Page 196 - DENG403_BRITISH_DRAMA

British Drama

Notes But at least at this point, we should share Volpone’s pleasure in his inventiveness. Especially so at
this stage of the play, where his tricks are as yet harmless. After all, this is a play we are reading;
dramatic art itself is partly based on the basic pleasure to be found in make-believe, something
Volpone seems to feel especially keenly. But there is a conflict here, especially in the fact that Volpone
is so entertaining in his deceit emphasizes the connection between stagecraft and lying and establishes
a conflict between stagecraft and truth. Disguise can be used both to conceal and reveal, while it
may conceal the external facts of a person’s identity, it can reveal aspects of their inner nature which
are usually invisible. We might think that as Scoto Mantua, Volpone is deceiving everyone to an
even greater extent than he is when pretending to be ill. But Volpone himself said that his disguise
would have to “maintain his own shape”; that is, it would have to maintain some truth about his
personality, since he counted this event as his introduction to Celia. So in a perfect example of
situational irony, he chooses Scoto Mantua, the mountebank—the man whose profession it is to
deceive—as a representation of his true, inner self.

This play is a fiction; the characters do not exist, and the actors who play them are all
in disguise. They all pretend to be someone else. But they do so in order to convey a truth, the
truth of Jonson’s moral message: that greed and vanity are present everywhere and that they
are demeaning and ridiculous vices, worthy of contempt, no matter how attractive they may
appear, and that people should look beyond shiny, golden exteriors to the inner decadence
they may contain.
Scoto delivers his lines in prose, not verse. This could be both because Scoto is a “low”, comic
character, or because he represents a direct authorial presence in the play. The only other part of the
play in prose is Jonson’s initial dedication, also written in his own voice. And Scoto also makes
several references to Jonson’s life. Like Scoto, over the course of eight months Jonson had been
slandered in public and arrested; in Jonson’s case, it was for participation in a play, Eastward Ho,
that had been seen as mocking the king. Thus, Scoto seems to be something of a self-portrait. And
this self-portrait Jonson paints of himself, as a carnival huckster/alchemist, suggests that he viewed
his art as being similar to the art of both; that he took deceit, lies, and human vices, and, like the
alchemist, transformed these valueless things into something valuable—a work of art that could
entertain, as well as instruct.

16.3.4 Scene IV

Volpone returns to his home, moaning about how beautiful Celia is, and how sick he is with love
for her. Mosca listens to him and promises that he will make Celia Volpone’s lover, if only he has
enough patience. Volpone is pleased by Mosca’s determination; he then asks him whether or not he
was good in his performance as Scoto. Mosca assures him the entire audience was fooled.

16.3.5 Scene V
The scene is within Corvino’s house. Corvino berates Celia for tossing her handkerchief to Scoto
Mantua. He feels he has been made a fool of in public and accuses his wife of harboring a desire to
be unfaithful to him and of making excuses in order to meet with her paramours. She begs him not
to be jealous and protests that she never makes such excuses, that she hardly even leaves the house,
even to go to Church—but this is not enough for Corvino. From now on, he says, she will never be
allowed out of the house, never allowed to go within two or three feet of a window, and forced to
do everything backward—dress backward, talk backward, walk backward. If she fails to obey, he
threatens that he will dissect her in public as an example of a woman without virtue.

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