On a bright morning in 1606, in a lavish chamber in Venice, a rich old man lies draped in silks on a makeshift sickbed. He groans feebly, as if at death’s door. One by one, the most eminent gentlemen of the city tiptoe into his room, each bearing extravagant gifts – gold plate, jewels, a luxuriously embroidered cap. They coo sympathetic words to the “dying” man, calling him noble Signor Volpone, praising his virtue, praying for his recovery. But as soon as each hopeful visitor departs, Volpone leaps from his bed with a spry grin. There is nothing sickly about him at all. It’s all a ruse, a grand practical joke to fleece those fawning legacy-hunters who lust after his fortune. Hidden behind a curtain, Volpone’s clever servant Mosca keeps a straight face as he ushers in the next greedy guest. This delicious charade continues, growing more absurd with each visitor’s flattery. Such is the opening of Ben Jonson’s comedy Volpone, a play that showcases the sharp, satirical edge of Jonson’s theatrical vision. Where Shakespeare’s dramas often soared into romantic or tragic realms, Jonson’s stage became a mirror held up to the vices of his day, reflecting them in merciless – and hilariously entertaining – detail.
Ben Jonson was a towering figure in the early 17th-century London theatre, a contemporary and friendly rival of Shakespeare. A brash, learned Londoner who once worked as a bricklayer and fought as a soldier, Jonson brought to drama a combative wit and a classical scholar’s discipline. He pioneered what came to be known as the “comedy of humours,” a style of comedy where characters are driven by dominating obsessions or follies, much like bodily humours unbalancing the soul. In the old medical theory, an excess of one humour (be it blood, phlegm, yellow bile, or black bile) made a person choleric, sanguine, melancholic, or phlegmatic in temperament. Jonson seized this concept as a rich source of comedic caricature. If a person’s humor was greed, they would be nothing but greedy; if vanity, nothing but vain. In his plays, he painted larger-than-life portraits of people consumed by singular follies – misers, hypocrites, braggarts, and fools – then let those exaggerated personalities collide in tightly constructed plots. The result was satire: pointed and moralistic, yet often uproariously funny.
