Select Literary Criticism of 'Volpone'
By Thomas Davies
The theme. The fable of Volpone is chosen with judgment, and is founded upon avarice and luxury. The paying of obsequious and constant courtship to childless rich people, with a view to obtain from them bountiful legacies in return, has been a practice of all times, and in all nations.
Absurd elements in the play. In the comedy of The Fox, there is not much to be censured, except the language which is so pedantic and stuck so full of Latinity that few, except the learned, can perfectly understand it. The conduct of the plot in the first four Acts, except the mountebank scene, is truly admirable. The last Act is quite farcical. That a man of Volpone's sagacity should venture to appear in public, in the disguise of a mountebank, to be an eye-witness of a lady's beauty of which he had heard only from report and after escaping from the apprehended consequences of this exorbitant frolic, which had brought him within the censure of a court of judicature, upor the bare declaration of the judges in his favour, and against those who had caused to be unjustly accused; that he should again assume another shape, that of an apparitor or tipstaff; make a pretended will; leave all his money jewels, and effects, pretendedly to so wretched a fellow as a pimp and parasite; and all this with no other view than to mortify, insult, and abuse those whom he had gulled while yet the sentence of the court was depending, is a matter as absurd and improbable as any thing acted at the Italian comedy.
By Richard Cumberland
Commendable work. After all it will be confessed that the production of such a drama as The Fox in the space of five weeks is a very wonderful nerformance; for it must on all hands be considered as the masterpiece of a very capital artist, a work that bears the stamp of elaborate design, a strong and frequently sublime vein of poetry, much sterling wit, comic humour, happy character, moral satire and unrivalled erudition.
Classical background. In this drama the learned reader will find himself for ever trading upon classic ground. Exclusive of Aristophanes, in whose volume Jonson is perfect, it is plain that even the gleanings and broken fragments of the Greek stage had not escaped him; in the very first speech of Volpone's, which opens the comedy, and in which he rapturously addresses himself to his treasure, he is to be traced most decidedly in the fragments of Merander, Sophocles, and Euripides, in Theognis and in Hesiod, not to mention Horace.
Merits of the play. The Fox is indubitably the best production of its author, and in some points of substantial merit yields to nothing, which the English stage can oppose to it. There is a bold and happy spirit in the fable; it' is of moral tendency, female chastity and honour are beautifully displayed and punishment is inflicted on the delinquents of the drama woth strict and exemplary justice. The characters of Voltore, Corbaccio, and Corvino (depicted under the titles of birds of prey) are warmly coloured, happily contrasted, and faithfully supported from the out set to the end. Volpone, who gives his name to the piece, with a fox-like craftiness, deludes and gulls their hopes by the agency of his inimitable parasite, his "fly", Mosca; and in this finished portrait Jonson may throw the gauntlet to the greatest masters of antiquity. The character is of classic origin; it is found with the contemporaries of Aristophanes, though not in any comedy of his now existing. The incident of Mosca's concealing Bonario in the gallery, from whence he breaks in upon the scene to the rescue of Celia and the detection of Volpone, is one of the happiest contrivances which could possibly be devised, because at the same time that it produces the catastrophe, it does not sacrifice Mosca's character in the manner most villains are sacrificed in comedy by making them commit blunders, which do not correspond with the address their first representation exhibits and which the audience has a right to expect from them throughout But this incident of Borario's interference does not only impeach the adroitness of the parasite, but it diminishes a very brilliant occasion for setting off his ready invention and presence of mind in a new and superior light, and serves to introduce the whole machinery of the trial and condemnation of the innocent person's before the court of advocates. In this part of the fable the contrivance is inimitable, and here the poet's art is a study which every votarist of the dramatic Muses ought to pay attention and respect to.
A glaring defect. Had the same address been exerted throughout, the construction would have been a matchless piece of art but here we are to lament the haste of which he boasts in his Prologue and that rapidity of composition, which he appeals to as a mark of genius, is to be lamented as the probable cause of incorrectness, or at least the best and most candid plea in excuse of it. For who can deny that nature is violated by the absurdity Volpone's unsensable insults to the very persons who had witnesses falsely in his defence, and even to the very advocate who had so successfully defended him? Is it in character for a man of his deep cunning and long reach if thought to provoke those, on whom his all depended, to retaliate upon him, and this for the poor triumph of a silly jest? Certainly this is a glaring defect, which everybody must lament, and which can escape nobody. The poet himself knew the weak part of his plot and vainly strives to bolster it up by making Volpone exclaim against his own folly: "I am caught in my own noose", and again:
To make a snare for mine own neck, and run
My head into it wilfully with laughter.
These are my fine conceits!
I must be merry, with a mischief to me!
What a vile wretch was I, that could not bear
My fortune soberly ! I must have my crotchets,
And my conundrums!
The flimsy connection of the sub-plot with the main business of the play. It is with regret I feel myself compelled to protest against so pleasant an episode, as that which is carried on by Sir Politic Would-be, and Peregrine, which in fact produces a kind of double plot and catastrophe. This is an imperfection in the fable, which criticism cannot overlook, but Sir Politic is altogether so delightful a fellow that it is impossible to give a vote for his exclusion; the most that can be done against him is to lament that he has not more relation to the main business of the fable.
A judge stoops to flatter the parasite. The judgment pronounced upon the criminals in the conclusion of the play is so just and solemn that I st think the poet has made a wanton breach of character and gained but a sorry jest by the bargain when he violates the dignity of his court of judges by making one of them so abject in his flattery to the parasite upon the idea of matching him with his daughter when he hears that Volpone has made him his heir, but this is an objection that lies within the compass of two short lines, spoken aside from the bench, and may easily be remedied by their omission in representation.
By Charles Dibdin
A bold idea the basis of the play; and moral justice in it. Volpone, or The Fox has been generally considered as Jonson's best production. Certainly the plot is upon a very meritorious principle, and the characters are forcibly drawn. A knave who feigns illness in order to impose upon knaves and cheat them of their money by working up their credulity into a belief that each shall become his heir, is one of the boldest ideas of a character that can be conceived, and yet moral justice is rendered more complete by making that knave imposed upon by another of yet superior cunning; showing that the machinations of the wicked, be they ever so subtle, are constantly counteracted by the same devil that inspires them.
The flaws of the play. The group of characters that are introduced to work up those materials are full of contrast, strength and mature. Would not one think it, therefore, very extra-ordinary that this piece, even supported by admirable acting, has never greatly succeeded. Quaint, dry, studied correctness
unsupported by quickness, spirit, and fire, can never satisfy.
By William Hazlitt
The Fox was received, as it well deserved to be, with general applause. The author's enemies, however, were not inactive: they could not venture to question his talents; they therefore turned, as usual, their attacks against his character, and asserted that under the person of Volpone, he had satirised Sutton, the founder of the Charter House, his friend and benefactor. It is not a little amusing to see the caluminators of our poet in that age, driven to the same absurdities as those of the present day. Two characters more opposite in every respect than those of Sutton and Volpone are not to be found in the history of mankind. Sutton inherited a large estate; he was one of the greatest traders of his time; he had agents in every country, and ships on every sea; he had contracts, mines, mills, ploughs; he was a naval commissioner, and master of the ordnance in the north; in a word, one of the most active characters of an active period. Now mark the description of Volpone, as given by himself, in the opening of the play:
I glory
More in the cunning purchase of my wealth
Than in the glad possession; since I gain
No common way, I use no trade, no venture,
I wound no earth with ploughshares, fat no beasts
To feed the shambles; have no mills for iron,
Oil, corn or men to grind them into powder;
I blow no subtle glass, expose no ships
To threatenings of the furrow-faced seas.....
Improbability and incongruity. His portraits are caricatures by dint of their very likeness, being extravagant tautologies of themselves; as his plots are improbable by an excess of consistency, for he goes thorough-stitch with whatever he takes in hand, makes one contrivance answer all purposes, and every obstacle give way to a pre-determined theory. For instance nothing can be more incredible than the mercnary conduct of Corvino, in delivering up his wife to the palsied embraces of Volpone; and yet the poet does not seem in the least to boggle at the incongruity of it: but the more it is in keeping with the absurdity of the rest of the fable, and the more it advances it to an incredible catastrophe, the more he seems to dwell upon it with complacency and a sort of wilful exaggeration, as if it were a logical discovery or corollary from well- known premises.
Unconvincing. The Fox or Volpone is his best play. It is prolix and improbable, but intense and powerful. It is made up of cheats and dupes, and the author is at home among them. He shows his hatred of the one and contempt for the other, and makes them set one another off to great advantage. There are several striking dramatic contrasts in this play, where the fox lies perdue to watch his prey, where Mosca is the dexterous go-between, outwitting his gulls, his employer and himself, and where each of the gaping legacy-hunters, the lawyer, the merchant, and the miser, eagerly occupied with the ridiculousness of the other's pretensions is blind only to the absurdity of his own: but the whole is worked up too mechanically, and our credulity outstretched at last revolts into scepticism, and our attention over-tasked flags into drowsiness.
Plautus as a model for the play. This play seems formed on the model of Plautus, in unity of plot and interest; and old Ben, in emulating his classic model, appears to have done his best. There is the same caustic unsparing severity in it as in his other works. His patience is tried to the utmost. His words drop gall.
Dramatic power. The scene between Volpone, Mosca, Voltore, Corvino, and Corbaccio at the outset, will show the dramatic power in the conduct of this play, and will be my justification in what I have said of the literal tenaciousness (to a degree that is repulsive) of the author's imaginary descriptions.
By Coleridge
No goodness of heart in any of the principal characters. This admirable, indeed, but yet more wonderful than admirable, play is from the fertility and vigour of invention, character, language, and sentiment the strongest proof, how impossible it is to keep up any pleasurable interest in a tale, in which there is no goodness of heart in any of the prominent characters. After the third act, this play becomes not a dead, but a painful, weight on the feelings. Bonario and Celia should have been made in some way or other principals in the plot; which they might have been, and the objects of interest, without having been made characters. In novels, the person, in whose fate you are most interested, is often the least marked character of the whole. If it were possible to lessen the paramountcy of Volpone himself, a most delightful comedy might be produced, by making Celia the ward or niece of Corvino instead of his wife, and Bonario her lover.
By Swinburne
An admirable and enjoyable play. In 1605 the singular and magnificen coalition of powers which served to build up the composite genius of Jonson displayed in a single masterpiece the consummate and crowning result of its marvellous energies. No other of even his very greatest works is at once so admirable and so enjoyable. The construction or composition of The Alchemist is perhaps more wonderful in the perfection and combination of cumulative detail, in triumphant simplicity of process and impeacable felicity of result but there is in Volponte a touch of something like imagination, a savour of something like romance, which gives a higher tone to the style and a deeper interest to the action. The chief agents are indeed what Mr Carlyle would have called unspeakably unexemplary mortals; but the serious fervour and passionate intensity of their resolute and resourceful wickedness give somewhat of a lurid and distorted dignity to the display of their doings and sufferings which is wanting to the less gigantic and heroic villainies of Subtle', Dol', and Face. The absolutely unqualified and unrelieved rescality of every agent in the later comedy-unless an exception should be made in favour of the unfortunate though enterprising Surly-is another note of inferiority, a mark of comparative baseness in the dramatic metal. In Volpone, the tone of villainy and the tone of virtue are alike higher. Celia is a harmless lady, if a too submissive consort; Bonario is a honourable gentleman, if too dutiful a son. The Putitan and shop-keeping scoundrels who are swindled by Face and plundered by Lovewit' are viler if less villainous figures than the rapacious victims of Volpone.
The comic Nemesis in Act V. Nor can I admit, as I cannot discern, the blemish or imperfection which others have alleged that they descry in the composition of Volpone- the unlikelihood of the device by which retribution is brought down in the fifth act on the criminals who were left at the close of the fourth act in impregnable security and triumph. So far from regarding the comic Nemesis or rather Ate which infatuates and impels Volpone to his doom as a sacrifice of art to morality, an immolation of probability and consistency on the altar of poetic justice, I admire as a master-stroke of character the haughty audacity of caprice which produces or evolves his ruin out of his own hardihood and insolence of exulting and daring enjoyment. For there is something throughout of the lion as well as of the fox in this original and incomparable figure. I know not where to find a third instance of catastrophe comparable with that of either The Fox or The Alchemist in the whole range of the highest comedy; whether for completeness, for propriety, for interest, for ingenious felicity of event or for perfect combination and exposition of all the leading characters at once in supreme simplicity, unity, and fullness of culminating effect.
By C. Gregory Smith
The serious and tragic note in the play. The theme of Volpone is the familiar story of the machinations of a cunning, greedy man and his clever parasite, the follies of their dupes, and the final undoing of all parties, but Jonson, notwithstanding his liberal allowance of good fun, tunes it to a pitch unexpected in comedy, and in one place at least, where Corvino would force his wife to shame, strikes the note of tragedy. All the chief characters, indeed all expect the English knight and his lady and the unhappy Celia, are so ill- conditioned that they forbid the 'sporting' sympathy on which comedy, by Jonson's own rule, must rely. Their deeds are crimes rather than follies. The Fox and his friends are never mere mischief- makes; they are villains of the stuff of which tragedy makes use, but without the dignity conveyed in her treatment, playing with a natural frankness, with no suggestion of the discrepancy between real and assumed character which gives comedy its great opportunity. It matters not that there is a happy ending to the sorrows of minor characters. The excess in depravity is here never a reasonable cause of entertainment, as it might be, and can be shown to be, in certain plays, when a character admitting poor defence on general grounds may be useful in serving the purpose of innocent pleasure. The satirical intensity rarely, if ever, permits that laughter at vice, which is 'the greatest of all possible incongruities.' The piece is a dramatic satire, or better, a satirist's comedy.
Exaggeration and other faults. Not a single character in it is real, even in the sense proclaimed by Jonson himself. Everything is drawn to exaggeration: the scene is laid in Venice, the mother-city of splendid vice there is one continuous suggestion of luxury, in Volpone's surroundings, in his wooing of Celia in terms out-Marlowing Marlowe. The intrigue is slight and the denouement is reached by the weak dramatic device of making triumphant villainy over-reach itself or be suddenly pricked in conscience, but the play, thanks to its observance of the unity of time, moves easily, notwithstanding such minor faults as the unnecessary tedium of the Fox's role as a mountebank, or the inexplicable entry of Bonario into the Magnifico's house, and it gathers some dramatic strength, if only in a reflex way, from the cumulative extravagance of the satire. Jonson's introduction of Sir Politic Would-be, his wife, and Peregrine in a comic under-plot with little or no connection with the main story is a concession and amends to comedy for giving in her name this unrelieved sketch of human depravity. The soul of the piece is the parasite Mosca, Volpone's 'witty mischief. But we suspect his humanity, as we suspect Volpone's and, it may be, Voltore's and Corbaccio's and Corvino's, and only listen to him with the respect we give to a wellcontrived hyperbole.
By M.C. Bradbrook
A savage, violent play. Anaemic virtue. No development in the characters. He (Jonson) found his true form with Volpone, where in the dedication he finds doctrine to be the principal end of poetry: to inform men in the best reason of living. This savage and violent play, with its blend of ancient crimes and Elizbethan cupidity and darling, can hardly be described as satire: the moral flavour is there, but the magnificent claims of Volpone to a life of unbounded desires and royal splendour recall Faustus and Tamburlaine rather than Sir Giles Overreach or Old Hoard. The assumption of different identities by the pair of cheating villains is so enthusiastic that to each of their dupes and to each other they show a slightly different character: they live for action and in their soliloquies they contemplate with enjoyment their public art. Volpone's heroic vitality leaves the anaemic virtue of Celta and Bonario to the chilly recompense of a final judgment scene in which all the characters are reduced to puppets, the strings are folded up, and they are laid in the right box, labelled Felicity or Perdition. Jonson's plays contain no true lovers or friends, no true fathers and sons: there are characters which bear these titles but each exile in a general relation to all the others, and not in particular relations with any one of them. The action in this sense is simple. Such characters are incapable of development; they may be converted or destroyed, not modified.
The characters of Volpone, human beings transformed into beasts of prey, have a more than mortal energy, the violence of the opening, with its perverted religious imagery, mirrors an insatiable pursuit of self-destruction which is general.
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