Page 190 - DENG403_BRITISH_DRAMA

British Drama

Notes The use of irony is a key element of satire in general; and used appropriately, irony is perfectly
suited to Johnson’s intention to convey a moral message in an entertaining fashion.

Irony, like a good joke, involves a reversal of the listener or reader’s expectations; so
irony is often funny. But irony can also have a serious purpose.
The use of irony is almost always a form of attack on a certain viewpoint or way of life, by showing
its inherent contradictions; and if it aims to show us that certain behavior or viewpoints are present
in the thoughts and actions of everyday people in society at large, then it makes a pointed commentary
on contemporary society. In other words, any thief who believes that stealing is the right way to
make money can be made to look ridiculous by losing his money to theft. And a commonly held
belief or way of behaving can be made to look ridiculous by showing that, in certain circumstances,
it has disastrous consequences. So it is not surprising that irony is omnipresent in Volpone; not only
does Jonson use situational irony to convey his message; he also uses verbal irony and dramatic
irony. Verbal irony is very close to sarcasm; something is expressed whose actual meaning is the
opposite of the literal meaning of the words; the difference between the two is that verbal irony is
usually more subtle, relying on ambiguities in certain words and context to tip off the listener or
reader to the actual meaning. Dramatic irony is the ironic effect created.

Example: When someone doesn’t know something you do, and says something that’s normally
reasonable but in the context quite stupid or funny; in other, the words or actions of a character take
on a meaning different from the one they intend because of circumstances or information that
character does not know.
16.2.2 Scene II

Nano (a dwarf), Castrone (a eunuch), and Androgyno enter. They are here to entertain Volpone,
with Nano leading the way. In a pleasant little fable, Nano relates that the soul now in Androgyno’s
body originated in the soul of Pythagoras. Mosca admits that he, in fact, wrote the entertainment,
after Volpone says he was pleased with it. Nano then sings a song praising Fools, such as himself,
who make their living by entertaining at the tables of the rich. A knock is heard at the door; Mosca
says that it is Signior Voltore, a lawyer and one of Volpone’s would-be “heirs.” Mosca goes to see
him into the house and comes back to announce that he has brought a huge piece of gold plate with
him as a gift. Volpone is excited; his con is working, and he quickly prepares to put on the act of
being sick, by getting into his night-clothes and dropping ointment in his eyes. He notes that he has
been fooling these would-be heirs for three years, with various faked symptoms such as palsy
(tremors), gout (joint-aches), coughs, apoplexy (breathing problems) and catarrhs (vomit).
Analysis

The entrance of Volpone’s bizarre “family” of children is the entrance of the grotesque in the play;
all three are”freaks” of one sort or another; Castrone the eunuch, Nano the dwarf, and Androgyno
the hermaphrodite. Grotesque figures are often used as personified abstractions, stock and usually
comic characters that represent an “inner” ugliness of some sort that the play intends to comment
upon. This interpretation is supported by their names—Nano, Castrone and Androgyno simply
mean “dwarf”, “eunuch,” and “hermaphrodite”—and by the fact they speak in heroic couplets, as
opposed to the central characters who speak in unrhymed iambic pentameter, also known as blank
verse. What their grotesquerie represents is an inner grotesqueness in Volpone. The three are not
only his servants, but also because they are in a very important sense his family; by his own admission,
he has “no wife, no parent, no child, no ally.” Furthermore, Volpone’s choice to surround himself
with individuals, such as Castrone and Androgyno, with “reproductive deformities” highlights

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