Characterization of Volpone
In his comedy of humour ” Volpone” Ben Jonson portrays various characters with different predominant traits or humours. Volpone is the nominal hero of the play and is marked by his excessive greed and villainy. But he is not a flat or a type but a round character with multi dimensional characteristics. It’s quite interesting to note his character evolution from a contented skilful man to a utterly desperate and doomed man.
Volpone’s most prominent feature is his irresistible love for gold. His first soliloquy reveals him to be the gold worshipper in a gold-centered world. For him gold is all the virtues, ” Dear saint” and even ” the dumb God”. But he doesn’t gather wealth by exploiting the poor. Rather he gains his gold by befooling the greedy legacy hunters and delights more in his ” cunning purchase” rather than his ” glad possession” of the wealth.
He is a genuine hardcore villain and a lover of genuine villainy. His attempt to ravish Celia and the unfair accusation of her and Bonario reveal his roguery. He enjoys their disgrace without any remorse and appreciates Mosca for diverting the “torrent upon the innocent”.
He disguised himself as a Commendatore only to witness the disgrace of the greedy trio – which shows his love for knavery.
He is shrewdness personified. When Mosca tries to flatter Volpone and extract wealth from him, he stops Mosca and gives in his own hands. Nano’s news that Mosca took the keys makes him anticipate Mosca’s intention to outwit the patron. In the second court scene he shows Voltore “possessed” and even the judges cannot detect his falsehood and shrewdness until he himself reveals it.
Volpone is synonymous to overreacher. He aspires to possess the central position in society by dislodging those reputable rank holders like Voltore the lawyer. He has more money than others but lack the prestigious social rank. He wants to empower himself by having a caring and loving family and for this reason he desires Celia. She is a chaste, lovely and pious lady who can fulfill the lack in Volpone and lead him to the center. Therefore it is not only lust but also passion which make him desire Celia, a flesh and blood human and not gold.
Volpone is a first rate actor with great disguising ability. His disguise of mountebank and Scoto is not doubted even by the suspicious Peregrine. His guile of Commendatore can’t be understood in the court itself. The judges are unable to detect his false weakness. His poetic spirit is expressed cheifly in his first soliloquy and seduction of Celia. He offers her the essence of rose and violet, unicorn’s milk and can compete with blue Proteus for her. He describes gold in such terms like ” son of Sol”,”price of souls”,”the dumb God” and more. [Old age means to him ” so many cares, so many maladies”. The final judgement also draws from him poetic statement : ” This is called mortifying of a fox”.]
Thus this Magnifico of Renaissance Venice is both love-seeking and gold-freak,shrewd and evil, humane and beastly. Volpone’s love for gold and beauty signify the Renaissance spirit which clashes with the classical spirit of Jonson. It is through this dichotomy that Jonson finds, as Una Ellis Fermor remarks, the identification of the author with the character.
Gold centred world in Volpone
The first twenty seven lines in Ben Jonson’s play “Volpone” constitute the exposition. Here jonson speaks of a gold-centered world in Volpone’s first soliloquy. Volpone is the nominal hero of the play and he gathers wealth by befooling the greedy legacy hunters. Gold is the only concern for him and he praises gold to be the last word for excellence and sublimity. His soliloquy reveals the world not to be a theocentric or anthropocentric but a gold-centered world.
Volpone bids good morning to the day and then to his favourite object – gold. Generally we think of God or of the lighted atmosphere of a sunny morning when we wake up from our sleep. But Volpone thinks of gold because that is only the ccenter point of his thoughts and existence. He extols his wealth or gold to be the most desirable,supreme and sublime object in the earth. Its beauty surpasses the sun, its grandeur parallels the light first created by God : ” like a flame by night;or like the day| Struck out of chaos”. The place where the gold is heaped is called “shrine” and the gold itself is called “saint”, elevating gold to an ecclesiastical level. Volpone kisses it as if he is kissing a holy relic. Gold is endowed with both the life sustaining faculty of sun and the life purifying faculty of God but it is blasphemous for its attempt to dislodge God to become omnipotent. Gold is the “price of souls” and can make the hell as comfortable as the heaven. It can make a room ” blessed” or a treasure ” sacred”. Gold is being worshipped and all life and force depend on gold : ” Riches, the dumb God,that giv’st all men tongues”. He compares its beauty with that of Venus and ” twenty thousand Cupids”. In one word, he is hypnotized by the charm of gold.
Volpone’s obsession with gold has seized his rationality and he is fulfilling his natural urge for family-love by love for gold. He places gold above ” all style of joy in children, parents, friends,| Or any other waking dream on earth”. His tresure is equal to virtue, fame, honour and the possessor of wealth is a noble, valiant and honest man. If one has gold, one has all and who doesn’t have it, has nothing. Jonson’s art never allows us to forget this fact of gold obsession or gold centric world throughout the play.
The gold centred life signifies two things : monopoly of a single element and unnatural condition. Gold has no equals and so dominates over the life of everyone. This dictatorship of gold leads to the cardinal vice of avarice, one of the seven deadly sins. Except Celia and Bonario almost everyone is a victim of avarice. The unnatural condition of life is also due to the changed world order. A gold centred world doesn’t follow the system and values of a normal world but will have its own ethics and rules. This abnormality is seen in the figures of the hermaphrodite, the dwarf and the eunuch. Corvino thinks Volpone’s touching Celia to be safe since touching a gold doesn’t degrade it. Volpone himself admits gold to be the paragon of excellence since poets also call the greatest age the “golden” age. The minimum distinction between humane and subhuman is absent in the comparison of Voltore and Corvino with a vulture and crow respectively.
The play mercilessly exposes the world to be only gold-centered and godless. The gold which was expected to elevate the life of all, actually brings the downfall. Jonson successfully uses the opening section as a just reflection of the gold-centered world with inversed standards of history, religion, society and man.
[ COMEDY OF HUMOUR ,or, THEORY OF DRAMA ,or, HOW “VOLPONE” IS DIFFERENT FROM OTHER COMEDY ,or, JONSON’S DEVIATIONS FROM HIS OWN THEORY ]…..OR….[ ART OF CHARACTERIZATION ,or, JONSON AS A DRAMATIST ,or, SATIRE ON GREED ]
FOR THE ANSWER OF ” COMEDY OF HUMOUR” WRITE ALL THE BLUE LINES AND OMIT ALL THE RED LINES. FOR THE ANSWER OF ” ART OF CHARACTERIZATION” WRITE ALL THE RED LINES AND OMIT ALL THE BLUE LINES.
A comedy of humour is a comedy which exposes the follies and foibles of the society through some humourous characters. Ben Jonson’s art of characterization is unique since it follows his own theory of humours. According to the medieval medical theory, human body is made of four elements or humours : blood, choler, phlegm and bile or melancholy. The imbalance of any one element causes some queerness in the character and that becomes his dominant trait or humour. His comic figures always have some or the other element in excess ,and therefore, are humorous. Jonson is the master of comedies of humour and satirizes the society at large by mocking these humorous characters. His play “Volpone” criticizes and subtly suggests the society to correct itself by targeting a specific trait of avarice in almost all the characters.
The dominant trait or humour in this play is an unnatural avarice. This excessive greed controls almost every character. The title character , Volpone himself is a gold worshipper. He extols his wealth or gold to be the most desirable,supreme and sublime object in the earth. Its beauty surpasses the sun, its grandeur parallels the light first created by God. It can make a room ” blessed” or a treasure ” sacred”. Gold is being worshipped and all life and force depend on gold.To him gold is all the virtues, ” Dear saint” and even ” the dumb God”. Volpone’s greed is not only of gold but also of lust and knavery. He tries to seduce Celia by attractive description of wealth and sensual pleasure . But when he fails, he attempts to ravish Celia to satisfy his lust. Volpone’s irresistible greed for roguery is also evident. That’s why he enjoys the “cunning purchase” of his wealth than the “glad possession”.
The three legacy hunters also are extremely greedy to grab Volpone’s wealth. The greedy Venetian trio also lack morality and will do just anything to gain Volpone’s grace. Corvino rebukes Celia for favouring the mountebank but later forces her to sleep with Volpone only for money. Old Corbaccio believes in his son’s integrity but still disinherits Bonario to please Volpone. The corrupt lawyer Voltore unfairly accuses Celia and Bonario.
This dominant trait of greed leads to a general atmosphere of immorality and godlessness. The devotion Mosca shows is not genuine since his chief feature is also greed for money and a still greater greed for position. For the same central position in society Volpone wants to dislodge the prestigious rankholders and Mosca wants to dislodge Volpone. This hollowness of character becomes another vital trait or humour. The figures in the subplot also echo this greed and the shallowness in the main plot. Sir Politic’s humour is to affect political skills and statesmanship. His wife Lady Would-be is very greedy and is ready to use her body to extract profit from Volpone . Both of them blindly imitate the Italian manners.
But certainly ” Volpone” is different from other Jonsonian comedies of humours. Unlike the previous comedies like ” Every Man in His Humour”, characters in this play are not totally humour-dominated. Except their dominant trait, the characters show other side of their features also. Volpone and Mosca are not only greedy impostors, but also lovers of beauty and social power. Their complex characterization at once exposes the Renaissance spirit and Jonson’s art of expressing more than is spoken. The source of all the imbalances is chiefly greed but it is differently manifest in different persons.
Thus Jonson’s mature art of characterization creates some complex but more life like , round characters. His slight deviation from his own theory doesn’t mar the comedy but improves it. His character sketching makes ” Volpone” more than a mere comedy of humour. It makes the play fulfill the tragic, comic and the satirical purpose at the same time.
The endTo write a better answer of the second section [ art of characterization…or… Johnson as a dramatist…or..satire on greed ] you might delete all the red lines of the second paragraph except the first red line He extols his wealth or gold to be the most desirable,supreme and sublime object in the earth.
and add these new red lines at the end of the fifth paragraph [ Unlike other comedies Johnson applies imagery freely in ” Volpone ” . The gold imagery and the beast imagery enrich the play and expose the characters. Volpone is the fox, Mosca is the fly and the greedy trio – Voltore the vulture, Corvino the crow and Corbaccio the raven – are birds of prey awaiting Volpone’s carcass.]
