renaissance Drama and a Modem Audience 55.

9' Glasgow. Madness, Masks and Laughter 48.

92 MacCarthy, "Volpone Revived" 225. lust, it is their courage, their genius, and their wit in which we take no ignoble or irrational pleasure-''^^ Thus, in Volpone, Jonson is seen to have transcended the rigid didactic code that he is traditionally associated with. Shrewd dramatist that he is, Jonson has found a way to eat his cake and have it too. Though the restoration of a punitive Lenten order does occur with the final scene of the resolution, yet the main body of the play has been the presentation of a joyous carnivalesque pageant and the epilogue reintroduces the same tone of amoral merriment.

It is true that Volpone is guilty of fraud and duplicity but also true that those he thus offends (with the exception of Celia and Bonario) are also guilty of the same crimes. Moreover, it is significant that the figures of authority in Volpone do not inspire any confidence either. They are easily fooled and display shocking signs of avarice themselves. One of the judges seriously considers Mosca as a husband for his daughter on the single criterion of the wealth he seems to have suddenly inherited. They are comparable to the untrustworthy figures of authority in . Musgrove points out that there is no "triumph of justice'"^'* associated with the insight or skill of the judges. Where both the exploiter and the exploited are offenders, the onlooker must turn to other standards of judging. While the fortune seekers who try their luck at captatio are conniving and deceiving, they are joyless creatures. Volpone and Mosca, on the other hand, stand out by the sheer glee and gusto of their role playing. As for the concept of fun, as discussed by Huizinga, as an attribute of play'^^^ there can be no doubt at all that

53 Algernon Charles Swinburne, A Study of Ben Jonson (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969) 45.

9^ S. Musgrove, "Tragical Mirth: King Lear and Volpone", Jonson: Volpone. ed. Jonas Barish (London: Macmillan, 1972) 130.

95 Huizinga, Homo Ludens 2-3. 102 the two player-protagonists have both had fun in play and also provided fun to those who watched them at play.

Volpone and Mosca betray themselves through their mutual quarrelling in their attempt to outsmart each other, to outplay each other "out of mere wantonness" (175) . It has been "dramatic legerdemain" on the part of both the characters and their creator. Jonson's "anti-theatrical prejudice" combines with what Barish refers to as "a subversive hankering after" the contradictory "arts of show and illusion" and leads to a marriage which, far from the "uneasy synthesis" Barish mentions, forms a fascinating amalgamation for the audience to ponder over. It is obvious that the audience has never ceased to view Volpone as an actor. It is as an actor that he surrenders himself to the audience, sure of a positive response. The audience applauds both the actor who has played the character and the character who has played a compulsive actor of roles. Due to this unexpected manipulation by Jonson, the members of the audience now become the "final authorities"^^' in a situation that has surprisingly modernistic overtones. To use Samuel Selden's terminology, the audience is pleased to play, thrilled to respond to the direct appeal made to them.^^

Thus Volpone wins our abiding admiration as a play that operates simultaneously on at least two levels. While the play assiduously perpetrates the idea of dissimulation as contemptible deceit, it also presents a charming and energetic display of the great joy afforded by play acting. While the confidence tricksters are punished within the comic structure of the play, the ludic spirit of the role players can only be applauded both within the play and beyond it.

^6 Alexander Leggatt, : Shakespeare to the Restoration. 1590 - 1660 (London: Longman, 1988) 134.

97 Samuel Selden, Theatre Double Game (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1969) viii. 103

The house of illusions that Volpone nurtures has moved so perceptive a critic as Womack to compare Jonson with Jean Genet whose balcon belongs to another such mansion that thrives on dealing in appearances and fantasies.^s Surely the judges of the Scrutineo, morally myopic and enamoured of material wealth themselves, are no better than the false line-up of authority figures that Madame Irma provides as a reassurance for the doubting crowds - the Queen, the Bishop, the Judge and the General seem to appear before the public but in actuality they are only images, roles played by customers at the brothel.

Volpone is a sophisticated play in which the playwright reveals himself also as a clever game player like his characters. Perhaps it is "the mental attitude of play" that Huizinga finds typical of the Renaissance'^^ that has triumphed. Ben Jonson, known universally as a "learned", "correct", didactic dramatist, seems to have operated under a quite different guise (or played a different role) during the creation of this play. Most overwhelmingly noticeable in Volpone is the playful tone (almost Rabelaisian in its carnivalesque boisterousness) that runs parallel to the "dark" bleakness of the vicious nature of the protagonist's crime. When all is said and done Volpone and Mosca are "gamesters" and actors first and foremost.

Thus Volpone transcends the limitations and boundaries of Jonson's comic structure by merit of its exuberance and earthy boisterousness, its demonstrated joy in the business of theatre, its ironic presentation of characters who are actors, of life as a play which throws up situations that must be handled with the finesse of the most finished theatre. The pre-occupation that Jonson reveals with the concept of man as a ludic and role-playing being in Volpone

58 Womack, Ben Jonson 117.

55 Huizinga, Homo Ludens 180. 104 establishes him as a playwright in line with Moliere, Congreve and Sheridan.