Volpone Ben Jonson

Donna ChuaJaryl SimNevin KhooOndrea GohOng Ziying

Changing landscapes & its Implications on Identity

From Rural to Urban“The outlying rural English farms were diminishing by the early seventeenth century due to the changing agricultural trade, forcing families into the city limits. London’s urban center experienced such a massive influx of immigrants from their hinterlands that it soon had to deal with an overwhelming wave of citizens that few other European cities saw during the era.” - (Dubay 1)

Rural vs Urban● Communal ties that

are more altruistic and spiritual

● Symbiotic ecology● Private space

● Rejection of familial values for individualistic motivations

● Materialism as God● Self-made man● Public space

● Essentialist: The identity of the individual is based on his essence which precedes his existence

● Existentialist:The identity of the individual is based on his existence which precedes his essence

Rural vs UrbanMore essentialist

● Communal ties that are more altruistic and spiritual

● Symbiotic ecology● Private space

More existentialist

● Rejection of familial values for individualistic motivations

● Materialism as God● Self-made man● Public space

The ideaL“A spiritual economy in which there is no scarcity and which generates value through affirming the long-standing, informal, personal relations within a group of like-minded Christians.” (Vinter 143)

Metaphysical truth“When real money is involved, such understandings of the communal deathbed can appear inadequate”.

(Vinter 144)

Death becomes an epistemological device in navigating between the dialectical tensions present in each landscape.

Is material gain and self-gratification Volpone’s only goal when counterfeiting his death or does he gain something transcendent?

● Capitalism vs Morality● Religion vs Materialism● Community vs The Self● Institutional Authority vs The Agency of the

Individual

The economics of happiness & Morality in volpone

Why does Volpone counterfeit dying? “Through Volpone’s counterfeit, Jonson explores how the obligations imagined to unite individuals within a community alter when a social world centered on informal local networks gives way to one composed of autonomous individuals and public institutions.” – (Vinter 141)

“This is called mortifying of a fox”: Volpone and How To Get Rich Quick by Dying Slowly - Maggie Vinter

What’s in it for him?

“Volpone undermines the deathbed community by profiting from it in order to satisfy his own avarice. But at the same time, he cultivates avarice as a way of separating himself from the community.” (Vinter 150)

“This is called mortifying of a fox”: Volpone and How To Get Rich Quick by Dying Slowly - Maggie Vinter

Volpone, a modern businessman, Mosca, an opportunist?

Feudalism > Protocapitalism > Capitalism700 A.D. – 1660 – Present

With no ties or allegiance to any authoritative structure, gold replaces family ties as a patriarchal objectO thou son of Sol,But brighter than thy father, let me kiss,With adoration…

[Act 1, Scene 1]

I gloryMore in the cunning purchase of myWealth, Than in the glad possession…

[Act 1 Scene 1]

Could the fault lie with society, not the individual?“When Volpone is not sick and twisted, his society is.”– Oliver Hennessey

Jonson’s Joyless Economy: Theorizing Motivation and Pleasure in Volpone

Why would volpone risk his wealth by behaving as irrationally disruptive as hedoes?

The joyless economy - Tibor Scitovsky 1. Motivating principles for human behavior stem from boredom and anxiety2. Happiness is a behavior acquired by skilled consumption (Volpone vs.

Mosca)

Justifies Volpone’s avarice and acquisition of wealth but also, as a form of entertainment and moral gratification

Religion

Volpone’s fraud exploits a well-established theological and devotional assumption that a shared experience of Christian death strengthens communal bonds and generates communal benefits

Volpone begins by subordinating religious and dynastic understandings of deathbed behavior to the flow of money in a way that implies his project is one of demystification, and that the only material reality in play is an economic one.

“This is called mortifying of a fox”: Volpone and How To Get Rich Quick by Dying Slowly - Maggie Vinter

The assumption of religion (Christianity)

Is the only material reality in play, an economic one?

how

Tenents of religion and materialism

Man

- Fear of death - Suspicion of the

afterlife- Competition - Self-absorption - No spiritual

existence

Religion

- Combats the fear of death

- Confirms afterlife

- Beneficence - Other Centredness - Spiritual

existence

Material satisfaction

- Combats the fear of death

- Confirms afterlife- Beneficence - Other Centredness - Spiritual

existence

“Hail to the world's soul, and mine… Oh, thou son of Sol (But brighter than thy father) let me kiss, With adoration, thee, and every relic Of sacred

treasure in this blessed room.”

"riches, the dumb God that giv’st all men tongues; /That canst do nought, and yet mak’st men do all things"

Material satisfaction as religion

Celia (heaven)“I am your martyr”

She pleads: “If you have ears that will be pierced – or eyes that can be opened – a heart may be touched – or any part that yet sounds man about you … Do me the grace to let me

'scape”

The old lens of the society

Religion is not divorced from materialMosca: [to the silver plate] "Stand there, and multiply"

- Allusion to God's words in Genesis (the Bible) as he tells Adam and Eve to "go forth and multiply"

Hindus worship Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth.

The Sikh gurus encouraged hard work, paving the way for the prosperity of Punjab.

The Semitic religions see prosperity as a gift from God. At the same time, all religions recognise that our attitude to wealth is crucial to our personality.

An example, Job was handsomely rewarded materially for his faith in God.

In summary

- The relationship of man, religion and material - Religion and material satisfaction arise from the same insecurities of man- Material satisfaction as religion - Material in religion

Are we so inherently corrupted that we choose to ignore the material aspect of

religion?

Community

“This is called mortifying of a fox”: Volpone and How To Get Rich Quick by Dying Slowly - Maggie Vinter

The community denies selfhood.

i.e. Community = non-being

Community / CommunitasCommunitas comes from the Latin root munus.

Munus:

1. onus → Obligation2. officium → Service that you render to someone else,

arising out of a sense of duty 3. donum → A gift that requires an exchange in return

“Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy” by Roberto Esposito

The munus is:

“...the unending, life-threatening obligation to give that is embedded in the idea of community” (Vinter 141)

Community / Communitas

“I have no wife, no parent, child, ally,

To give my substance to”

[Act I Scene I]

The use of the word ‘substance’ to describe his economic wealth essentially aligns Volpone’s body with this inheritance.

Community = non-being

Community = non-beingWhich is to say:

“…by bequeathing his substance, he will lock himself into a set of interpersonal relations which will entail that his self is not entirely his own, but part of a lineage” (146)

Also:

“…naming an heir, acknowledging familial ties, and participating in a communal deathbed threaten him with loss

of self.” (146)

The dwarf, eunuch, & hermaphrodite“What family Volpone does admit - a dwarf, a eunuch, and a hermaphroditic fool - appeal to him precisely for their divergence from such notions of inheritance, shared

substance, or communal identity.” (146)

● The 3 characters function as fully separate individuals, incapable of existing as a community.

● Their asociality is everything that Volpone desires to have, but cannot.

Having a court in the play shows us that our desire to establish human rights actually subordinates the individual to the communal.

In our attempt to acquire agency, we ironically hand over our agency to a sovereign power e.g. governing bodies.

The Court

“Is that thy substance all be straight confiscate

To the hospital of the Incurabili”

[Act V Scene XII]

the hospital of the Incurabili: A state-endorsed institution dedicated to the management of the chronically ill

The transfer of Volpone’s ‘substance’ [private space] to an institution [public space] further de-individualizes him.

The Courtroom Scene

The Court, Law & PUNISHMenT

Ben Jonson - Repeat offender1597: Jonson’s The Isle of Dogs was charged for having sedition, lewdness and slander. Jonson imprisoned but released without a conviction.

1598: Jonson pleads guilty to murder; claims it was a duel and self-defence.

1599: Jonson imprisoned for debt. After payment of debt, he was freed.

1603: 23 April, Jonson beats an attendant. He was charged with Popery and treason for his play Sejanus but was found innocent.

1605: Jonson charged withlibel and with failure to get approval for Eastward Ho! Imprisoned. Wrote to many powerful men pleading innocence and is freed.

1605: Jonson attends a dinner given by people involved in the Gunpowder Plot. Warrant was issued to Jonson to bring in a certain priest.

1606: Jonson indicted as recusant Catholic and sentenced to a course of religious instruction.

The Court“The courtroom exposes him to a greater level of scrutiny and a larger

audience than the bedroom. But more than that, it stresses fixed institutional

and social roles over the private and informal cultivation of personal

relationships. In the public court, power derives from professional and

official identity” - (Vinter, 154) “This is called mortifying of a fox”: Volpone and

How To Get Rich Quick by Dying Slowly - Maggie Vinter

The Court -> The Stage

The Law -> Prop

- Can be manipulated - A performance

PUNISHMENTVolpone

- Volpone’s scheme means that he too is imprisoned, isolated within his bedroom

- Leaving his prison is easy -> disguises himself as a mountebank but depends upon his servants making all the arrangements

- Under surveillance, both by the legacy-hunters and by Mosca

- “...the ravisher… the great imposter”

- Trapped in role; disguise-made-reality

Celia

- Never leaves the house save to go to church

- Disregarded, spoken of and treated with contempt

- “The gentlewoman.../Of unreproved name”

- “Lewd woman”, “artificial looks or tears”, “visor”, “Prettily feigned”

- “Home to her father with her dowry trebled”

Law & Imprisonment“It does not assert that Volpone escapes the laws or audience condemnation; it

asks the audience to decide whether Volpone escapes the laws, and to consider

the ethical implications of joining in censure of his crimes while enjoying

and paying for the performance he has enabled.” (155)

“This is called mortifying of a fox”: Volpone and How To Get Rich Quick by Dying Slowly -

Maggie Vinter

q&A

Q1. How does the use of meta theatrics affect your reading of volpone’s ending?

VOLPONE: The seasoning of a play, is the applause.

Now, though the Fox be punish’d by the laws,

He yet doth hope, there is no suffering due,

For any fact which he hath done ‘gainst you;

If there be, censure him; here he doubtful stands:

If not, fare jovially, and clap your hands.

[EXIT.]

[Act V Scene XII]

Q2. “class is a social construct.” How is this reflected in the play?

Esposito, Roberto. Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 2008.

Print.

Hennessey, Oliver. Jonson’s Joyless Economy: Theorizing Motivation and Pleasure in Volpone.

English Literary Renaissance 38 (2008): 83 - 105. Web.

Jonson, Ben. Volpone. New Haven: Yale UP, 1962. Print.

Scitovsky, Tibor. The Joyless Economy: The Psychology of Human Satisfaction. Oxford

University Press. 1992. Print.

Vinter, Maggie. "“This Is Called Mortifying of a Fox”: Volpone and How To Get Rich Quick by

Dying Slowly." Shakespeare Quarterly 65.2 (2014): 140-63. Web.

Bibliography