Critic: P. H. Davison

Source: Modern Language Quarterly, 1963, Vol. 24, pp. 151–157. Reprinted in Drama for Students, Vol. 10.

Although Jonson called Volpone "quick comoedie, refined," this description has not satisfied critics puzzled by the precise nature of the play. Edward B. Partridge, in his illuminating study of Jonson's major comedies, 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 such a profound sense of evil ... seems closer to tragedy than comedy," he states, and he refers to T. S. Eliot's dictum that, although "Jonson's type of personality `found its relief in something falling under the category of burlesque or farce,' these terms are manifestly inadequate" for the unique world of Volpone. Although satire "may be the least unsatisfactory term" for the play, it better describes Jonson's method than "the aesthetic result."

That Jonson misunderstood Aristotle's view of comedy is well known. He quotes Aristotle as saying, "the moving of laughter is a fault in Comedie, a kind of turpitude, that depraves some part of a mans nature without a disease," whereas, as Herford and Simpson point out in their note on this passage, Aristotle stated that "comedy is an imitation of characters of a lower type."

Partridge is chiefly concerned with imagery in his study of Volpone, and he believes (correctly, I feel) that such a study, although it helps to "reveal the tone of the play," cannot entirely clear up the "confusion about the kind of drama that Volpone is." Herford and Simpson speak of Volpone as approaching Jonson's "own grandiose and terrible tragedy of two years before," Sejanus. T. S. Eliot has pointed out that "No theory of humours could account for Jonson's best plays," and he adds that Volpone and Mosca are not humors. More recently Northrop Frye has suggested that Volpone "is exceptional in being a kind of comic imitation of a tragedy, with the point of Volpone's hybris carefully marked."

Volpone is a comedy: but a special kind of comedy, the ultimate source of which is to be found in the Old Comedy of Greece.

Jonson was well acquainted with the comedies of Aristophanes, and attention has been drawn to this by Herford and Simpson, among others. They point to the use made of Plutus and The Wasps in The Staple of News and speak of Jonson as nowhere being "less Elizabethan than in the Aristophanic allegory of the Poetaster or The Staple of News"; however, they do not feel that Jonson approaches "the poetic splendour of The Birds or The Clouds ...." It is to these two plays by Aristophanes that Herford and Simpson believe we must ascribe, in Cynthia's Revels, "both the frank use of mythic or fantastic incident against the canon of Jonsonian realism, and the admission of serious and beautiful lyric poetry (as in Echo's Song) contrary to the rigour of the comic spirit."

Though it is clear that Jonson was familiar with the comedies of Aristophanes, so far as I am aware his dependence upon Aristophanes has generally been thought to have been restricted to the use of such "mythic or fantastic incident," lyric "contrary to the rigour of the comic spirit," an admiration for the tartness of Aristophanes, and, in general, to "the salt in the old comoedy":

AVT. Ha! If all the salt in the old comoedy

Should be so censur'd, or the sharper wit

Of the bold satyre, termed scolding rage,

What age could then compare with those, for buffons?

What should be sayd of ARISTOPHANES?

(Poetaster, To the Reader)

We also know that Jonson was acquainted with the Old Comedy by the reference to it by Cordatus when he states that Everyman Out of His Humour is "somewhat like Vetus Comoedia." Precisely what is meant here by Old Comedy is not certain. Thus Herford and Simpson, while stating their interpretation of the passage as necessarily meaning Greek and Roman comedy (as opposed to old comedy in the native English tradition), also record O. J. Campbell's view that Jonson here meant "the Greek comedy which culminated in the work of Aristophanes."

That Jonson misunderstood Aristotle's view of comedy is well known. He quotes Aristotle as saying, "the moving of laughter is a fault in Comedie, a kind of turpitude, that depraves some part of a mans nature without a disease," whereas, as Herford and Simpson point out in their note on this passage, Aristotle stated that "comedy is an imitation of characters of a lower type." In view of the serious, and to some, the quasi-tragic nature of Volpone, Jonson's interpretation of the ancients is significant. Thus his repetition from Heinsius in Discoveries of the statement that "The parts of a Comedie are the same with a Tragedie, and the end is partly the same. For, they both delight, and teach," suggests a view of the structure of comedy which accords with the argument below, in which the hybris of tragedy is equated with the alazoneia of Aristophanic comedy, giving in Volpone the appearance of the hubristic hero wreaking his own downfall. The greater "seriousness" of Volpone as compared with Aristophanic comedy is also explicable in the light of Jonson's view (in his reference to Aristophanes in Discoveries) that "jests that are true and naturall, seldome raise laughter, with the beast, the multitude. They love nothing, that is right, and proper. The farther it runs from reason, or possibility with them, the better it is." Here, indeed, we have a theoretical basis for what Herford and Simpson describe as "the frank use of mythic and fantastic incident against the canon of Jonson's realism" in Cynthia's Revels.

In Volpone one has not only the general indebtedness to ancient comedy as Jonson understood it, and to Aristophanes in particular, but also the employment of the Aristophanic figures of alazon and [bomolochos]. Pickard-Cambridge points out that

A considerable part of many plays of Aristophanes consists of scenes in which a person of absurd or extravagant pretensions is derided or made a fool of by a person who plays the buffoon--scenes (to use the convenient Greek terms) between an [alazon] and a [bomolochos]

The [alazon] takes many forms, he states, but the [bomolochos] "generally takes one of two forms--the old rustic and the jesting slave." In a footnote, he quotes from paragraph 6 of the Tractatus Coislinianus: ["ethe komodias Ta Te bomolochia Kai Ta eironika Kai Ta Ton alazon on.]"

This passage is also referred to by F. M. Cornford, who states that "Aristotle seems to have classified the characters in Comedy under three heads: The Buffoon (bomolochos), the Ironical type (eiron), and the Imposter (alazon)." However, he concludes that "in the Old Comedy, `buffoonery' (bomolochia) is only the outer wear of `Irony,'" and thus there is "over against the Imposter, one character only--the Ironical Buffoon."

Although their precise functions have changed a little (for example, Pickard-Cambridge states that the [bomolochos] had "a particular function in the prologue--that of stating the subject of the play, requesting the goodwill of the audience, and attracting their favour by some preliminary jesting"), it is this relationship which underlies Volpone: [alazon]and [bomolochos]: Impostor and Buffoon--or perhaps more aptly, as Cornford suggests, Ironical Buffoon.

Northrop Frye argues for four types making two opposed pairs: "The contest of eiron and alazon forms the basis of the comic action, and the buffoon and the churl polarize the comic mood." This is not only theoretically accurate, but each type exists individually. However, they overlap and interchange frequently, and although churl and buffoon are appropriately paired, the pairing of alazon and eiron fails to take into account the buffoonery associated so often with the eiron. The distinction may, in part, be a social one--Pickard-Cambridge's two forms of "old rustic and the jesting slave." Thus, Peregrine in Volpone may seem (at first) more aptly an eiron than a buffoon, whereas Volpone disguised as a mountebank plays the buffoon. However, Peregrine in V.iv. engages in buffoonery, and Volpone is a source of irony. Thus, so far as Volpone is concerned, I prefer to set one form--the Ironical Buffoon--against the Impostors.

In the main action, Volpone is the principal Impostor, his downfall being worked by Mosca when he changes his role from that of agent to antagonist. The lesser characters of the main action, the four legacy seekers--Voltore, Corvino, and Corbaccio, and Lady Politique Would-Bee--are also Impostors.

In the action associated with Sir Politique Would-Bee, he himself is an Impostor, and Peregrine is the Ironical Buffoon who exposes him, by verbal irony, as in Peregrine's comments upon Sir Pol's diary, and then in V.iv, when Peregrine frightens Sir Pol into making himself ridiculous in the tortoise shell, and thus completely disposes of him.

The similarity of this Impostor-Ironical Buffoon relationship in the actions associated with Volpone and Sir Pol is significant for two reasons, one dramatic and the other critical. Jonas A. Barish remarks in his study, "The Double Plot in Volpone": "For more than two centuries literary critics have been satisfied to dismiss the subplot of Volpone as irrelevant and discordant, because of its lack of overt connection with the main plot." In addition to mimicking their environment and thus performing "the function of burlesque traditional to comic subplots in English drama" (which is Barish's concern), there is also this use of Impostor and Ironical Buffoon, common to both plots, which further unifies Volpone. Critically, the use of this concept in both actions tends to confirm that it was Old Comedy which was the source of Jonson's inspiration, for, although Volpone's character is complex, making less obvious the relationship with Old Comedy, in Sir Pol and Peregrine one has, very clearly indeed, the Impostor and Ironical Buffoon of Old Comedy.

There is also another association with Old Comedy in the use of animal names. Edward Partridge has pointed out that Volpone is not a beast fable cast in the form of classical comedy, for in Volpone "reasonable beings appear as lower animals with the instincts of lower animals." Jonson may well have had in mind the practice of Aristophanes as exemplified in The Wasps, The Birds, or The Frogs. As has already been mentioned, Jonson speaks in Discoveries of "the beast, the multitude."

It will be plain that Jonson, in his use of this relationship of Impostor and Ironical Buffoon, has not done so without adapting it. Though the lesser characters can be seen simply as Impostors, Mosca and Volpone are more complex, especially Volpone. Mosca, in his dual role of agent and antagonist, is both Plautine "managing servant" and Ironical Buffoon. Further, when at the opening of Act III he says, "Successe hath made me wanton," we see the beginning of an action that will lead to Mosca overreaching himself in the manner of an Impostor--seeing himself as the "fine, elegant rascall, that can rise, / And stoope (almost together) like an arrow." The imagery itself suggests the dual function.

Just as there are two aspects to Mosca's character, so there are two aspects to Volpone's. Volpone and Mosca combine to deflate the lesser Impostors in the main action, and, in this capacity, Volpone acts as Ironical Buffoon. The buffoonery is particularly apparent when, in his desire to participate in the action, he disguises himself as a mountebank (II.ii) and as a Commandadore in V.v to V.viii. The Ironical Buffoon aspect of Volpone's character is especially to be seen in V.vi to V.viii, where Corbaccio, Corvino, and Voltore are mocked. Corbaccio and Voltore specifically refer to their being mocked by this Commandadore in the sixth and seventh scenes of the act, and in V.vii, Volpone (still disguised), jeers at Corvino because he has "let the FOXE laugh at your emptinesse." More subtly, Volpone, as has been so clearly demonstrated by Edward Partridge, is the source of much of the play's irony, and in this the ironical aspect of the Ironical Buffoon is stressed. For example, in I.i, in the perversion of religious imagery in praise of gold, an imagery which "at once creates and passes a judgment on Volpone's religion of gold" creates an "irony which is fundamental to the tone" of the whole play.

Thus, in so far as Volpone (with Mosca) brings about the down-fall of the lesser Impostors, Volpone appears as an Ironical Buffoon in speech and behavior. But this does not entirely explain either play or character, for it is only part of the whole, and it is for this reason that a study of the imagery, so largely ironical, cannot entirely clarify the confusion as to the kind of drama represented in Volpone (as Partridge has noted).

What must be taken into account is that, although Volpone is at one level the deflating Ironical Buffoon, he is primarily an Impostor, the most magnificent Impostor of them all. He is so from first to last, but it is only in the fifth act, when he feigns death and his agent turns antagonist, that Impostor gains dominance over Ironical Buffoon.

It is significant that when, in III.vii, Volpone attempts to seduce Celia, we have a temporary change in the tone of the play. At this point, irony and buffoonery are absent. Volpone's imposture of the lover is unchecked. The result is melodramatic overstatement, rather than tragic, an impression most apparent in Bonario's lines when he comes to Celia's rescue: "Forebeare, foule rauisher, libidinous swine, / Free the forc'd lady, or thou dy'st, imposter." How apt is Bonario's calling Volpone "imposter"! The melodramatic nature of this scene illustrates the dramatic effect of a situation in which an Impostor is allowed free rein. It is only with the presence, actual or implied, of the Ironical Buffoon, that comedy can be effected in a play dependent upon this relationship.

Perhaps the most skillful employment of this technique of Old Comedy is the nature of Volpone's [alazoneia]--that which causes him to overreach himself. Volpone initiates his own destruction, becoming the victim of his own Ironical Buffoonery. In his pretense of death, he wins his final triumph over the four inheritance seekers (and, simultaneously, he acts the Buffoon as he watches in delight, "Behind the cortine, on a stoole"). But this final imposture, of death, is both the end of the Ironical Buffoon in Volpone and the cause of his downfall. This he himself realizes:

To make a snare, for mine owne necke! and run

My head into it, wilfully! with laughter!

When I had newly scap't, was free, and cleare!

Out of mere wantonnesse!

(Volpone, V.xi.1-4)

Here we have the self-initiated fall, the Ironical Buffoonery ("with laughter"), the overreaching.

Some of the excess of Aristophanic comedy, the savageness of the satire, the farce, and the burlesque, is to be found in Volpone, but, in Jonson, one has a greater concern for moral issues than in Aristophanes. As Partridge suggests, "a critic willing to do some violence to the play" might see Volpone "as a prophetic vision of the society which capitalism, even in Jonson's day, was creating." It requires even greater violence to a play by Aristophanes to say something akin to this even though in Lysistrata, for instance, one might perceive the undertones of war. Though Jonson adapts what he takes from the Old Comedy and is more concerned with serious issues, one can see how essential the Old Comedy relationship of Impostor and Ironical Buffoon is to the play: it is this relationship that makes clear the nature of the drama of Volpone. Volpone is comedy, but close in tone and certain aspects of its technique to Old Comedy, the comedy of Aristophanes. As Jonson said in his address to the two universities, he had written Volpone

though not without some lines of example, drawne euen in the ancients themselues, the goings out of whose comodies are not alwaies ioyfull, but oft-times, the bawdes, the seruants, the riuals, yea, and the masters are mulcted: and fitly, it being the office of a comick-Poet, to imitate iustice, and instruct to life, as well as puritie of language, or stirre vp gentle affections.

Source: P. H. Davison, "Volpone and the Old Comedy," in Modern Language Quarterly, 1963, Vol. 24, pp. 151-157. Reprinted in Drama for Students, Vol. 10.