1. VOLPONE (1606) /PLAY/by BEN JONSON
Ben Jonson did not possess Marlowe’s
poetic power, but his career on the whole was more productive and better
rounded. One of the best of his plays is
Volpone. It is a harsh and scathing
exposure of human greed in terms which are at the same time horrifying for
their baseness and yet mockingly humorous.
The rich and avaricious Volpone, aided by his wily servant, Mosca (The
Fly), pretends that he is dying. He
tricks his equally greedy friends into giving him costly gifts of gold and
jewels, leading each one to believe that he has a chance of becoming heir to
Volpone’s great wealth.
When the friends have been bled, one
of them having disinherited his son in Volpone’s favour, another having offered
him his wife, Volpone spreads the rumour that he has died, and confounds the
hopefuls/candidates by a will making Mosca his heir. Mosca, seizing the upper hand, tries to keep
Volpone legally dead, but succeeds only in bringing the house of cards down
upon the heads of the whole unsavoury crew.
Volpone is an impressive play,
similar in quality and texture to the almost forgotten plays of
Machiavelli. In 1928 the Theatre Guild
produced it in an adaption for the modern stage by Stefan Zweig, and it has
since been made into a French film.