Volpone

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Three men queue at the bedside of a rich Venetian, each carrying an expensive gift and each hoping to be named heir. The patient is not sick at all. He is the title character of Volpone, a comedy by the English playwright Ben Jonson, first produced in 1605-1606. The name is Italian for sly fox. Jonson wrote it as a merciless satire of greed and lust. It remains his most-performed play, and it is ranked among the finest comedies of the Jacobean era. Why would a wealthy man gamble his fortune on a lie? What happens when every character in a room is cheating someone else? And how did a play so admired in its own century fall out of favour, then return to the stage?

  46

• 2. Beasts of Venice

  ›

  Voltore the Vulture, Corbaccio the Raven and Corvino the Carrion Crow are the three birds circling Volpone's fortune. Voltore is a lawyer. Corbaccio is an avaricious old miser, and his son is called Bonario. Corvino is a merchant, and his wife is Celia. Volpone himself is a greedy, rich and childless Venetian magnifico. His servant Mosca is the Fly, a name that suits a hanger-on buzzing around a wealthy man's household. Jonson built the play from elements of city comedy and beast fable, so that human appetites wear animal names. Two English travellers drift through the story as well. Sir Politic Would-Be is a ridiculous Englishman, and his wife, Lady Would-Be, is the Parrot. Another traveller, Peregrine, whose name means Pilgrim, is far more sophisticated than the couple. Volpone also keeps three companions. Nano is a dwarf, Androgyno is a hermaphrodite and Castrone is a eunuch. Over everything sit the Avocatori, the judges of Venice. Only Bonario and Celia, the two characters who will be caught in the schemes of others, carry no animal label in the cast list.

  46

• 3. Gifts and Disguises

  ›

  One by one, Voltore, Corbaccio and Corvino arrive at Volpone's house, each bearing a luxurious gift and each determined to have his name written into the will. Mosca is the engineer of their hopes. He encourages every visitor to believe that he has been named heir. His most startling success is with Corbaccio, whom he persuades to disinherit his own son and favour Volpone instead. Mosca also tells Volpone that Corvino has a beautiful wife named Celia.

  Volpone disguises himself as Scoto the Mountebank and goes to see her. Corvino drives the stranger away, but Volpone becomes insistent that he must possess Celia. Mosca then deceives Corvino with a cruel remedy. The supposedly dying man, he says, will be cured if he lies in bed beside a young woman. Corvino believes illness has left Volpone impotent, so he offers his own wife. He expects that a revived Volpone will recognise him as sole heir.

  Just before Corvino and Celia are due, Bonario arrives hoping to catch his father in the act of disinheriting him. Mosca guides him into a side room. Volpone and Celia are left alone. Fantastic promises of luxury and wealth fail to win her, and Volpone attempts to rape her. Bonario comes forward to rescue her.

  The matter then goes to court. Voltore uses all his prowess as a lawyer, and false evidence from Mosca, Volpone and the other dupes convinces the Avocatori. The truth is well buried, though the play still has a final act to run.

  46

• 4. Tortoise and Reckoning

  ›

  A giant tortoise shell is the prop that sums up the English subplot. Sir Politic Would-Be constantly talks of plots and outlandish business plans, while Lady Would-Be annoys Volpone with her ceaseless talking. Mosca co-ordinates a mix-up between the couple that leaves Peregrine feeling offended. Peregrine takes his revenge on Sir Politic. He tells him he is about to be arrested for sedition, and the frightened man hides inside the shell.

  Volpone, meanwhile, cannot leave well enough alone. He insists on disguising himself again and having it announced that he has died and left his wealth to Mosca. The news enrages Voltore, Corbaccio and Corvino. Everyone returns to court to dispute the will, and Volpone becomes entangled in the plots that he and Mosca devised.

  Then the servant turns on his master. Despite Volpone's pleas, Mosca refuses to give up his new role as a rich man. Volpone reveals himself and his deceits in order to topple Mosca. The result is a reckoning for all of them. Voltore, Corbaccio, Corvino, Mosca and Volpone himself are finally punished.

  46

• 5. Playhouse and Print

  ›

  The Globe Theatre hosted the premiere in the spring of 1606. The King's Men performed it, though the casting is uncertain. John Lowin may have played the title role, since James Wright's Historia Histrionica of 1699 associates him with it. William Gifford suggested that Alexander Cooke may have played Lady Would-be.

  An outbreak of plague closed the London theatres, either that summer or the next. The company took the play to Oxford and Cambridge instead. Jonson may have added the first act's satire on Pythagoras for those university audiences. Volpone stayed in the King's Men's repertoire throughout the period. It was performed for Charles in 1624, while he was still Prince of Wales, and again in 1630. A performance followed at the Cockpit-in-Court in 1637.

  In early 1607 the play appeared in quarto, printed by George Eld for the publisher Thomas Thorpe. That edition carried Jonson's dedication to Oxford and Cambridge. It also carried a great number of commendatory verses, in English and Latin, by fellow poets including Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. The play next appeared in the folio of 1616, presumably after Jonson's careful review, and that text forms the basis of most modern editions.

  43

• 6. Applause and Neglect

  ›

  On the 16th of October 1662, the diarist John Evelyn watched Volpone performed at the court of Charles II. The Restoration brought the play a lengthy prominence. John Genest records over fifty performances before 1770. When the theatres reopened, the play belonged to the King's Men of Thomas Killigrew, and it was staged at Drury Lane in 1663. Michael Mohun played Volpone to Hart's Mosca, with Katherine Corey as Celia and Rebecca Marshall as Lady Would-be. Samuel Pepys saw the same cast in 1665.

  Richard Steele mentioned a performance in a 1709 edition of Tatler. James Quin was among the famous eighteenth-century Volpones, and Charles Macklin was a famous Mosca. Colley Cibber played Corvino in his own productions. His wife, Katherine Shore, played Celia, as did Elizabeth Inchbald later.

  Then the appeal faded, as it did for many Jacobean plays. Critics complained that the fifth act was improbable and often likened it to farce. They also disliked Jonson's highly Latinate language. An updated version by George Colman the Elder failed at Drury Lane in 1771. By the end of the century the objections seemed insurmountable to producers, and the play fell into disuse. A revival at the Lyric Hammersmith in 1921 would eventually bring it back.

  3

• 7. Wolfit's Fox

  ›

  W. B. Yeats sat in the audience in 1921 when the Phoenix Society revived Volpone at the Lyric Hammersmith. He mentioned the production approvingly in a letter to Allan Wade. In 1935 the Birmingham Repertory Theatre staged the play at the Malvern Festival.

  A 1938 production then introduced the two dominant elements of twentieth-century stagings. One was the performance of Donald Wolfit, and the other was animal imagery. Wolfit repeated his dynamic Volpone several times over the following decades, and it set the standard for modern interpretations. Under that model Politick's plot was truncated or eliminated. Mosca, played in 1938 by Alan Wheatley, was relegated to a secondary role.

  Famous companies took up the play. In 1952 George Devine directed Ralph Richardson as Volpone and Anthony Quayle as Mosca at the Stratford Memorial Theatre. At the same theatre in 1955, Eric Porter played Volpone. Sir Tyrone Guthrie's National Theatre production of 1968 emphasized the beast-fable motif, with stage design by Tanya Moiseiwitsch. That same year David Raeburn directed a modern dress performance at Beckenham Boys Grammar, with rock music settings of the songs.

  The Stratford Festival mounted a Canadian production in 1971, directed by David William, with William Hutt as Volpone and Douglas Rain as Mosca. The Bristol Old Vic staged the play in 1972. One of the most memorable stagings of the 1970s was Peter Hall's for the Royal National Theatre in 1974. Paul Scofield played Volpone, Ben Kingsley played Mosca, Sir John Gielgud played Sir Politick and Ian Charleson played Peregrine. Matthew Warchus received an Olivier Award nomination for his 1995 Royal National Theatre production, which featured Michael Gambon and Simon Russell Beale.

  13

• 8. Afterlives

  ›

  In 1928, Jules Romains and Stefan Zweig adapted Volpone and changed the ending so that Mosca ends up with Volpone's money. George Antheil used their version for his 1953 opera Volpone. It also lent portions to a French film of 1941. Jacques de Baroncelli began that film in 1938, but production shut down because of financial difficulties. Maurice Tourneur took over, and shooting resumed in 1940.

  Alphons Silbermann's adaptation ran at the Independent Theatre in Sydney from the 3rd of April to the 21st of June 1947. A short-lived Broadway musical of 1964, titled Foxy, moved the setting to the Yukon during the gold rush of 1898. Australian television adapted the play in 1968. Larry Gelbart's stage adaptation Sly Fox moved the action from Renaissance Venice to nineteenth-century San Francisco. It also changed the tone from satire to farce.

  The Honey Pot, a 1967 film by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, starred Rex Harrison. Cliff Robertson played Mosca, renamed McFly, and Maggie Smith played the love interest. A portion of the original play is performed privately for Harrison's character, who says it is his favourite.

  France produced several versions based on the Zweig and Romains script. In 1978, Jean Meyer directed a production in the boulevard theatre style, starring Jean Le Poulain as Volpone and Francis Huster as Mosca. Meyer himself played Corbaccio, and Claude Jade played Colomba, the Celia of this version. Francis Perrin directed another in 2001, with Bernard Haller as Volpone. In 2003, Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt rewrote the play for television with Gérard Depardieu as Volpone and Daniel Prévost as Mosca. That ending sees Volpone and Mosca escape together with Corbaccio's wife.

  Elsewhere, György Fehér adapted the play for Hungarian television in 1974, with Tamás Major as Volpone. In 1988 Maurizio Ponzi set an Italian film, Il volpone, in modern Liguria. It starred Paolo Villaggio and Enrico Montesano.

  On the 24th of March 2004, Ian McDiarmid starred as Volpone in a BBC Radio 3 production directed by Peter Kavanagh, with Tom Hollander as Mosca. The Wolf Trap Opera Company of Vienna, Virginia, commissioned an opera that year, with a score by John Musto and a libretto by Mark Campbell. Its world premiere took place at The Barns at Wolf Trap on the 10th of March 2004. The company staged it again in 2007 with a new cast, recorded it live, and saw the recording nominated in 2010 for a Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording.

  215