George Washington University

Ben Jonson's Black Comedy: A Connection between Othello and VolponeAuthor(s): Brian F. TysonReviewed work(s):Source: Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Winter, 1978), pp. 60-66Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2869170 .Accessed: 30/03/2012 05:44

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Ben Jonson' s Black Comedy: A Connection Between Othello and Volpone

BRIAN F. TYSON

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE AND JONSON has always been a point of interest and disagreement to critics: "Through the whole of the

seventeenth century, Jonson's art and learning were contrasted with Shake- speare's natural gift, as in Milton's verses in the Second Folio and his tribute in

*L'Allegro to Shakespeare's 'native woodnotes wild.' "1 Admittedly in the swell of praise for Shakespeare in the eighteenth century, reaching its climax in Samuel Johnson's famous Preface to Shakespeare's works, other Elizabethans were almost forgotten. Samuel Johnson, for example, had but "a passing acquaintance with Ben Jonson."2 A century later, even in reaction against the Victorian "bardolatry" of the 1890s, Shaw with typical extremism saw Jonson only as a "brutish pedant"3 whose best use was to reveal the commonplaces of the Elizabethan age that they might be discarded for whatever was unique in Shakespeare.

Twentieth-century criticism, of course, acknowledges a more positive rela- tionship between the two writers: we find Derek Traversi maintaining that the Falstaff of 2 Henry IV exhibits the "realistic, moral influence of Ben Jonson,"4 Murray Krieger arguing for the influence of Jonson's popular comedies upon Measure for Measure,5 and 0. J. Campbell seeing in Shakespeare's Timon of Athens a form and temper which owes much to Ben Jonson's Sejanus and Volpone.6 A culmination of this trend is reached in Sydney Musgrove's inter- esting book Shakespeare and Jonson (1957), in which a case is made for a professional relationship between the two poets, and in particular, for a connection between Volpone and King Lear, which approximately coincide in date. Musgrove traces similarities of theme and phrasing and highlights the beast imagery common to both plays. He believes that Shakespeare and Jonson may have seen one another's work in rehearsal, if not read it in

1 Kenneth Muir, "Changing Interpretations of Shakespeare," in The Age of Shakespeare: A Guide to English Literature, II (London: Cassell, 1961), 286.

2 David Nichol Smith, Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon, 1928), p. 50. 3 George Bernard Shaw, Our Theatres in the Nineties (London: Constable, 1932), II, 183. 4 Derek Traversi, An Approach to Shakespeare (London: Sands, 1957), p. 32. 5 Murray Krieger, "Measure for Measure and Elizabethan Comedy" in PMLA, 66 (September

1951), 775-84. 6 Oscar J. Campbell, Shakespeare's Satire (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1943), pp. 168 if.

BRIAN F. TYSON, Associate Professor of English at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, is the author of several broadcast plays and has contributed articles and reviews to such journals as Canadian Drama, Modern Drama, and The Shaw Re- view.

Othello AND Volpone 61

manuscript, and concludes by saying: "If this reading of the facts is correct, the minds of Shakespeare and Jonson came into closer rapport about the year 1605 than ever they had done before, or were to do again."' Though I believe Musgrove is correct, I find it remarkable that the play of Shakespeare's he chooses for illustration is King Lear, rather than Othello, a play more precisely coincident in date with Jonson's grim comedy, and one in which can be seen not merely echoes, but parodic overtones of Shakespeare's piece.

As usual with plays of this period, there are disputes over dating: the date of Othello rests on the reluctantly accepted Revels Accounts, which place the earliest recorded performance as "Hallamas Day (1 November) 1604."8 The year of Volpone's first performance is given as 1605 in the Jonson First Folio,9 and Jonson himself, in the Prologue, is at pains to point out how closely performance followed composition. If the above dates are reliable, then we do indeed know that Shakespeare and Jonson were on speaking terms when the plays were written; for Shakespeare had just finished acting in Jonson's Sejanus His Fall in 1603, a play which, incidentally, Schelling thought was written "in deliberate emulation of the success of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar" three years earlier.10 There is the possibility, moreover, that Shakespeare was the "second Pen" which "had a good share" in Sejanus when it was acted on "the publicke Stage,"11 though, as Chambers points out, in the absence of the original text, conjecture as to the identity of this "happy . . . Genius" is useless. Certain it is, in any event, that in spite of emulation and collaboration Sejanus was not a success; Shakespeare and Jonson shared in its failure, as did Richard Burbage, who also played in it-probably the name part. Burbage provides a further link between Shakespeare and Jonson: for he played the lead in both Sejanus and Othello, probably composed at about the same time and performed the follow- ing year, and he no doubt rejoiced that the success of Shakespeare's tragedy entirely made up for the failure of Jonson's.12 More interesting still is the fact that this talented actor played the title role in Jonson's next play, Volpone, this time a successful comedy. It seems worth asking whether some quality in Burbage is to be found running like a thread through all three roles, a quality that might lead us to our first internal link between Othello and Volpone."3

For if the external connections between the two plays are impressive, their internal resemblances are even more striking. Both plays are Venetian in

7 Sydney Musgrove, Shakespeare and Jonson, Auckland University College English Series No. 9, Bulletin No. 51 (Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1957), pp. 38-39.

8 Although J. C. Maxwell argues for an earlier date in "Shakespeare: the Middle Plays" in The Age of Shakespeare, p. 201.

9 C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson, eds., in Ben Jonson, Vol. V (Oxford: Clarendon, 1937), conjecture that this might, on Jonson's reckoning, be early in 1606, a date supported by several internal topicalities.

0 Felix E. Schelling, ed., Ben Jonson's Plays (London: Everyman's Library, 1910), pp. xvii-xviii. Ben Jonson, Epistle to 1st. 4to. of Sejanus (1605), quoted in E. K. Chambers, William

Shakespeare (Oxford: Clarendon, 1930), II, 206. 12 For an interesting account of contemporary audience reaction to the two plays, see Leonard

Digges' Commendatory Verses to Shakespeare's Poems (1640): "Sejanus too was irksome, they pris'd more / Honest Iago, or the jealous Moore." Jonson's own admiration for Shakespeare's tragedy can perhaps be seen in The Masque of Blackness (performed at Court in January 1605), which presented Niger "in forme and coullor of an Aethiope blacke: his haire and rare beard curled; shadow'd with a blew and bright mantle" (Ben Jonson, Vol. VII [Oxford: Clarendon, 1941], p. 195).

13 The question gains in importance when one remembers Gildon's statement that "Shakespeare put some words and expressions 'perhaps not so agreeable to his Character' into the part of lago, for the benefit of the comedian who played it." E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare, p. 461.

62 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

background; and Shakespeare has, unusually for him, devised accurate Italian names. Both plays are dramas of contemporary life. The Turkish attack on Cyprus, featured in Othello, took place in 1570; and Sir Politic Would-Bee is still threatening to "sell this state, now to the Turke; / Spight of their galleis . . ." (Volp., IV. i. 130-31)14 in Jonson's comedy. In Othello it has been noted, too, that the characters are taken from lower life more than are the characters of Shakespeare's other tragedies: the highest in rank, the Duke of Venice, a parallel to Jonson's Magnifico.

Structural and thematic similarities immediately strike one too: it is in Othello that Shakespeare comes nearest in his tragedies to observing the unities so beloved by Jonson.15 And more than one critic has remarked upon Othello's unusual reliance on intrigue and accident, both staples of Volpone. When W. H. Auden says of Othello, "I cannot think of any other play in which only one character performs personal actions-all the deeds are lago's-and all the others without exception only exhibit behaviour,"16 one is tempted to cite Jonson's play, in which, substituting Mosca for lago, the same generalization holds equally true. In addition, parallel themes exist in the two plays. In Shakespeare's tragedy the primary project would seem to be gulling or deceiv- ing: lago gulls Othello, Roderigo, Emilia, and Desdemona. The play's impact derives mainly from the success of lago's deceit, which results in insensate jealousy-Othello believing that his wife, Desdemona, is a strumpet, though she is innocent, Roderigo feeling jealous of the Moor over Desdemona, and even lago at times claiming similar feelings with respect to Emilia. In Jonson's comedy the themes are identical: Mosca deceives Volpone, Voltore, Corbaccio, Corvino, and Bonario. From Corvino's genuine jealousy over his wife Celia, we pass to his feigned jealousy at the trial (at which he accuses his innocent wife of being a whore), an accusation echoed by Fine Madam Would-Bee, who suspects Celia of seducing her husband.

Moreover, there are actual incidents in the two plays that are similar: and it is at this point that the possibility of conscious parody occurs. Almost a hundred years ago, Gervinus in his Shakespeare Commentaries made the point that Shakespeare in Othello "with wonderful psychological perception ... created a magnificent tragic field for the passion of jealousy, which commonly belongs rather to man's petty self-love and is better suited to comic treat- ment."917 And Thomas Rymer, in 1693, queried derisively why Othello was not called "The Tragedy of the Handkerchief." The handkerchief which fans the flame of Othello's anger, causing him to accuse his wife of harlotry, is trans- muted for comic effect in Volpone into the handkerchief thrown by Celia to the disguised Fox, an act that incenses her husband, who instantly accuses her of harlotry. In both plays an innocent young man is accused with the heroine: Cassio in Othello, Bonario in Volpone. The evidence and false witness in both plays are supplied by scheming underlings; and whether or not "beloved Mosca" was played by the same actor who represented "honest lago," the

14 All quotations from Volpone are from Herford and Simpson, Ben Jonson, Vol. V. 15 M. R. Ridley in his introduction to the Arden edition of Othello (London: Methuen, 1958)

makes this point. 16 W. H. Auden, "The Joker in the Pack," in Shakespeare. Othello. A Casebook, ed. John Wain

(London: Macmillan, 1971), p. 199. 17 G. G. Gervinus, Shakespeare Commentaries, trans. F. E. Bunnett (London: Smith, Elder,

1877), p. 506.

Othello AND Volpone 63

audience in 1605 would surely have recognized the irony in the appellation "beloved."

Jonson's play reveals grotesque reflections of Shakespeare's at several points: reflections of language, of setting, almost of shape. Voltore's lying speech to the Scrutineo (Volp., IV. v) concerning Celia's "lewdness" is strongly reminiscent of the baiting of Brabantio (Oth., I. i). Corvino here plays lago's role, which is to interject remarks, translating into crude terms what Voltore/ Roderigo put more formally. Thus, Roderigo says that Desdemona is

Transported with no worse nor better guard But with a knave of common hire, a gundolier To the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor.

(Oth., I. i. 124-26)18

Similarly, Voltore says of Celia:

... she baited A stranger, a graue knight, with her loose eyes, And more lasciuious kisses. This man saw 'hem Together, on the water, in a gondola.

(Volp., IV. v. 146-49)

Corvino excitedly interrupts, claiming that Celia "Neighes, like a iennet" (Volp., IV. v. 119), a statement that precisely echoes the words employed by lago as he taunts Brabantio, "you'll have your nephews neigh to you; you'll have coursers for cousins, and gennets for germans" (Oth., I. i. 112-13). Even the probable staging, with Brabantio and the Avocatori occupying the gallery and being addressed by speakers from the platform below, would serve, I think, to reinforce the parallel to a contemporary audience.

Another parallel concerns the near discovery of the deceiver by one of the deceived. Voltore's suspicion of Mosca's duplicity (Volp., III. ix) parallels Roderigo's similar suspicion of lago (Oth., IV. ii), to whom, in similar fashion, he has given jewels in expectation of a greater return. Both Mosca and lago brazen it out, and actually succeed in persuading the gull to believe an even greater lie. Indeed, to overcome the implausibility of having the suspicious gull become trusting again so soon, both dramatists let the completion of the deception occur off stage: Mosca's promise to explain things later ("Ile tell you how, anone") being the same as lago's "go along with me; I will show you such a necessity. . ." (Oth., IV. ii. 239-40).

A third example of parallel setting concerns the climax of Shakespeare's play. While Othello is in the very act of killing Desdemona (and the First Quarto stage direction "he stifles her" reminds one of the talk of stifling the sick Volpone), he is interrupted by the arrival of Emilia, who excitedly knocks on the door (Oth., V. ii). In what looks like parodic mimicry, Jonson manages the action in such a way that Corvino, while he is threatening the life of his wife Celia in his jealous fit, is interrupted by the arrival of Mosca (Volp., II. v-vi). Moreover, both Othello and Corvino are waiting for news of a much-desired death. Othello's fearful whisper "'Tis like she comes to speak of Cassio's death" (Oth., V. ii. 92) is echoed comically by Corvino's "Let him come in, his

18 All quotations from Shakespeare are from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. B. Evans et al. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974).

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master's dead" (Volp., II. vi. 1). But when the intruders enter, the news is contrary. In Othello Emilia reports that far from being killed, Cassio has killed "a young Venetian." And Volpone, says Mosca, far from dying, "is recov- ered." In his anguish at this point Othello cries out: "Murder's out of tune and sweet revenge grows harsh." Corvino-not to be outdone-exclaims: "I am bewitched, my crosses meet to vex me." Though the moment and the atmo- sphere differ vastly in these two scenes, A. Gilbert's hint that the conversation between Neighbor and Love-Wit in The Alchemist (V. i. 35 ff.) may constitute a derisive reference to Desdemona's death scene strengthens the possibility of parody here.'9

Similar examples of apparent parody are Celia's plea to Volpone that she prizes her innocence above all else (Volp., III. vii), which corresponds to Desdemona's plea to Othello and lago (Oth., IV. ii); Voltore's feigned fit when he collapses before the Scrutineo vomiting crooked pins (Volp., V. xii), which surely must have reminded a contemporary audience of Othello's collapse (Oth., IV. i); and the "fine Devill" Mosca being led away to be whipped, a reminder of the "demi-devil" lago being led away to be tortured.

Verbal parallels also point to the connections between the two plays. Othello tragically mistakes Desdemona for "that cunning whore of Venice / That married with Othello" (Oth., IV. ii. 88-89), while Lady Would-Bee comically mistakes Peregrine for "the most cunning curtizan of Venice" (Volp., III. v. 20). "Virtue! a fig!" exclaims lago, the once-jealous husband. "Honour? tut, a breath," exclaims Corvino, the once-jealous husband. Brabantio believes that his daughter Desdemona has been "abus'd, stol'n from me, and corrupted / By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks" (Oth., I. iii. 60-61)-a fate that almost befalls Celia, when Volpone, disguised as a "prating mounte- bank," tries to steal and corrupt her. And Othello's speech describing Desde- mona, beginning "It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul" (Oth., V. ii), seems mockingly answered by Mosca's speech describing Celia (Volp., I. v), with its parallel references to "stars," "blood," "white skin," and "snow".

A close examination of the language of the two plays reveals that Shake- speare and Jonson frequently employ similar metaphors. Both, for example, see the destruction of innocence in musical terms: when lago says "I'll set down the pegs that make this music" (Oth., II. i. 200), he anticipates Mosca's delight in making "So rare a musique out of Discordes . . ." (Volp., V. ii. 18). As Clemen has pointed out, Othello's gradual infection with the disease of jealousy permeates the imagery of Shakespeare's play;20 it also receives parodic tribute in Volpone's astonishing array of complaints. Thus, when lago advises Cassio, "This broken joint between you and her husband entreat her to splinter" (Oth., II. iii. 322-23), he ushers in a disease metaphor which is equally central to Volpone, about whose principal character it is said that "a freezing numnesse stiffens all his ioynts" (Volp., I. iv. 43). When lago and Mosca lure people to destruction by lies and false promises, both ironically use the metaphor of medicine: "Work on, / My medicine, [work]! Thus credulous fools are caught" (Oth., IV. i. 43-45); "Yea mary, sir! / This is true physick, this your sacred medicine" (Volp., I. iv. 70-71). Mosca's claim that they "re- vived" Volpone by pouring Scoto's oil into his ears is a parodic actualization

19 Allan H. Gilbert, The Principles and Practice of Criticism (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1959), p. 63.

20 Wolfgang Clemen, The Development of Shakespeare's Imagery (London: Methuen, 1951), pp. 119 ff.

Othello AND Volpone 65

of Tago's image of the way he is going to infect Othello: "I'll pour this pestilence into his ear" (Oth., II. iii. 356). Othello's excuse for desiring the handkerchief-"I have a salt and sorry rheum offends me" (Oth., III. iv. 51)- is picked up in Mosca's description of his "dying" patron, from whom "Flowes a cold sweat, with a continuall rhewme, / Forth the resolued corners of his eyes" (Volp., I. iv. 48-49). And even the tiny detail of the famous handkerchief itself being "dy'd in mummy" (Oth., III. iv. 74) finds an echo in Mosca's suggestion that they should sell Volpone for "mummia, hee's halfe dust already" (Volp., IV. iv. 14).

But by far the most significant correspondences in imagery come from the central metaphor of both plays. As Caroline Spurgeon noted long ago, "The main image in Othello is that of animals, preying upon one another."21 In her comparison between the animal imagery of Othello and that of King Lear, she makes the interesting point that the scale of the latter is much greater than the former, the animals more dignified; whereas in Othello "we see a low type of life, insects and reptiles swarming and preying on each other, not out of special ferocity but just in accordance with their natural instincts."22 Spurgeon's description applies perfectly to the predominant image of Volpone, symbolized by Mosca, the Fly, circling the body of the "dying" Fox to lure the carrion eaters in. In both Othello and Volpone people are reduced to the level of beasts. Cassio laments the loss of his reputation thus: "O [God], that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! that we should, with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!" (Oth., II. iii. 289-93). On one level, of course, he refers to alcohol. But with uncon- scious irony he also touches on a deep theme of the play, the power of words over people: the enemy in the mouth of lago does indeed-at Othello's own behest-steal away the Moor's brains, with the result that he is transformed into a beast. In Volpone, Jonson takes the metaphor one stage further: for him vice itself is a beast, a beast that has to grow fat before being slaughtered by virtue. This is expressed in the last image of the play: "Mischiefes feed / Like beasts, till they be fat, and then they bleed" (Volp., V. xii. 150-51). Finally, what is most striking is that the very beasts chosen by the two authors are in most cases identical. Volpone includes Shakespearean rarities. Flies, moths, worms, locusts, ravens, gulls, asses, crocodiles, baboons, goats, and toads appear significantly in both plays, and the movement down the Great Chain of Being is clear.

Othello and Volpone exhibit too many correspondences for coincidence alone to account for them. But the question remains: what are we to make of them? Here are two plays whose differences in intention and effect far outweigh any similarities of structure and content: one the most painful and powerful tragedy; the other a riotous-if at times grim-comedy. It seems to me that the facts assembled above confirm Musgrove's thesis: Shakespeare and Jonson were indeed in close rapport around the year 1605. Moreover, it seems possible that there is a causal connection between Othello and Volpone. Since I am now in the realm of conjecture, let me suggest what that connection may be, following up a clue in the prefatory Epistle to Jonson's play. A fervent classicist, Jonson always directed his work, not at the groundlings, but at

21 Caroline F. Spurgeon, Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1936), p. 335.

22 Spurgeon, p. 336.

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"scholars that can judge." Volpone is dedicated to the two universities of Oxford and Cambridge, to whose austere ears the author feels obliged to explain the "reason for his play"; a reason which, he claims, lies in its subject. He immediately goes on to say: "It is certayne, nor can it with any fore-head be oppos'd, that the too-much licence of Poetasters, in this time, hath much deform'd their Mistris" (Volp., The Epistle, 13-15). In the light of this it may not be too fanciful to suppose that Jonson here is "correcting" his friend Shakespeare, deliberately emulating that tragic source of comedy beloved of the Greeks where the tragic trilogy was nearly always followed by a fourth play "in which the same material which (the author) had been treating so tragically was suddenly seized by the bootstraps and turned upside down until apples and silverware and every sort of improper thing plummeted out of its pockets."23

23 W. P. Ker, Tragedy and Comedy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967), p. 23.