Deception in Jonsons Volpone Essay examples -- Jonson Volpone

 Deception in Volpone   In Volpone, Ben Jonson emphasizes the shimmer and the humor of deceit, only he does not overlook its nastiness, and in the stopping point he punishes the deceivers. The play centers around the wealthy Volpone, who, having no wife or children, pretends to be dying and, with the help of his slippery servant Mosca, eggs on several greedy characters, each of whom hopes to be made Volpones sole heir. Jonsons keen love of language reveals itself through turn out the play, but especially in the language of Mosca and Volpone, who relish the deceptive powers of language. Volpone himself pursues his schemes partly out of greed, but partly out of his passionate love of getting the best of people. He cannot resist the temptation to outsmart those around him, particularly when fate delivers him such perfect gulls as the lawyer Voltore, the merchant Corvino, the doddering old Corbaccio, and the foolish English travelers Sir liquid and Lady Would-Be. Mosc a too revels in his ability to beguile others, remarking I panic I shall begin to grow in love / With my dear self, so thrilled is he with his own manipulations. His self-love, however, proves his undoing, as it does for Volpone. Both characters become so entranced by their own elaborate fictions that they cannot bring themselves to stop their conniving before they betray themselves. Jonsons audience would have recognized both the wily Volpone and the parasitical Mosca as stereotypically Italian. English playwrights frequently borrowed characters from Italian drama and from Italys shady dramatic tradition, the commedia dellarte. Venice, the setting for Volpone, evoked the glory of Italian art and culture, but also Italys decadence and corruption, which the English view... ...trations were well known to be more than just a little obscene, as she says. We are boost to laugh with Volpone and Mosca at the pretensions and hypocrisies of Lady Would-Be and the other ever-hopeful hei rs but at long be Jonson chooses to punish the deceivers and asks us to side, however reluctantly, with the Venetian Senate in condemning them. Voltore, Corvino, and the others whitethorn richly deserve to be tricked, but Volpone and Mosca are not agents of justice, and we must not confuse them with such truly virtuous characters as Celia and Bonario. Nevertheless, Jonson gives Volpone the last word in the plays Epilogue, where Volpone asks our forgiveness, and we find ourselves in complicity with him once again. We are invited in the end to revel in the delightfulness of deception, and of language, and to suspend, if only briefly, our moral judgments.