Page 182 - DENG403_BRITISH_DRAMA

British Drama

Notes The conception of the humor of the medieval age has a great impact on Ben Jonson’s Volpone,
especially on the character development. Actually, Volpone is, to many extents, based upon the
humor theory. That’s why it is considered as a comedy of humor. Jonson tries to show using the
above notion that, if somebody lacks any character trait or contains too much of that particular trait,
she/he is considered to be abnormal because of her/his imbalanced features. If a person does contain
all the traits in a measured or balanced state, then she/he can be considered normal.
In Volpone, Volpone, Mosca, Corvino, Corbaccio, Voltore, Sir Politic-Would-Be and his wife, all of
them do have imbalance in their characters, and this imbalance make the play a comedy since these
abnormal characters pave the way to make the plot satiric and at a time amusing. Each character is
peculiar and singular in his/her own way. It is necessary to keep in mind that, a comedy of humor
always deals with the characters more than anything else.
Jonson indirectly hints that, the mental imbalance is more dangerous than physical imbalance as he
shows that, the characters—Nano, Castrone and Androgyno—being physically abnormal, are better
creatures than the earlier ones.

Dark Comedy

In Volpone all of the characters are equally greedy. So the audience does not get angry for Volpones
victimising them.They deserve their end. This play ends with punishment not just ridicule and this
ending makes it dark comedy.
In fact comedy should have a happy endihg but in this play we see that people are punished at the
end of the play, thus it doesnt have a satisfactory ending for a comedy so we can say that it is a dark
comedy because Ben Jonson was the great comic and satiric writer of the English Renaissance. He
also protested in Volpone the inhumanity of greedy people such as greedy lawyers. In Volpone Ben
Jonson celebrates the joy of a good trick. He emphasizes the fun and the humour of deceit but he
does not overlook its nastiess, and in the end he punishes the deceivers.
According to Wittenburg there are 4 types of love in the play:
• Sexual love (between Volpone and Lady Would Be)
• Self Love (Mosca and the others loving themselves)
• Love of money
• True Love (Between Bonaria and Celia)
People are weak about money and they can do everything for it. The love of money is shown as the
root of all evil. The reputation of venice as a wordly, commercial and cosmopolitan place darken
the comedy.
According to Watson with Volpone or the fox Johson turned to his satirical talent and developed
his own species of satiric comedy. Volpone is the first and the greatest of a series of comedies which
show Jonsons characteristic mixture;
• of savagery and humour
• of moral feeling of the monstrous absurdities of human nature Volpone cunningly mixes a
number of genres and ideas well known to Renaissance audience: Volpone can be read as:
• a moral example
• a best fable: It is a short tale in which the principle actors are of animals, as their names
reveal.
• a satiric play (there is satire on English life is general)
• a humour play

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