Mischiefs feed like beasts #ReadingTheTheatre

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Volpone,
[or The Foxe: A Comedie]
by Ben Jonson (1606-7).
Edited by Philip Brockbank.
New Mermaids: A & C Black / W W Norton & Company, 1989 (1969).

‘Riches, the dumb god, that giv’st all men tongues;
That canst do nought, and yet mak’st men do all things.’ — Volpone.

I:1

Ben Jonson’s play, first performed around 1606 and published the year after, is set in Venice, a setting which Shakespeare had already used for The Merchant of Venice and for Othello and a city state which had a reputation for mendacity and duplicity.

Above all Venice represented the wealth that comes from extensive trading and banking, and which Tudor and Jacobean traders envied. But, as the First Avocatore or prosecutor declares (Act 5 scene xii) ‘These possess wealth, as sick men possess fevers, | Which, trulier, may be said to possess them.’

Here then is a story about possessions – possessing riches, being possessed by the desire to have riches, and faking possession by disease and by devils. It’s not a pretty story but it’s entertaining – and there’s a very moral ending.

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First of all we have the characters, many of whom have the Italian names of animals from traditional fables, applied satirically to suit their natire: Volpone, the cunning fox; Voltore, the scavenging vulture; Corbaccio, an old raven; Corvino, a crow. Some even align neatly with stock characters from the Italian commedia dell’arte: Volpone, described as ‘a Magnifico’ or magnate, corresponds to the old man called Pantalone, while Voltore resembles ‘Il Dottore’ or learned gentleman, in this case a lawyer or advocate.

Then there’s Volpone’s servant Mosca (meaning a parasitic fly) who at Volpone’s bidding orchestrates the various ruses to separate legacy hunters from their own wealth by promising they stand to inherit when Volpone dies; and then we have an English traveller or pilgrim, Peregrine – perhaps also the falcon is intended – whose sotto voce commentary brings out the buffoon-like nature of Sir Politics Would-be and his gossiping wife.

So through Mosca’s flattery traps are set to swindle one legacy hunter by giving him false hopes of inheriting, another to disinherit his son in favour of Volpone, and a third to pimp his wife. But as it says in Proverbs 29: 5-20, ‘A man who flatters his neighbour spreads a net for his feet’ (New King James Version), and it’s only a matter of time surely before Volpone’s lust and greed and Mosca’s machinations trip the pair up.

The play makes fun of human foibles that are still evident, four centuries after the comedy appeared on the Jacobean stage. Mosca highlights the effects of the legacy hunters’ cupidity:

‘Too much light blinds ’em, I think. Each of ’em
Is so possessed, and stuffed with his own hopes,
That anything, unto the contrary,
Never so true, or never so apparent,
Never so palpable, they will resist it—’

V, ii.

‘Like a temptation of the devil,’ adds Volpone.

Although Jonson never travelled as far as Italy he clearly did his homework, for the play feels Venetian: names and styles feel near enough right, there are scenes with a mountebank’s stage and a courtroom, and the sense of pecking order comes across loud and clear. Where there are sycophants and quacks there’ll be dupes to gull and money to part from fools.

Not only is Volpone a well-plotted and very human comedy but Jonson also plays up the so-called ‘beast fable’ element. Voltore is compared to an ass, and Aesop’s fable of ‘The Fox and the Crow’ is referenced by Volpone himself, as he taunts Corvino:

‘Yet you, that are so traded i’ the world,
A witty merchant, the fine bird, Corvino,
That have such moral emblems on your name,
Should not have sung your shame; and dropped your cheese,
To let the Fox laugh at your emptiness.’

V, viii.

When Mosca seems to have reached the zenith of his ambition, Voltore prophesies: ‘Well, flesh-fly, it is summer with you, now; | Your winter will come on.’ And the chief prosecutor passes this judgement on matters: ‘Mischiefs feed | Like beasts, till they be fat, and then they bleed.’

Just to read Jonson’s comedy is as satisfying as a novel, but it would be even better to experience the to-ing and fro-ing, the ‘business’ and the human drama on the stage. Although this edition in modern English by Philip Brockbank, with the usual scholarly introduction, notes and appended analogues, is over half a century old there’s much of value about text, context and background which added hugely to my understanding. And, of course, Jonson’s morality tale is still as relevant today, because human frailties don’t really change, do they?

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#ReadingTheTheatre: EnterEnchanted.com

Read for Lory’s April meme Reading the Theatre, Jonson’s play is here reviewed the day after the date his fellow dramatist Shakespeare died – 23rd April – which is also presumed to be his actual birthdate.