Volpone

من طرف **X-MaN** الثلاثاء مايو 11, 2010 5:43 am

Analysis of Major Characters

Volpone

The play's title character is its protagonist, though an
inconsistent one He disappears in Act IV, seemingly replaced by Mosca,
and is first an instrument and then a victim of Jonson's satire of
money-obsessed society. He is an instrument of it because it is through
his ingenuity and cleverness that Voltore, Corbaccio, and Corvino are
duped and he seems to share in Jonson's satiric interpretation of the
events, observing in I.v "What a rare punishment / Is avarice to
itself." But the satire eventually turns back on him, when he becomes a
victim of Mosca's "Fox-trap." The reason he is ensnared by Mosca is that
he cannot resist one final gloat at his dupes, oblivious to the fact
that in doing so, he hands over his entire estate to Mosca. This lack of
rational forethought and commitment to his own sensual impulses, is
characteristic of Volpone. He enjoys entertainment, banquets, feasts,
and love- making. He hates having to make money through honest labour or
cold, heartless banking, but he loves making it in clever, deceitful
ways, especially as a means toward food and lovemaking. He is a creature
of passion, an imaginative hedonist continually looking to find and
attain new forms of pleasure, whatever the consequences may be. This
dynamic in his character shapes our reaction to him throughout the play.
At times, this hedonism seems fun, engaging, entertaining, and even
morally valuable, such as when he is engaged in the con on his fortune
hunters. But his attempted seduction of Celia reveals a darker side to
his hedonism when it becomes an attempted rape. The incident makes him,
in the moral universe of the play, a worthy target for satire, which is
what he becomes in Act V, when because of his lack of restraint he ends
up on his way to prison, the most unpleasurable situation imaginable.

Mosca

[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]

In a play that revolves around disguises, Mosca is
the ultimate master of disguise. He is the person who continually
executes Volpone's ideas and the one who comes up with the necessary lie
whenever needed. The lie could be made in order to save Volpone from
the charges laid against him by Bonario and Celia or to convince Corvino
to let his wife sleep with the Fox—either way Mosca seems to have no
scruples about deceit. But his most important deception is the one he
effects on Volpone and the audience, hiding his true nature and
intentions from both the Fox and us. In the opening acts, Mosca appears
to be exactly what he is described as: a clinging, servile parasite, who
only exists for Volpone and through Volpone. In other words, he exists
to serve Volpone, and all that Volpone wants he wants. This impression
is reinforced by several cringing speeches that he gives, all in praise
of Volpone. But in Act Three, we have the beginning of what seems an
assertion of self-identity by Mosca, when he begins to grow confident in
his abilities. But then this confidence again is left unvoiced, and
Mosca seems to go back to being Volpone's faithful servant, helping him
get out of the troublesome situation with Bonario and Celia. But it
turns out that Mosca's aid in this situation may have been motivated as
much by personal interest as it was by a desire to aid Volpone, for when
he is presented with an opportunity to seize Volpone's wealth, he takes
it. Mosca himself is possessed by greed, and he attempts to move out of
his role as parasite—a harmless fly, circling around a great beast—to
the role of great beast himself. But his attempt fails, as Volpone
exposes them both. An interesting question is what significance his
failure has in the context of the play and whether it is just punishment
for his greed, his deceit, or his attempt to usurp the powers and
privileges of the nobility and move above his social class.

Celia

While Volpone says "yes" to every single pleasure he can
find—and pursues those pleasures vigorously—Celia is defined by her
self-denial. This makes her a perfect foil for Volpone, since her
self-restraint exposes his complete lack thereof, no more clearly than
in Volpone's attempted seduction of her. The turning point of the play
comes when she says "no" to Volpone's advances, thus denying him the
lascivious pleasures he describes in his seduction speech. Celia seems
willing to do anything to avoid dishonor, and this makes her character
flat and predictable, too ready to sacrifice herself to be believable.
Her willingness to subject herself to Corvino's harsh dictates and abuse
may make her seem more weak than strong. But she has an inner moral
sense, (even if it is dictated by seventeenth-century conventions on
femininity) indicated by the fact that she refuses Volpone against her
husband's express wishes. The fact that Jonson sides with her can be
seen in his decision to put one of the strongest statements of the
play's thesis in her mouth: "Whither, whither / Is shame fled human
breasts? Is that, which ever was a cause for life , /Now placed beneath
the basest circumstance? / And modesty an exile made, for money?" Jonson
again chooses a name with symbolic meaning for Celia: it derives from
the Latin word caelum, meaning "sky" or "heaven".

Voltore

Voltore is, like all the legacy hunters, named after a
carrion-bird. In the case of Voltore, that bird is the vulture; for
Corvino, it is the crow, and for Corbaccio, the raven. Voltore is the
most pleasant of all the legacy hunters, for he is the least crass and
the least obsessed with seeing Volpone die. His preferential status
shows in Mosca's special regard for him: Mosca tries to make sure that
Voltore gets enough payment for his services at the Scrutineo in Act IV.
But Voltore comes to regret his actions at the Scrutineo. Of course,
this regret only comes after he has been denied his inheritance, and it
seems to stem directly from his resentment at Mosca's leapfrogging over
him on the social ladder. And when Volpone whispers to him that he might
still get his inheritance, he stops confessing his lies to the
Scrutineo and pretends that he was "possessed" by an evil demon. The
verbal irony is that Voltore, in that statement and action, reveals his
greed.

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols

Themes

Greed

Volpone 's satire is directed against
"avarice," which can be thought of as greed that extends not just to
money but also to all objects of human desire. The play's main thesis is
stated by Volpone himself, "What a rare punishment / Is avarice to
itself." The punishment—and the central irony of the play—is that while
greed drives the search for money, power, and respect, it ends up making
everyone in the play look foolish, contemptible, and poorer, both
spiritually and financially. A similar idea is stated by both Celia,
when she asks in III.vii, "Whither [where] is shame fled human breasts?"
and by the judge at the end of the play in his plea that the audience
should "learn" from the play what happens to those who succumb to greed,
emphasizing that the play's stance on greed is a didactic one,
intended to teach the audience what greed's real consequences are.
Volpone himself starts out as an instrument of this lesson—he dupes the
Corvino, Corbaccio and Voltore into parting with their goods in the hope
of inheriting his—but ends up an object of the lesson as well, for
succumbing to his greedy want for sensual pleasure.

The Power of Stagecraft

[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]

There is a dichotomy in the play, never entirely
resolved, between the devices of stagecraft and the conveyance of moral
truth. In other words, there is a tension between the play itself (a
play which, Jonson hopes, will be of moral value to those who see it)
and what goes on in the play, in which the devices of stagecraft that
are involved in the play's actual production are a source of deceit,
confusion, and moral corruption. In other words, Volpone does not merely
lie, nor he does not merely deceive; he makes an entire production out
of his game, using a special eye ointment to simulate an eye infection,
creating a character (the sick Volpone) using wardrobe, make-up, and
props. He too seems to share the intention to expose moral folly, with
the playwright, Jonson; but this is in the end seen to be another
illusion. Likewise, Mosca and Voltore put on a production to convince
the judges of their innocence. They use rhetoric and poetry to tell a
story, complete with a shocking "surprise witness" and the graphic use
of imagery (the appearance of "impotent" Volpone). The play thus exposes
us to many different forms of theatrical illusion as methods of lying,
perhaps in the hope of allowing us to better discern which forms of
theater are sensationalistic, unhelpful, and inaccurate in their
portrayal of reality.

Parasitism

"Everyone's a parasite" to paraphrase Mosca (III.i), and over
the course of the play he is proved right, in the sense that everyone
tries to live off of the wealth or livelihood of others, without doing
any "honest toil" of their own. Corvino, Corbaccio and Voltore all try
to inherit a fortune from a dying man; and Volpone himself has built his
fortune on cons such as the one he is playing now. Parasitism, thus
portrayed, is not a form of laziness or desperation, but a form of
superiority. The parasite lives by his wits, and feeds off of others, by
skillfully manipulating their credulity and goodwill.

Motifs

The Sacred and the Profane

Volpone, both in his initial speech in Act I and in his
seduction speech of Act III, mixes religious language and profane
subject matter to a startling poetic effect. In Act I the subject of his
worship is money; in Act III it is Celia, or perhaps her body, that
inspires prayer-like language. As a foil against this, Celia pleads for a
distinction to be restored between the "base" and the "noble," (in
other words, between the profane—that which is firmly rooted in our
animal natures, and the sacred—that which is divine about humans.
Through their respective fates, the play seems to endorse Celia's
position, though Jonson invests Volpone's speeches with a great deal of
poetic energy and rhetorical ornamentation that make his position
attractive and rich, which is again, another source of tension in the
play.

Disguise, Deception, and Truth

Jonson creates a complex relationship among disguise,
deception, and truth in the play. Disguise sometimes serves simply to
conceal, as it does when Peregrine dupes Sir Politic Would-be. But
sometimes it reveals inner truths that a person's normal attire may
conceal. Volpone, for example, publicly reveals more of his "true self"
(his vital, healthy self) when he dresses as Scoto Mantua; and Scoto's
speeches seem to be filled with authorial comment from Jonson himself.
Furthermore, disguise is seen to exert a certain force and power all of
its own; by assuming one, people run the risk of changing their
identity, of being unable to escape the disguise. This is certainly the
case for Mosca and Volpone in Act V, whose "disguised" identities almost
supersede their actual ones.

"Gulling"

Gulling means "making someone into a fool." The question that
the play teaches us to ask is who is being made a fool by whom?.
Volpone plays sick to make the legacy-hunters fools, but Mosca plays the
"Fool" (the harmless assistant and entertainer) in order to make
Volpone into a fool. To make someone else into a fool is both the
primary method characters have for asserting power over one another and
the primary way Jonson brings across his moral message: the characters
in the play who are made into fools—Corbaccio, Corvino, Voltore,
Volpone—are the characters whose morality we are supposed to criticize.

Symbols

Venice

[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]

As the seat of greed, corruption, and
decadence, at least according to the prevailing prejudices, Venice was
the beneficiary of years of stereotype in English drama. Italians in
general were seen as sensuous, decadent beings, thanks to their
extremely sophisticated culture, history of Machiavellian politicians
(Lorenzo de Medici, Cesare Borgia, Machiavelli himself) and beautiful
(and often erotic) love poetry. Though not things considered
particularly awful today, this type of decadence made English people
wary of being infected with immorality, and Venetians were seen as the
worst of the bunch. The direct influence of the "power of Venice" to
corrupt can best be seen in the Sir Politic Would-be subplot, where the
English knight Sir Politic "goes Venetian" and becomes a lying would-be
thief. But the Venetian setting probably made the story more believable
for most English audiences, signifying the fascination of the play with
disguise and deceit, though also, perhaps against Jonson's intentions,
distancing them from the play's moral message, by placing the greed in a
historic far away place traditionally associated with greed, instead of
right in the heart of London.

Animalia

There is a "fable" running throughout the play, through the
associations the characters' names create with animals. It is very
simple and tells the tale of a cunning "Fox" (Volpone in
Italian), circled by a mischievous "Fly" ( Mosca in Italian), who
helps the Fox trick several carrion-birds—a vulture (Voltore), a
crow (Corvino) and a raven (Corbaccio) into losing their
feathers (their wealth). The animal imagery emphasizes the theme of
"parasitism" in the play, where one life form feeds off of another. And
it should also be remembered that fables are tales with simple moral
messages, told for a didactic purpose. Though much more complex, Volpone,
at its heart shares the same purpose, making the use of "fable-like"
symbolism appropriate and helpful in understanding the meaning of the
play.

Plot Overview

Volpone takes place in seventeenth-century
Venice, over the course of one day. The play opens at the house of
Volpone, a Venetian nobleman. He and his "parasite" Mosca—part slave,
part servant, part lackey—enter the shrine where Volpone keeps his gold.
Volpone has amassed his fortune, we learn, through dishonest means: he
is a con artist. And we also learn that he likes to use his money
extravagantly.
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]

Soon, we see Volpone's latest con in action. For the last
three years, he has been attracting the interest of three legacy
hunters: Voltore, a lawyer; Corbaccio, an old gentleman; and Corvino, a
merchant—individuals interested in inheriting his estate after he dies.
Volpone is known to be rich, and he is also known to be childless, have
no natural heirs. Furthermore, he is believed to very ill, so each of
the legacy hunters lavishes gifts on him, in the hope that Volpone, out
of gratitude, will make him his heir. The legacy hunters do not know
that Volpone is actually in excellent health and merely faking illness
for the purpose of collecting all those impressive "get-well" gifts.
In the first act, each legacy hunter arrives to present a gift to
Volpone, except for Corbaccio, who offers only a worthless (and
probably poisoned) vial of medicine. But Corbaccio agrees to return
later in the day to make Volpone his heir, so that Volpone will return
the favor. This act is a boon to Volpone, since Corbaccio, in all
likelihood, will die long before Volpone does. After each hunter leaves,
Volpone and Mosca laugh at each's gullibility. After Corvino's
departure Lady Politic Would-be, the wife of an English knight living in
Venice, arrives at the house but is told to come back three hours
later. And Volpone decides that he will try to get a close look at
Corvino's wife, Celia, who Mosca describes as one of the most beautiful
women in all of Italy. She is kept under lock and key by her husband,
who has ten guards on her at all times, but Volpone vows to use disguise
to get around these barriers.
The second act portrays a time just a short while later that day,
and we meet Sir Politic Would-be, Lady Politic's husband, who is
conversing with Peregrine, an young English traveler who has just landed
in Venice. Sir Politic takes a liking to the young boy and vows to
teach him a thing or two about Venice and Venetians; Peregrine, too,
enjoys the company of Sir Politic, but only because he is hilariously
gullible and vain. The two are walking in the public square in front of
Corvino's house and are interrupted by the arrival of "Scoto Mantua,"
actually Volpone in diguise as an Italian mountebank, or medicine-show
man. Scoto engages in a long and colorful speech, hawking his new "oil",
which is touted as a cure-all for disease and suffering. At the end of
the speech, he asks the crows to toss him their handkerchiefs, and Celia
complies. Corvino arrives, just as she does this, and flies into a
jealous rage, scattering the crows in the square. Volpone goes home and
complains to Mosca that he is sick with lust for Celia, and Mosca vows
to deliver her to Volpone. Meanwhile, Corvino berates his wife for
tossing her handkerchief, since he interprets it as a sign of her
unfaithfulness, and he threatens to murder her and her family as a
result. He decrees that, as punishment, she will now no longer be
allowed to go to Church, she cannot stand near windows (as she did when
watching Volpone), and, most bizarrely, she must do everything backwards
from now on–she must even walk and speak backwards. Mosca then arrives,
implying to Corvino that if he lets Celia sleep with Volpone (as a
"restorative" for Volpone's failing health), then Volpone will choose
him as his heir. Suddenly, Corvino's jealousy disappears, and he
consents to the offer.
The third act begins with a soliloquy from Mosca, indicating that
he is growing increasingly conscious of his power and his independence
from Volpone. Mosca then runs into Bonario, Corbaccio's son, and informs
the young man of his father's plans to disinherit him. He has Bonario
come back to Volpone's house with him, in order to watch Corbaccio sign
the documents (hoping that Bonario might kill Corbaccio then and there
out of rage, thus allowing Volpone to gain his inheritance early).
Meanwhile Lady Politic again arrives at Volpone's residence, indicating
that it is now mid-morning, approaching noon. This time, Volpone lets
her in, but he soon regrets it, for he is exasperated by her
talkativeness. Mosca rescues Volpone by telling the Lady that Sir
Politic has been seen in a gondola with a courtesan (a high-class
prostitute). Volpone then prepares for his seduction of Celia, while
Mosca hides Bonario in a corner of the bedroom, in anticipation of
Corbaccio's arrival. But Celia and Corvino arrive first—Celia complains
bitterly about being forced to be unfaithful, while Corvino tells her to
be quiet and do her job. When Celia and Volpone are alone together,
Volpone greatly surprises Celia by leaping out of bed. Celia had
expected and old, infirm man, but what she gets instead is a lothario
who attempts to seduce her with a passionate speech. Always the good
Christian, Celia refuses Volpone's advances, at which point Volpone says
that he will rape her. But Bonario, who has been witnessing the scene
from his hiding place the entire time, rescues Celia. Bonario wounds
Mosca on his way out. Corbaccio finally arrives, too late, as does
Voltore. Mosca plots, with Voltore's assistance, how to get Volpone out
of this mess.
A short while later, in the early afternoon, Peregrine and Sir
Politic are still talking. Sir Politic gives the young traveler some
advice on living in Venice and describes several schemes he has under
consideration for making a great deal of money. They are soon
interrupted by Lady Politic, who is convinced that Peregrine is the
prostitute Mosca told her about—admittedly, in disguise. But Mosca
arrives and tells Lady Politic that she is mistaken; the courtesan he
referred to is now in front of the Senate (in other words, Celia). Lady
Politic believes him and ends by giving Peregrine a seductive goodbye
with a coy suggestion that they see each other again. Peregrine is
incensed at her behavior and vows revenge on Sir Politic because of it.
The scene switches to the Scrutineo, the Venetian Senate building, where
Celia and Bonario have informed the judges of Venice about Volpone's
deceit, Volpone's attempt to rape Celia, Corbaccio's disinheritance of
his son, and Corvino's decision to prostitute his wife. But the
defendants make a very good case for themselves, led by their lawyer,
Voltore. Voltore portrays Bonario and Celia as lovers, Corvino as an
innocent jilted husband, and Corbaccio as a wounded father nearly killed
by his evil son. The judge are swayed when Lady Politic comes in and
(set up perfectly by Mosca) identifies Celia as the seducer of her
husband Sir Politic. Further, they are convinced when Volpone enters the
courtroom, again acting ill. The judges order that Celia and Bonario be
arrested and separated.
[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]

In the final act, Volpone returns home tired and worried
that he is actually growing ill, for he is now feeling some of the
symptoms he has been faking. To dispel his fears, he decides to engage
in one final prank on the legacy hunters. He spreads a rumor that he has
died and then tells Mosca to pretend that he has been made his master's
heir. The plan goes off perfectly, and all three legacy hunters are
fooled. Volpone then disguises himself as a Venetian guard, so that he
can gloat in each legacy hunter's face over their humiliation, without
being recognized. But Mosca lets the audience know that Volpone is dead
in the eyes of the world and that Mosca will not let him "return to the
world of the living" unless Volpone pays up, giving Mosca a share of his
wealth.
Meanwhile, Peregrine is in disguise himself, playing his own
prank on Sir Politic. Peregrine presents himself as a merchant to the
knight and informs Politic that word has gotten out of his plan to sell
Venice to the Turks. Politic, who once mentioned the idea in jest, is
terrified. When three merchants who are in collusion with Peregrine
knock on the door, Politic jumps into a tortoise-shell wine case to save
himself. Peregrine informs the merchants when they enter that he is
looking at a valuable tortoise. The merchants decide to jump on the
tortoise and demand that it crawls along the floor. They remark loudly
upon its leg-garters and fine hand-gloves, before turning it over to
reveal Sir Politic. Peregrine and the merchants go off, laughing at
their prank, and Sir Politic moans about how much he agrees with his
wife's desire to leave Venice and go back to England.
Meanwhile, Volpone gloats in front of each legacy hunter,
deriding them for having lost Volpone's inheritance to a parasite such
as Mosca, and he successfully avoids recognition. But his plan backfires
nonetheless. Voltore, driven to such a state of distraction by
Volpone's teasing, decides to recant his testimony in front of the
Senate, implicating both himself but more importantly Mosca as a
criminal. Corvino accuses him of being a sore loser, upset that Mosca
has inherited Volpone's estate upon his death, and the news of this
death surprises the Senators greatly. Volpone nearly recovers from his
blunder by telling Voltore, in the middle of the Senate proceeding, that
"Volpone" is still alive. Mosca pretends to faint and claims to the
Senate that he does not know where he is, how he got there, and that he
must have been possessed by a demon during the last few minutes when he
was speaking to them. He also informs the Senators that Volpone is not
dead, contradicting Corvino. All seems good for Volpone until Mosca
returns, and, instead of confirming Voltore's claim that Volpone is
alive, Mosca denies it. Mosca, after all, has a will, written by Volpone
and in his signaure, stating that he is Volpone's heir. now that
Volpone is believed to be dead, Mosca legally owns Volpone's property,
and Mosca tells Volpone that he is not going to give it back by telling
the truth. Realizing that he has been betrayed, Volpone decides that
rather than let Mosca inherit his wealth, he will turn them both in.
Volpone takes off his disguise and finally reveals the truth about the
events of the past day. Volpone ends up being sent to prison, while
Mosca is consigned to a slave galley. Voltore is disbarred, Corbaccio is
stripped of his property (which is given to his son Bonario), and
Corvino is publicly humiliated, forced to wear donkey's ears while being
rowed around the canals of Venice. At the end, there is a small note
from the playwright to the audience, simply asking them to applaud if
they enjoyed the play they just saw.