Ben Jonson’s Major Comedies: A Study of Serio Ludere and Volpone
BEN JONSON’S MAJOR COMEDIES: SERIO LUDERE. Jonson aimed to teach through his comedies, using humor to engage audiences.
Biographical Profile of Ben Jonson (1592-1637)
While William Shakespeare is more famous today, we know much more about the life of his fellow Elizabethan dramatist, Ben Jonson.
- He was born in London. This connection is significant, as London plays a prominent role in his plays.
- He served as a soldier in the Low Countries.
- He never attended university but was arguably the most learned and classical of all Elizabethan poets. He was deeply familiar with classical culture, rhetoric, and Elizabethan culture.
- He was an actor, but not a good one.
- He killed the actor Gabriel Harvey in a duel and was imprisoned several times.
- In 1617, he was appointed Poet Laureate.
- He enjoyed a literary friendship with Shakespeare. He wrote the poem To the Memory of my Beloved, the Author, which was published in The First Folio as a preface.
- He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and his tomb bears the epitaph: O rare Ben Jonson. This suggests he was a unique and unconventional figure, not following the trends of his time.
BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE:
– First paragraph (Craig). They fought to become the best and most popular writer in the period. To distinguish the particular production of each one of them, we can consider Jonson as a Spanish great galleon, full of details but very slow. This critical difference between them was a central concern for criticism in the next centuries. So, critics were offering different interpretations of their relationship.- Second paragraph (Barish). Critics tried to make Shakespeare the only God of literature. This is a very subjective and personal criticism.
– BEN JONSON AND THE CRITICS: His work has been regarded negatively because of his learning and classicism. He has been considered a classical writer and the representative of classical comedy. He can be regarded as the most learned and the most genuinely classical of all Elizabethan poets. This means that he was an intellectual; so, he was very much different from Shakespeare. He had all good literary gifts except true genius. It has been in the 20th century when his literary achievements has been recognised and reconsidered by critics like T.S. Eliot.
– JONSON CLASSICISM: Jonsons career as a writer for the public stage is usually divided into three stages. In the early comical satires he began to develop a theatrically complex, linguistically rich and morally prescriptive mode of writing with mixed results. In the middle period the mature Jonson produced a series of remarkable plays, mostly comedies like Volpone. Their distinguishing features can be listed as follows: 1. The precise and self-conscious use of a wide range of literary materials, drawn most often from Greek and Roman sources. 2. An overt project to produce moral reflections through challenging the audiences beliefs and attitudes about both theatre and their own lives. He wrote his drama to teach the audience to improve their lives. 3. An open mode of representation where there is no clear boundary or separation between the onstage world of the play and its characters, and the real world of actors and audience. What we see on the stage is a reflection of what we really see in everyday life. 4. A sense of playfulness and delight about the whole project: a sense that actors and audience are engaged in a form of game, often a kind of practical joke at the expense of either certain characters or of the audience, or of both. 5. Topicality. The plays are firmly located in the moment of their productions, especially in terms of contemporary politics and current events. In other words, Jonsons comedy is a realistic comedy, so the location of the comedies is a real one. The roots of Jonsons theatre are to be found in the intellectual traditions to which he firmly adhered, and in his own varied and complex life in the society of early modern London.
– JONSONS MASQUES: Jonson created this particular type of drama specially to entertain the English court. Masques were performed at Christmas and all the household participated in their staging though the speaking parts were reserved for the professional actors.
– BEN JONSONS COMEDY: – Realistic and didactic comedy to offer moral correction. Jonson is very much opposed to fictional drama. What he takes to the stage is something taken from real experience. The aim was to teach people. To some extent it was easier for him in the sense that people on the stage reflected the roles they played in everyday life; they were familiar to these roles. – Comedy as satire of city life. City comedy as a genre. He was also the creator of a new dramatic subgenre known as city comedy, which was a new kind of drama invented by Jonson and Middleton. – Detailed recording of the ways in which ordinary men survive in the city. He is concerned with everybody, not with a particular class or social level. – Impression of actuality. Jonson thinks that having it, it was much easier to convince people. The presentation of real events was more likely to convince people. – London becomes a dramatic setting. – Dramatization of human folly. – Intellectual theatre with no appeal to the emotions. It is a theatre for the mind and not for the heart. So, even the passion of Volpone for Celia is very intellectual; it is not real passion, there is no emotion. It is important to remark how different these two types of plays were. However, they were written by the same author.
– TEXT. BEN JONSON’S COMIC THEORY. : – 1st EXCERPT. Jonson wants to present arguments and ideas for the comedies he is writing. Thus, he provides a series of justifications with the main points for just showing the way he writes comedies. The reason for that is that he is an intellectual. For instance, at the beginning of Volpone, he gives a prologue or introduction in which he explains why he writes this comedy. Comedy is the way he uses to criticize society, making the audience laugh. – 2nd EXCERPT. Here we find the idea of patriotism; society as an element that takes part in the stage; Jonson wants to be didactic but in a very polite way. He also includes marginal people or people who do not follow moral principles. He wants to improve that society. It is not easy to find a comedy blaming people for what they do and at the same time be funny.
– VOLPONE: According to gossip in Jacobean London the model for Volpone was the wealthy man Thomas Sutton, an heirless speculator and usurer who was courted for his legacy by suitors: o It is one of the greatest comedies in English o It is frequently acted o Jonson wrote it when he was 32. o First acted in 1605 and first published in 1607 o It also appears in the 1616 folio volume of Jonson’s works o The setting: Venice : – If Jonson wanted to challenge English audiences, why did he set it in Venice? The possible answer is that it would be hard for him to present such a negative criticism of the London society, and it would be more acceptable to locate it in Venice, since the effect could be the same because he meant to refer to London. Venice is just the external location of the play, but what is implied beyond that location is London. – Though he had never been in Venice, he gathered information about it from accounts by his Italian friend John Florio. – He gives accurate descriptions of its society, buildings, institutions and government. Although Venice is a metaphor, we get the real Venice on the stage. – Through it was a centre of sophisticated Renaissance culture; Jonson stresses continually its decadence, since Venice is presented in a negative way. At the end of the Renaissance the city began to decline and be corrupted. Jonson makes reference to this decline and corruption because he is interested in showing the negative picture of London.
o Classical elements: – Structure: Unities of time and place. – Characterisation: portray of characters. They are more prototypes than individuals. – Plot-source: the plot is also found in Horace, Juvenal and Petronius – Didactic and moral intention: to teach and delight was a motto in classical literature
o Dedication, argument and prologue: These opening parts of the play, the Prologue, before we are introduced to the action, may seem superfluous. But they help us understand the play in several ways. The play is dedicated to the universalities of Oxford and Cambridge, both of which had recently awarded Jonson honorary doctorates at the time of the play’s writing. He briefly discusses the moral intentions of the play and its debt to classical drama. In the Argument, Jonson provides a brief summary of the play’s plot. The Dedication gives us a clue as to Jonson’s intentions in writing Volpone. First of all, he pretends to write a ‘moral’ play. By taking to ask those ‘poetasters’ (his derogatory term for inferior playwrights) who have disgraced the theatrical profession with their immoral work. Jonson also highlights the moral intentions of his plays.
o Topics and Interpretations: Materialism and Dehumanisation: What should I do? But cocker up my genius and live free to all delights my fortune calls me to? (1.1.70-73) Disease, abnormality and deformity represented by the carrion birds flock: a vulture (Voltore), a crow (corvine) and a raven (Corbaccio). Reduction of man to beast. For T.S Eliot is a “savage farce”. Money means everything for Volpone “Hail the world’s soul and mine” (1.1.3). Volpone’s satire is directed against “avarice”. The animal imagery emphasizes it. For Volpone’s is also a frustrated seducer in 3.7: First he talks to Celia (he convinces through language), then he sings and finally he shows her his money. Language: Volpone as a manipulator of language as the mountebank Scoto of Mantua. Different registers (2.2)Social degradation: Jonson creates a complex relationship among disguise, acting, deception, and truth in the play “Now, my feigned cough, my phthisic and my gout, my apoplexy, palsy and catarrhs (1.2.127-128). His final plan “That I am dead” (5.2.61)