Page 180 - DENG403_BRITISH_DRAMA

British Drama

Notes Fill in the blanks:

4. Jonson was a serious ......... who modeled his plays on classic Roman and Greek
tragedies.
5. There is a ......... running throughout the play, through the associations the
characters’ names create with animals.
6. The main plot of Volpone is a ......... .
7. The topic of Volpone is quite serious, although this is ..........
State whether the following statements are true or false:
8. Volpone is considered Jonson’s most popular work.
9. The action of Volpone is set in Venice, which many Englishmen thought was a
center of debauchery and sin.
10. Corvino a scavengeris the poor merchant who can’t get enough.

15.3 Text as a Classical Drama

While Volpone was set in Venice, London audiences were well able to recognise its themes. For his
realism, Jonson was attacked at the time as “a meere Empyrick, one that gets what he hath by
observation.” But four centuries on, his ability to capture social contradictions and present them in
a captivating form continues to resonate.

Through the play Volpone, considered by some his masterpiece, Jonson portrays with a
black humour a society in which the pursuit of wealth and individual self-interest have become
primary. Venice was regarded as the epitome of a sophisticated commercial city and virtually
all the characters are revealed as corrupt or compromised.
Volpone means “fox” in Italian. Jonson based his story around medieval and Aesopian tales in
which a fox pretends to be dead in order to catch the carrion birds that come to feed on its carcass.
In the play, Volpone is a single and aging Venetian “magnifico” who has devised a trick to fleece
his neighbours while simultaneously nourishing his sense of superiority over his hapless victims.
For three years he has pretended to be dying, so as to encourage legacy hunters to bring gifts in the
hope of being named as his beneficiary.
With the aid of his servant Mosca, Volpone strings along his suitors—Voltore, Corbaccio and
Corvino—extracting their wealth by feeding their avarice. (Voltore Corbaccio and Corvino are the
Italian names for vulture, crow and raven.) Voltore, a lawyer, offers Volpone a platter made of
precious metal. Corbaccio, a doddering gentleman, is talked into disinheriting his son Bonario in
favour of Volpone, while Corvino, a miserly merchant and hugely jealous husband, is driven by
greed to offer his young wife Celia to bed and comfort the supposedly dying Volpone.
Here Volpone, a rogue whose victims trap themselves by their own weaknesses (and are therefore
deserving of their respective fates) becomes overwhelmed by his own passions. Definitely not at
death’s door and completely obsessed, he tries to force himself onto Celia and is only stopped by
the lucky appearance of Bonario. The two innocents bring charges in court against the old man. But
countercharges of adultery and fornication against Celia and Bonario are laid by the three legacy
hunters who are desperate to defend what each considers his own future wealth.
Volpone revels in these ever-widening displays of degradation. He decides to stage his own death
so he can witness their frenzy when they see him bequeathing his wealth to Mosca. However, after

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