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Unit 16: Volpone: Satire and all its Detailed Analysis and Comedy

slightly different way, either with a different tone or with a different emphasis. Notes
• When Volpone loses control with Celia, he breaks the implicit rules he seemed to be playing
by initially, or at least may have fooled the audience into thinking he was playing by: that he
was only out to deceive and hurt those who deceived and hurt themselves.
• In scene I of Act IV, Sir Politic and Peregrine are walking along a canal, and Politic undertakes
to teach Peregrine a thing or two about life in Venice. His two main points are that one should
never tell the truth to strangers, and that one should always have proper table manners, which
Politic then goes on to explain in full.
• In Scene II of Act IV, Lady Politic, Nano, and some serving women enter, looking for her
husband. And in Scene III, Mosca enters and finds Lady Politic incensed over her husband’s
infidelity.
• The moral satire of the play becomes somewhat submerged in the Fourth Act, as considerations
of plot and tone become more important. Jonson frames the intense confrontation between
Volpone, Celia, and Bonario with humorous scenes involving the Politic Would-bes.
• The scene IV of Act IV is now set at the Scrutineo, the law courts of the Venetian state. The
four Avocatori also appear in scene V. In Scene VI Mosca enters with his surprise witness,
who is, of course, Lady Politic Would-be.
• The Fourth Act is marked by Volpone’s near complete disappearance for the play; Mosca
takes his place as the driving force behind the plot.
• The way Voltore and Mosca go about creating their illusion has similarities with the way
playwrights go about creating theirs, using words and images in a dramatic manner.
• The way Jonson metes out punishment to his characters bears a resemblance to one of Lady
Politic’s less favorite Italian poets: Dante Alighieri. The greedy Corbaccio has his estate taken
away from him, Corvino, who behaves like an ass during the entire play, is metaphorically
transformed into one, and Volpone, who pretended to be bedridden in order to satisfy his
insatiable lusts, will now be bedridden permanently, still unable to satisfy his desires for
Celia. This fitting of the punishment to the crime in a poetic, imaginative way is similar to
Dante’s device of contrapasso which he employs in Inferno (Hell), book one of his Divine
Comedy. The punishments there, and here, are meant to capture the inner essence of the
crime itself; in other words, Volpone’s greed for pleasure and self-gratification made him a
prisoner of his desires, bound to be frustrated in his attempts to achieve them, long before he
was ever put into chains.

16.8 Keywords
Poetasters : A derogatory term for an inferior playwright who have disgraced the
theatrical profession with their immoral work.
Hail : A term used in medieval mystery plays to announce the presence of Christ.
Profane : Of low moral worth
Dramatic irony : It is the ironic effect created, when someone doesn’t know something you do,
and says something that’s normally reasonable but in the context quite stupid
or funny.
Iambic pentameter : A meter in which each line has ten syllables, or fine pairs of syllables, the first
syllable in each pair unstressed and the second stressed.
Unity of time : The audience and the characters must experience time at the same rate.
Unity of place : The play should have only one setting.

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