... of Jonson’s major comedies,2 remarks that confusion as to the nature of Volpone suggests that “Jonson either failed to create anything aesthetically pleasing or created a drama too complex in nature and unique in effect to be encompassed by the traditional categories.” A play “which creates...

...Alan C. Dessen VOLPONE AND THE LATE MORALITY TRADITION By ALANC. DESSEN Volpone has in recent years been the object of intensive scholarly study, a significant part of which has been devoted to a fruitful investi- gation of its forms...

...S. L. Goldberg FOLLY INTO CRIME THE CATASTROPHE OF VOLPONE By S. L. GOLDBERG The catastrophe that befalls the protagonists of VoZpone has worried critics as it evidently worried Jonson himself. Jonson’s editor only echoes common...

... insights and to qualify earlier views in significant ways. His com- ments on Volpone as an actor-artist, for example, contain some sound perceptions about the falseness of Volpone’s life and about the motives behind his final self-revelation, while his observation that Jonson usually shows...

...) of the play, whose hero resembles the comic overreachers like Sir Epicure Mammon, Volpone, and Zeal-of-the- Land Busy. Sejanus is a sort of “lethal buffoon” (p. 98). Jonson the playwright turned away from tragic conventions, refusing to invoke the terrors and mysteries of portents such as those...

... of the resemblance is essential to a fuller under- standing of Fletcher’s aims and of the total effect of the play. Jonson’s use of humor characters changes as he evolves the form of satirical comedy exemplified in Volpone. In Every Man in his Humor (1598) the theory of humors provides little...

... of the early period, and with Volpone. But the two greatest plays at the opposite pole, The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair, are “apparent exceptions” that must be forced into the common mold. The result is a painfully over-solemn reading of The Alchemist: the brilliant comedy is smothered under a grim...

... by a social role he no longer relishes” (p. 72). Oedipal aggression is heightened in Sejanus, where Sejanus’s efforts to wrest maternal Rome from the absent Tiberius are put down violently by Tiberius’s sudden reassertion of imperial power. Jonson’s next protagonist, Volpone, is both passive pa...

..., appear without mention of the dramatist, and this custom is followed for all of his plays then on the stage: Volpone, Bartholomew Fair, The Alchymist, and The Silent Woman. There is also less variation in the wording of the phrase than for most of the other authors; nearly always...

... everyone, in Volpone exemplifies the central theme of “avarice” or “disease” or “folly,” depending on which inter- pretation one reads. “Epicoene explores the question of . . . the de- corum of the sexes” (or “the question of what is natural since “nearly everyone in the play is epicene in some...

... with this general argument he strongly discounts the, idea that Jonson based characters on living persons: “We are told that Jonson took the spectacularly successful financier Thomas Sutton for his model in creating the character Volpone; and yet it is not easy directly to re- late the action of Volpone...

..., the evaluations of individual plays are sometimes chal- lenging. Every Man Out of His Humour, not its predecessor, is a “focal point,” a “crucial work” in Jonson’s career. The earlier play (not called a humor play by Enck) seems only a slight development from The Case Is Altered. Sejanus, Volpone...

... lines of Volpone itself, we find Jonson’s use of monosyllables about equal to Shakes- peare’s, and Jonson’s polysyllables (“morning,” “teeming,” “lying”) scarcely demonstrate a debt to “new words of Greek and Latin stock.” There are, of course, important differences between Shakespeare’s...

... high style. If we compare Wickham’s passage from Troilus with, say, the first ten lines of Volpone itself, we find Jonson’s use of monosyllables about equal to Shakes- peare’s, and Jonson’s polysyllables (“morning,” “teeming,” “lying”) scarcely demonstrate a debt to “new words of Greek...

... play by Enck) seems only a slight development from The Case Is Altered. Sejanus, Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair remain Jonson’s major achieve- ments, but Enck finds in ?he Alchemist signs of a decline setting in: the pyro- technical set pieces, the “catalogical imperative...

... seeking and heralds Hal’s re-creation of heroic values and heroic language. In VoZpone, Bonario’s high-flying archaic denunciation of Volpone renders his own position comical and helps undermine simplistic responses to Volpone’s seduction of Celia: Forbear, foul ravisher! libidinous...

.... This poem is the continuation of one by Catullus of which Herrick used a part in that “To Anthea” beginning “Ah my Anthea!” (p. 24). Jonson had earlier made the Latin idea dramatic in Volpone 3.6, where it is used to enforce the idea of Carpe diem, Gather the fruit when it is ripe. This, too...

...- sey’s estate (V, 1). When the prophecy of Dr. Guiacum’s return to life is not fulfilled, Father Marrogne-like Face in The Alchemist, and Mosca in Volpone-plans to desert his fellow conspirators (V,1). To conclude, on the basis of the evidence presented, that DUrfey was a slavish imitator...

... is to be judged. Over and above the follies of society stands the high court of Cynthia in Cynthia’s Revels or the tribunal of Roman dignitaries in Poetaster, from which semi- divine embodiments of virtue and justice pronounce sentence on the contemptible antics below. Volpone, too, has its high...

... pp. $22.50. Hart, Henry. The Poetry of Geoffrey Hill. Introduction by Donald Hall. Carbon- dale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986. xiii + 305 pp. $24.95. Jones, Robert C. Engagement with Knavery: Point of View in “Richard Ill,” “TheJewof Malta,” “Volpone,”and “TheRevenger’s...