Essay: Analysis in Volpone
Dedication, Argument, and PrologueFrom SparknotesSummaryThe play is dedicated to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, both of which had recently awarded Jonson honorary doctorates at the time of the play's writing. He briefly discusses the moral intentions of the play and its debt to classical drama. In the Argument, Jonson provides a brief summary of the play's plot in the form of an acrostic on Volpone's name. The prologue then introduces the play to the viewing audience, informing them that "with a little luck," it will be a hit; Jonson ends by promising that the audience's cheeks will turn red from laughter after viewing his work.
Analysis
These opening parts of the play, before we are introduced to the action, may seem superfluous. But they help us understand the play in several ways. First, in the banal sense; the Argument, as Jonson terms it, provides in brief encapsulated form the premise of the play, a premise that will be fully introduced in the first scene.
The Dedication, however, gives us a clue as to Jonson's intentions in writing Volpone. First of all, he is intent on writing a "moral" play. By taking to task those "poetasters" (his derogatory term for an inferior playwright) who have disgraced the theatrical profession with their immoral work, Jonson highlights the moral intentions of his play. His play will make a moral statement. And it will do so in line with the traditions of drama followed by classical dramatists, that is, the dramatists of ancient Greece. This connection to the past further indicates that the play we are about to read (or see) is a work of serious intellectual and moral weight.
But, in the Prologue, we see a different side of Jonson. This side of Jonson is boastful—this play was written in five weeks, says Jonson, all the jokes are mine, I think it's going to be a huge hit, and you are all going to laugh hysterically until your cheeks turn red. The Prologue sets a boisterous tone that the rest of the play will follow. So in these opening passages, Jonson begins to mix a serious intellectual and moral message with a boisterous, light- hearted and entertaining tone, reinforcing the explicit promise he makes in the Prologe "to mix profit with your pleasure." In other words, says Jonson, Volpone will be a work that will educate you but also entertain you at the same time.
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Essay: George Eliot and Middlemarch
George Eliot (1819-1880) - pseudonym for Mary Ann Cross, also Marian Evans, original surname EvansFrom
Kirjasto Victorian writer, a humane freethinker, whose insightful psychological novels paved way to modern character portrayals - contemporary of Dostoevsky (1821-1881), who at the same time in Russia developed similar narrative techniques. Eliot's liaison with the married writer and editor George Henry Lewes arise among the rigid Victorians much indignation, which calmed down with the progress of her literary fame.
"Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic - the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which makes the advancing years as a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common." (from Middlemarch, 1871-72)
Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) was born in Chilvers Coton, Warwickshire. Her father was a carpenter who rose to be a land agent. When she was a few months old, the family moved to Griff, a 'cheerful red-brick, ivory-covered house', and there Eliot spent 21 years of his life among people that he later depicted in her novels. She was educated at home and in several schools, and developed a strong evangelical piety at Mrs. Wallington's School at Neneaton. However, later Eliot rejected her dogmatic faith. When her mother died in 1836, she took charge of the family household. In 1841 she moved with her father to Coventry, where she lived with him until his death in 1849. During this time she met Charles Bray, a free-thinking Coventry manufacturer. His wife, Caroline (Cara) was the sister of Charles Hennel, the author of a work entitled An Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity (1838). The reading of this and other rationalistic works influenced deeply Eliot's thoughts. After her father's death, Eliot travelled around Europe. She settled in London and took up work as subeditor of Westminster Review.
In Coventry she met Charles Bray and later Charles Hennell, who introduced her to many new religious and political ideas. Under Eliot's control the Westminster Review enjoyed success. She became the centre of a literary circle, one of whose members was George Henry Lewes, who would be her companion until his death in 1878. Lewes's wife was mentally unbalanced and she had already had two children by another man. In 1854 Eliot went to Germany with Lewes. Their unconventional union caused some difficulties because Lewes was still married and he was unable to obtain divorce. Eliot did not inform her close friends Caroline and Sarah Hennell about her decision to live with Lewes - the both friends were shocked and angry because she had not trusted them.
Eliot's first collection of tales, SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE, appeared in 1858 under the pseudonym George Eliot - in those days writing was considered to be a male profession. It was followed by her first novel, ADAM BEDE, a tragic love story in which the model for the title character was Eliot's father. He was noted for his great physical strength, which enabled him to carry loads that three average men could barely handle. When impostors claimed authorship of Adam Bede, it was revealed that Marian Evans, the Westminster reviewer, was George Eliot. The book was a brilliant success. Her other major works include THE MILL ON THE FLOSS (1860), a story of destructive family relations, and SILAS MARNER (1861). Silas Marner, a linen-weaver, has accumulated a goodly sum of gold. He was falsely judged guilty of theft 15 years before and left his community. Squire Cass' son Dunstan steals Marner's gold and disappears. Marner takes care of an orphaned little girl, Eppie and she becomes for him more precious than the lost property. Sixteen years later the skeleton of Dunstan and Marner's gold is found. Godfrey Cass, Dunstal's brother, admits that he is the father of Eppie. He married the girl's mother, opium-ridden Molly Farren secretly before hear death. Eppie and Silas Marner don't wish to separate when Godfrey tries to adopt the girl. In the end Eppie marries Aaron Winthorp, who accepts Silas Marner as part of the household.
MIDDLEMARCH (1871-72), her greatest novel, was probably inspired by her life at Coventry. The story follows the sexual and intellectual frustrations of Dorothea Brooke. Eliot weaves into her story other narrative lines, which offer a sad comment upon human aspirations. Among Eliot's translation works are D.F. Strauss's Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet (published anonymously in 1846), Ludwig Feuerbach's Das Wesen des Christentum, and Spinoza's Ethics (unpublished).Eliot's thoughts of religion were considered at that time advanced. When she visited Cambridge University in 1873 and discussed with F.W.H. Mayers of "the words of God, Immortality, and Duty", she pronounced "with terrible earnestness how inconceivable was the first, how unbelievable was the second, and yet how peremptory and absolute the third."
Middlemarch is a novel of English provincial life in the early nineteenth century, just before the Reform Bill of 1832. The book was called by the famous American writer Henry James a 'treasure-house of detail.' It fuses several stories and characters, creating a a network of parallels and contrasts. One of Eliot's main concerns is the way which the past moulds the present and the attempts of various characters to control the future. Harold Bloom has noted in The Western Canon (1994) the implicit but clear relation of the work to Dante's Comedy. Dorothea, an idealistic young woman, marries the pedantic Casaubon. After his death she marries Will Ladislaw, Casaubon's young cousin, a vaguely artistic outsider. Doctor Tertius Lydgate is trapped with the egoistic Rosamond Vincy, the town's beauty. Lydgate becomes involved in a scandal, and he dies at 50, his ambitions frustrated. Other characters are Bulstrode, a banker and a religious hypocrite, Mary Garth, the practical daughter of a land agent, and Fred Vincy, the son of the mayor of Middlemarch. For modern feminist readers Middlemarch has been a disappointment: Dorothea was not prepared to give up marriage. "'I know that I must expect trials, uncle. Marriage is a state of higher duties, I never thought of it as mere personal ease,' said poor Dorothea." However, Eliot's lament for Dorothea left no doubts about her views: "Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the nature of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, the the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favorite lovestories in prose and verse." - The book is required reading in university English courses.
In 1860-61 Eliot spent some time in Italy collecting material for her historical romance ROMOLA. It was published serially first in the Cornhill Magazine and in book form in 1863. Henry James considered it the finest thing she wrote, "but its defects are almost on the scale of its beauties." In 1871 she mentioned to Alexander Main: "I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence." When Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote admiringly of Silas Marner in 1869 Eliot began a correspondence with her. In a letter from 1876 she wrote about DANIEL DERONDA (1876): "As to the Jewish element in 'Deronda', I expected from first to last in writing it, that it would create much stronger resistance and even repulsion than it has actually met with. But precisely because I felt that the usual attitude of Christians towards Jews is - I hardly know whether to say more impious or more stupid when viewed in the light of their professed principles, I therefore felt urged to treat Jews with such sympathy and understanding as my nature and knowledge could attain to. Moreover, not only towards the Jews, but towards all oriental peoples with whom we English come in contact, a spirit of arrogance and contemptuous dictatorialness is observable which has become a national disgrace to us."
After Lewes's death Eliot married twenty years younger friend, John Cross, an American banker, on May 6, 1880. They made a trip to Italy and according to a story, he jumped in Venice from their hotel balcony into the Grand Canal. After honeymoon they returned to London, where she died of a kidney ailment on the same year on December 22. Cross never married again. In her will she expressed her wish to be buried in Westminster Abbey, but Dean Stanley of Westminster Abbey rejected the idea and Eliot was buried in Highgate Cemetery. Eliot's interest in the interior life of human beings, moral problems and strains, anticipated the narrative methods of modern literature. D.H. Lawrence once wrote: "It was really George Eliot who started it all. It was she started putting action inside." The young Henry James described her "magnificently, awe-inspiringly ugly," but also studied her work carefully, critically, and acknowledged her greatness as a writer: "What is remarkable, extraordinary - and the process remains inscrutable and mysterious - is that this quiet, anxious, sedentary, serious, invalidical English lady, without animal spirits, without adventures, without extravagance, assumption, or bravado, should have made us believe that nothing in the world was alien to her; should have produced such rich, deep, masterly pictures of the multifold life of man." (Henry James in The Atlantic monthly, May 1885)
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The Role of Women in George Eliot's "Middlemarch"
The Role's of Women in George Eliot's "Middlemarch"by Mary Elizabeth Rupp
A major theme in George Eliot's novel, Middlemarch, is the role of women in the community. The female characters in the novel are, to some extent, oppressed by the social expectations that prevail in Middlemarch. Regardless of social standing, character or personality, women are expected to cater to and remain dependent on their husbands and to occupy themselves with trivial recreation rather than important household matters. Dorothea and Rosamond, though exceedingly dissimilar, are both subjected to the same social ideals of what women should be.
Dorothea and Rosamond are on different levels of the intricate social spectrum in Middlemarch. As a Brooke, Dorothea's connections "though not exactly aristocratic, were unquestionably ëgood'"(p.7). Rosamond is of a slightly lower status, especially given that her father has married an innkeeper's daughter, thus further lowering the family's social rank. Although Dorothea and Rosamond enjoy similar amenities such as servants, the detailed social continuum of Middlemarch separates them.
Dorothea and Rosamond's responses to their respective social classes differ much more widely than the actual social gap between them. Rosamond is particularly aware of her social standing; she "felt that she might have been happier if she had not been the daughter of a Middlemarch manufacturer. She disliked anything which reminded her that her mother's father had been an innkeeper" (p.101). While Dorothea does not dissociate herself from her wealthy peers, she shows an affinity for the lower class by helping to improve the standard of living among them through new cottages. Dorothea's philanthropic view of the lower class contrasts with the distain Rosamond feels for them.
Accordingly, the two women's material views differ as well. Not only is Rosamond painfully aware of her social position vis-a-vis Dorothea's, she actively seeks to increase it by marrying Lydgate. When Lydgate's material wealth reaches its limit and Rosamond's dreams of social supremacy vanish, the marriage quickly deteriorates. Contrastingly, Dorothea relinquishes a great deal of money for her love of Will. Dorothea's lack of concern for material goods and Rosamond's preoccupation with them are a striking example of the disparity between them.
In spite of the vast differences between them, Middlemarch society applies the same tenets to both Dorothea and Rosamond. As females, both women are expected to follow certain social norms that hinder their personal objectives, material in Rosamond's case and intellectual in Dorothea's.
A key function of women in Middlemarch society is that of a wife. Lydgate marries Rosamond expecting someone who will compliment his busy lifestyle by making his home-life pleasant. He compares women to geese and men to ganders when reflecting on the psychological differences between them, namely: " the innate submissiveness of the goose as beautifully corresponding to the strength of the gander." (p.356) He presupposes Rosamond's obedient devotion. Caussabon, too, expects that Dorothea will aid him in his work. In his proposal to her, he writes: "But I have discerned in you an elevation of thought and a capability of devotedness - " (p.43). His letter is not a profession of love but an indication that he finds Dorothea worthy of assisting him. The men expect nothing but support from their wives.
Not only do the men demand complete dedication, they fail to comprehend the women's autonomous nature. To them, Dorothea and Rosamond entered into marriage not as equal partners, but as compliant, dependent supporters. Caussabon willingly recognizes that Dorothea will assist him with his work but refuses to entertain the idea that she has her own intellectual goals. Dorothea doubts her own intellect but retains her thirst for knowledge. " She would not have asked Mr. Caussabon at once to teach her the languages, dreading of all things to be tiresome instead of helpful; but it was not entirely out of devotion to her future husband that she wished to know Latin and Greek." (p. 64) When Caussabon fails to fully include Dorothea in his studies, he undermines her intellectual ambitions and alienates her within the marriage.
Lydgate's views of women become apparent when, upon meeting Dorothea, he muses that a women with her intelligence and strong views would make a tiresome wife. He seeks a wife who will be complacent and not interrupt his budding career. As such a wife, Rosamond is supposed to occupy her time with trifling pursuits such as needlework and music. Lydgate presumes that Rosamond will help to reduce his debt from within the household by lowering expenditures, but refuses to listen to her ideas about appealing to the wealthy Sir Godwin. This forces Rosamond to go behind his back and ask for a loan herself. Not only does the request for help injure Lydgate's pride, but also, Rosamond's disobedience enrages him. He rebukes her, " - Have you sense enough to recognize now your incompetence to judge and act for meóto interfere with your ignorance in affairs which it belongs to me to decide on?" (p. 665) Lydgate cannot accept anything but Rosamond's ineptitude in managing financial affairs.
In addition to her husband's lack of confidence in her, Rosamond must deal with skepticism from other members of the community. When Sir Godwin receives her letter, he immediately assumes that Lydgate is behind it and admonishes him for dealing through his wife. It does not cross Godwin's mind that Rosamond herself generated the request. In Godwin's reply to Lydgate, he insists, "Don't set your wife to write to me when you have anything to ask - I never choose to write to a woman on matters of business." Lydgate's and Godwin's treatment of Rosamond in the matter of her request reveal general misogynistic tendencies of the society in Middlemarch.
Society puts pressure on Dorothea to conform to its model of the ideal woman as well. After the death of Caussabon, society deems it inappropriate for her to continue living at Lowick alone, managing the parish. Even another woman, Mrs. Cadwallader, warns her, "You will certainly go mad in that house alone, my dear. You will see visions." (p.537) Society frowns upon the dependence of women, even Dorothea with her great inner strength.
Although Dorothea and Rosamond differ in almost every aspect, their husbands and society consider them simply as women and apply the same standards to each. By holding Dorothea and Rosamond to the same standards and ignoring the vast dissimilarity between them, society minimizes the unique nature of the two women and contributes to the oppression of females throughout the community.
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The Mood and Tone in the Love-Poems of Donne
The Great Variety of Mood and Tone in the Love-Poems of Donne(with reference to the poems: The Canonization, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, The Sunne Rising, and The Ecstasy)By:
Purwarno Hadinata John Donne revolved against the Petrarchan tradition in love poetry, with its lovers in flower gardens; its smooth lawns (grass) and gentle and murmuring streams; its goddesses of mythological and pastoral imagery; and its conventions of chivalry. From the time to Wyatt, Surrey, and their contemporaries, English lyrical and amatory poetry had been flowing continuously in the Petrarchan channel. Now, instead, we have a violent assertion of sexual realism. Donne is neither Platonic nor ascetic, but frankly and honestly sensuous. His interest is in his experience of love, and his endeavor (attempt) is to understand it, not to deny or suppress it, and still less to present it untruthfully.
Donne’s reputation as a love poet rest on his fifty-five lyrics written at different periods of his life, but were published for the time in 1633 in one volume called Songs and Sonnets. Donne’s love poem cover a wide range of feeling from extreme physical passion to spiritual love, and express varied moods ranging from a mood of cynicism and contempt to one of faith and acceptance. His love experiences were wide and varied and so is the emotions range of his love poetry. He had love affairs with a number of women, some of them lasting and permanent, others only of a short duration. It would seem that Donne has given as exhaustive an analysis of the psychology of love as he possibly could. He insists that love is properly fulfilled only when it embraces both body and soul. He images the future canonization of himself and his mistress as saints of a new religion of love.
According to Grierson “there is the strain of conjugal love to be noticed in Donne’s Valediction: Forbidding Mourning addressed to his wife, Anne Moore whom he loved passionately and in his relationship with her he attained spiritual peace and serenity.” In the poem, addressed to his wife at the moment of separation, the well-known conceit of the compass has been brought in to prove that physical separation does not affect the union of spirits. “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” shows a combination of passion, tenderness, and intellectual content, as perfect as anything in Browning:
Such wilt be thou to mee, who must
Like the’ other foot obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begunne.
(A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, lines 33-36)
Donne’s treatment of love is both sensuous and realistic. He does not completely reject the pleasure of the body even in poems where love is treated as the highest spiritual passion. This emphasis on the claims of the body is another feature which distinguish Donne from the poets both Petrarchan and Platonic schools. Donne claims that love, merely of the body, is not love but lust. But he is realistic enough to realize that it cannot also be of the soul alone; it must partake both of the soul and the body. It is the body which brings the souls together, and so the claims of the body must not be ignored. The beloved must not hesitate to give herself body and soul to her lover even though they have not got married yet. In The Canonization, the lovers unite body and soul to form a ‘neutral sex’ while in The Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, the poet does not consider physical contact as necessary for the continuation of spiritual love. Thus Grierson rightly points out, “neither sensual passion, nor gay and cynical wit, nor scorn and anger, is the dominant note in Donne’s love poetry.”
Donne’s tells us very little about the beauty of the women he loves. He writes exclusively about the emotion of love and not about its cause. He describes and analyses the experience of being in love and the charm of his mistress are either not mentioned at all or can only be guessed from the stray hints that happen to drop.
Neither does Donne accept the contemporary view that marriage alone sanctifies the sexual act, nor the medieval view that sex is alike sinful within or without the marriage bond. According to his view, the purity of the sexual act depends on the quality of the relation between the lovers. If delight in one another is mutual, physical union is its proper consummation, but if the lovers are not inter-assured of the mind, then “the sport” is, “but a winter-seeming, summer’s night”. He may sometimes accept the human laws, which forbid the consummation of love outside marriage, but he does so with great reluctance. Indeed, he often makes the woman’s readiness to give herself entirely, body and soul, to her lover as the test of her love for him. As Joan Bennet puts it, “Donne’s love poetry is not about the difference between marriage and adultery, but about the difference between lust and love.” Further Donne asserts that the sexual act without love is merely lust whether within or outside marriage.
The last stanza of the Canonization admirably sumps up Donne’s sexual metaphysic; that the really valid and complete relationship between man and woman fuses their soul into a complete whole, and they become a microcosm of the loving world. This very attitude is expressed in a number of his other poems. For true lovers the entire world is contracted into the eyes of each other and this world is better because it is not subject to decay and dissolution.
Donne rebelled not only against the sugared sonnets in which the Petrarchan convention found expression, but also against the whole creed of chivalry and woman-worship. For the sugary language, he substituted a more realistic use of words “such as men do use”, and a more dramatic and passionate lyrical verse. As for woman-worship, he looked upon woman as not a goddess but a creature, desirable indeed, though not adorable. However, no poet has at times used the language of adoration more daringly to express the feeling of the moment (The Sun Rising).
There are, indeed, several strands in Donne’s songs and elegies. Some of the love-poems are frankly, even arrogantly, sensual. In others the tears of passion are touched with shame and scorn. Others again are directly and splendidly passionate, like the following: “For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love” (The Canonization). But there are still other poems in which Donne rises to a purer conception of love, neither Petrarchan nor Platonic, but something more concrete than either, compounded of passion and tenderness, mutual trust and entire affection. In The Ecstasy, he sings of the inter-dependence of soul and body.
The dominant note in Donne’s love poetry is neither sensual passion, nor gay and cynical wit, nor scorn and anger. The finest note here is the note of joy, the joy of mutual and contented passion. His heart might be subtle to torment itself, but its capacity for joy is even more obvious. It is only in the songs of Burns that we shall find the sheer (pure) joy of loving and being loved finding expression in the same direct and simple language as in some of Donne’s songs, and only in Browning that we shall find the same simplicity of feeling combined with a similar swift and subtle dialectic: “For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love” (The Canonization).
But Donne does not write only love poems dealing with the heart and the senses. He writes purer poems, in more complex moods. The Ecstasy is a metaphysical poem, not only in the sense of being erudite (learned) and witty, but also in the proper sense of being reflective a d philosophical. The Ecstasy makes us realize fully what Ben Jonson meant by calling Donne “the fist poet in the world for some things”.
Donne’s contribution to love-poetry may then be summed up thus: He introduced a new realism in love-poetry, revolting against the Petrarchan tradition. His poems are an attempt to deal exhaustively with the psychology of love. That accounts for the variety of mood and tone in his love poetry. Some of his love poems cynical (pessimistic) and he mocks at women and at love. Some poems sing of the joy of love and contented mutual passion. He also introduced colloquial language in love-poetry.
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Summary: The Tempest
Short Summary: The TempestBy: William Shakespeare
Act I
The play begins on a ship, with a ship-master and a boatswain trying to keep the ship from wrecking in a tempest. Alonso, King of Naples, is on board, as are his brothers Antonio and Sebastian. Alonso comes above deck merely to give the mariners an unnecessary order; the boatswain begs the nobles to keep below deck during the storm, so that the men can do their jobs without distraction. However, Antonio and Sebastian take the opportunity to make rude and sarcastic remarks to the good boatswain, and can do nothing to help. A spell comes over all on board, and the mariners all flee in desperation; the nobles on deck decide that all is lost without the sailors, and go below deck to say goodbye to their king.
Miranda and Prospero are revealed on the island; Miranda laments that a shipful of men must have died in the tempest, but her father reassures her that none were hurt, and that the tempest was of his own doing. Upon Miranda's request, Prospero begins to tell her of his history, and how they came upon the island; Miranda was very young when she left the island, and cannot remember anyone but her father, not even her dead mother. Prospero tells her how his kingdom was usurped by his brother Antonio, while Prospero was distracted by his studies, and how the king of Naples supported Antonio's rule. Antonio then cast Prospero and Miranda out of Milan, and ordered both of them killed; however, Prospero tells his daughter how the good councilor Gonzalo arranged for them not to be killed, which led to their landing on the island.
Prospero declares his intention of reclaiming his dukedom, and that the tempest and his brothers' shipwreck on the island are part of this plan. Ariel makes his first entrance, and declares that Prospero's bidding has been perfectly performed, and none of the party are harmed; the sailors are still upon the ship, while the King and his companions have been scattered about the island. Ariel reminds Prospero of his promise to free Ariel, and Prospero impresses upon him how much more generous a master he believes himself to be than Sycorax.
Caliban enters, stating his claim to the island that comes through his mother Sycorax; Prospero's teachings, for whatever reason, have failed upon Caliban, and Caliban retains his more primitive nature, for which Prospero and Miranda despise him. Ferdinand stumbles upon Miranda, and they immediately fall in love, due to Ariel's magic; but Prospero decides to make him a servant, and will put him to hard tasks about the island.
Act II
King Alonso has landed on the island, with his brothers Sebastian and Antonio, noblemen Adrian and Francisco, and the councilor Gonzalo. Gonzalo tries to console Alonso upon their good fortune of surviving the shipwreck - but Alonso is grieved - not only because his son Ferdinand is missing and presumed dead, but because he was returning from his daughter's wedding in Africa, and fears he will never see her again because of the distance. Antonio and Sebastian show great skill with mocking wordplay, and use this skill to stifle Gonzalo and Adrian's attempts to speak frankly to the rest of the party. Ariel's magic makes the party fall asleep, with the exception of Antonio and Sebastian.
A strange seriousness, of Ariel's doing, falls upon Antonio and Sebastian. Antonio begins to concoct a plan to get his brother the kingship, which will be much easier if Ferdinand, the current heir, really is dead; and since Alonso's daughter is very far away in Tunis, Sebastian might be able to inherit the crown with only two murders, those of Alonso and Gonzalo. Ariel, however, hears to conspirators plan, and wakes Gonzalo with a warning of the danger he is in. Ariel intends to let Prospero know that the conspiracy has indeed been formed as he wished, and Prospero in turn will try to keep Gonzalo safe, out of appreciation for his past help in preserving the lives of Prospero and Miranda.
Caliban curses Prospero, as another storm approaches the island; he takes the storm as a sign that Prospero is up to mischief, and hides at the approach of what he fears is one of Prospero's punishing spirits. Trinculo, Alonso's court jester, finds Caliban lying still on the ground and covered with a cloak, and figures him to be a "dead Indian"; but, the storm continues to approach, so he also hides himself, using Caliban's cloak as a shelter, and flattening himself on the ground beside Caliban's prostrate form.
Alonso's drunken butler, Stephano, enters, drunk and singing, and stumbles upon the strange sight of the two men under the cloak; he figures, in his drunken stupor, that Trinculo and Caliban make a four-legged monster. Caliban,in his delirium, thinks that Stephano is one of Prospero's minions, sent to torment him; Stephano thinks a drink of wine will cure Caliban of what ails him, and bit by bit, gets Caliban drunk as well. It takes Stephano a while to recognize his old friend, Trinculo, whom Caliban seems to be ignoring. Because of Stephano's generosity with his "celestial liquor," Caliban takes him to be some sort of benevolent god; much to Trinculo's disbelief, Caliban actually offers his service to Stephano, forsaking the "tyrant" Prospero. Stephano accepts the offer.
Act III
Ferdinand has been made to take Caliban's place as a servant, despite his royal status; and though he does not like Prospero, he does the work because it will benefit his new love, Miranda. Ferdinand and Miranda express their love for each other, and both express their desire to be married - though they have known each other for less than a day.
Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban are drinking; Trinculo and Sebastian continue to insult Caliban, though Caliban only protests against Trinculo's remarks, and tries to get Stephano to defend him. Caliban begins to tell the other two about the tyranny of his old master, Prospero, and how he wants to be rid of Prospero forever; Ariel enters, causes further discord among the group, and gets Caliban to form a murder plot against Prospero. Caliban promises Stephano that if Prospero is successfully killed, he will allow Stephano to be ruler of the island, and will be his servant. He also promises that Stephano will get Miranda if the plot is successful - Ariel leaves, to tell Prospero of these developments.
Alonso, Adrian, Francisco, Sebastian, Antonio, and Gonzalo are still wandering about the island, and Alonzo has finally given up any hope of his son Ferdinand being alive. Antonio and Sebastian decide to make their murderous move later that night, but their conspiracy is interrupted by Prospero sending in a huge banquet via his spirits, with he himself there, but invisible. They are all amazed, but not too taken aback that they will not eat the food; but, as they are about to eat, a vengeful Ariel enters, taking credit for their shipwreck, and makes the banquet vanish. Alonso recognizes Ariel's words as being of Prospero's pen, and the great guilt of Alonso, Antonio, and Sebastian begins to take them over, at the thought of Prospero being alive, and so nearby.
Act IV
Prospero stops Ferdinand's punishment, and decides to finally give Miranda to him, since he has proven his love for her through his service. Prospero accepts the union, but issues them a warning; if Ferdinand takes Miranda's virginity before a ceremony can be performed, then their union will be cursed. Ferdinand swears to Prospero that they shall wait until the ceremony to consummate their marriage, and then Prospero calls upon Ariel to perform one of his last acts of magic. A betrothal masque is performed for the party by some of Prospero's magical spirits; Juno, Ceres, and Iris are the goddesses who are represented within the masque, and the play speaks about the bounties of a good marriage, and blesses the happy couple. This act of magic so captivates Prospero that he forgets Caliban's plot to kill him; for a moment, he almost loses control, but manages to pull himself out of his reverie and take action.
Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo come looking for Prospero, and swipe a few garments of Prospero's on their way. Caliban still wants very much to kill Prospero, and carry out this plot; however, Trinculo and Stephano are very drunk, as usual, and prove completely incapable of anything but petty theft. Prospero catches them - not difficult, since they are making a huge amount of noise--and sends Ariel after them as they flee.
Act V
Prospero finally has all under his control; Ariel has apprehended Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio, and they are all waiting for Prospero's judgment. Finally, Prospero makes up his mind against revenge, and makes a speech that signifies his renunciation of magic; the accused and the other nobles enter the magic circle that Prospero has made, and stand there, enchanted, while he speaks. Prospero charges Alonso with throwing Prospero and his daughter out of Italy, and Antonio and Sebastian with being part of this crime. Prospero announces Ariel's freedom after Ariel sees the party back to Naples, and Ariel sings a song out of joy. Alonso and Prospero are reconciled after Alonso declares his remorse and repents his wrongs to Prospero and Miranda, and Prospero finally wins back his dukedom from Antonio. Prospero, perhaps unwillingly, also says that he forgives Antonio and Sebastian, though he calls them "wicked" and expresses his reservations about letting them off the hook.
After despairing that his son is dead, Alonso finds out that his son Ferdinand is indeed alive, and the two are reunited; then, Ferdinand and Miranda's engagement is announced, and is approved before the whole party by Alonso and Prospero. Gonzalo rejoices that on the voyage, such a good match was made, and that the brothers are reunited, and some of the bad blood between them is now flushed out. Ariel has readied Alonso's boat for their departure, and the boatswain shows up again, telling them about what happened to all of the sailors during the tempest.
Caliban apologizes to Prospero for taking the foolish Stephano as his master, and Prospero, at last, acknowledges Caliban, and takes him as his own. Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban's plot is exposed to the whole group, and is immediately forgiven. Prospero invites everyone to pass one last night in the island at his dwelling, and promises to tell the story of his and Miranda's survival, and of the devices of his magic. The play ends with Prospero addressing the audience, telling them that they hold an even greater power than Prospero the character, and can decide what happens next.
Related link:
1. William Shakespeare
2. Summary and Analysis Each Act
Source: Gradesaver
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Biography: Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
The life of Ben Jonson (1572-1637)By:
LuminariumBen Jonson was born around June 11, 1572, the posthumous son of a clergyman. He was educated at Westminster School by the great classical scholar William Camden and worked in his stepfather's trade, bricklaying. The trade did not please him in the least, and he joined the army, serving in Flanders. He returned to England about 1592 and married Anne Lewis on November 14, 1594.
Jonson joined the theatrical company of Philip Henslowe in London as an actor and playwright on or before 1597, when he is identified in the papers of Henslowe. In 1597 he was imprisoned for his involvement in a satire entitled The Isle of Dogs, declared seditious by the authorities. The following year Jonson killed a fellow actor, Gabriel Spencer, in a duel in the Fields at Shoreditch and was tried at Old Bailey for murder. He escaped the gallows only by pleading benefit of clergy. During his subsequent imprisonment he converted to Roman Catholicism only to convert back to Anglicism over a decade later, in 1610. He was released forfeit of all his possessions, and with a felon's brand on his thumb.
Jonson's second known play, Every Man in His Humour, was performed in 1598 by the Lord Chamberlain's Men at the Globe with William Shakespeare in the cast. Jonson became a celebrity, and there was a brief fashion for 'humours' comedy, a kind of topical comedy involving eccentric characters, each of whom represented a temperament, or humor, of humanity. His next play, Every Man Out of His Humour (1599), was less successful. Every Man Out of His Humour and Cynthia's Revels (1600) were satirical comedies displaying Jonson's classical learning and his interest in formal experiment.
Jonson's explosive temperament and conviction of his superior talent gave rise to "War of the Theatres". In The Poetaster (1601), he satirized other writers, chiefly the English dramatists Thomas Dekker and John Marston. Dekker and Marston retaliated by attacking Jonson in their Satiromastix (1601). The plot of Satiromastix was mainly overshadowed by its abuse of Jonson. Jonson had portrayed himself as Horace in The Poetaster, and in Satiromastix Marston and Dekker, as Demetrius and Crispinus ridicule Horace, presenting Jonson as a vain fool. Eventually, the writers patched their feuding; in 1604 Jonson collaborated with Dekker on The King's Entertainment and with Marston and George Chapman on Eastward Ho.
Jonson's next play, the classical tragedy Sejanus, His Fall (1603), based on Roman history and offering an astute view of dictatorship, again got Jonson into trouble with the authorities. Jonson was called before the Privy Council on charges of 'popery and treason'. Jonson did not, however, learn a lesson, and was again briefly imprisoned, with Marston and Chapman, for controversial views ("something against the Scots") espoused in Eastward Ho (1604). These two incidents jeopardized his emerging role as court poet to King James I. Having converted to Catholicism, Jonson was also the object of deep suspicion after the Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes (1605).
In 1605, Jonson began to write masques for the entertainment of the court. The earliest of his masques, The Satyr was given at Althorpe, and Jonson seems to have been appointed Court Poet shortly after. The masques displayed his erudition, wit, and versatility and contained some of his best lyric poetry. Masque of Blacknesse (1605) was the first in a series of collaborations with Inigo Jones, noted English architect and set designer. This collaboration produced masques such as The Masque of Owles, Masque of Beauty (1608), and Masque of Queens (1609), which were performed in Inigo Jones' elaborate and exotic settings. These masques ascertained Jonson's standing as foremost writer of masques in the Jacobean era. The collaboration with Jones was finally destroyed by intense personal rivalry.
Jonson's enduring reputation rests on the comedies written between 1605 and 1614. The first of these, Volpone, or The Fox (performed in 1605-1606, first published in 1607) is often regarded as his masterpiece. The play, though set in Venice, directs its scrutiny on the rising merchant classes of Jacobean London. The following plays, Epicoene: or, The Silent Woman (1609), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fair (1614) are all peopled with dupes and those who deceive them. Jonson's keen sense of his own stature as author is represented by the unprecedented publication of his Works, in folio, in 1616. He was appointed as poet laureate and rewarded a substantial pension in the same year.
In 1618, when he was about forty-five years old, Jonson set out for Scotland, the home of his ancestors. He made the journey entirely by foot, in spite of dissuasion from Bacon, who "said to him he loved not to see poesy go on other feet than poetical dactyls and spondæus." Jonson's prose style is vividly sketched in the notes of William Drummond of Hawthornden, who recorded their conversations during Jonson's visit to Scotland 1618-1619. Jonson himself was sketched by Hawthornden: " He is a great lover and praiser of himself ; a contemner and scorner of others ; given rather to lose a friend than a jest ; . . . he is passionately kind and angry ; careless either to gain or keep ; vindictive, but, if he be well answered, at himself . . . ; oppressed with fantasy, which hath ever mastered his reason."1 After his return, Jonson received an honorary Master of Arts degree from Oxford University and lectured on rhetoric at Gresham College, London.
The comedy The Devil is an Ass (1616) had turned out to be a comparative flop. This may have discouraged Jonson, for it was nine years before his next play, The Staple of News (1625), was produced. Instead, Jonson turned his attention to writing masques. Jonson's later plays The New Inn (1629) and A Tale of a Tub (1633) were not great successes, described harshly, but perhaps justly by Dryden as his "dotages."
Despite these apparent failures, and in spite of his frequent feuds, Jonson was the dean and the leading wit of the group of writers who gathered at the Mermaid Tavern in the Cheapside district of London. The young poets influenced by Jonson were the self-styled 'sons' or 'tribe' of Ben, later called the Cavalier poets, a group which included, among others, Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, and Richard Lovelace.
Jonson was appointed City Chronologer of London in 1628, the same year in which he suffered a severe stroke. His loyal friends kept him company in his final years and attended the King provided him some financial comfort. Jonson died on August 6, 1637 and was buried in Westminster Abbey under a plain slab on which was later carved the words, "O Rare Ben Jonson!" His admirers and friends contributed to the collection of memorial elegies, Jonsonus virbius, published in 1638. Jonson's last play, Sad Shepherd's Tale, was left unfinished at his death and published posthumously in 1641.
Related link:
1. Volpone
2. Summary of Volpone
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Summary: Volpone Act V, Sc I - III
Act V, scene i–scene iiiBy: Sparknotes
Summary
Act V, scene iVolpone returns home after the drama at the Scrutineo, tired. He declares that he has grown tired of his con and wishes it were over. Pretending to be sick in public has made some of the symptoms he has been falsely presenting, such as cramps and palsy (tremors), feel all too real. The thought that he might actually be getting sick depressed and frightens him; to banish it he takes two strong drinks and calls Mosca.
Act V, scene ii
Volpone calls Mosca and informs him that he wants to be over with the con. They discuss how well the entire con went off and congratulate themselves on being so erudite, so brave, and so clever. Mosca advises that Volpone should stop his life of trickery here, for he will never outdo himself. Volpone seems to agree, and the begin discussing the matter of payment to Voltore for his services, something that Mosca insists on. But Volpone suddenly decides to carry out one final joke on the legacy hunters. He calls in Castrone and Nano, and tells them to run through the streets, informing everyone that Volpone is dead. He then tells Mosca to wear his clothes and to pretend that Volpone has named him the heir to the estate when the legacy hunters arrive, using an authentic will naming Mosca as heir. Mosca remarks on how distraught all four of the people involved in the deceit at the Scrutineo—Voltore, Corbaccio, Corvino, and Lady Politic—will be when they come to believe that Mosca has been chosen over them. Soon, Voltore arrives, and Volpone hides behind a curtain.
Act V, scene iii
Voltore enters to find Mosca making an inventory. Thinking that the property is now his, he praises Mosca's hard work. He takes the will in order to read it. Corbaccio, clearly near death, is carried in by his servants. Corvino soon after enters, and soon Lady Politic Would-be enters too. All the while, Mosca continues to take an inventory of Volpone's property. All four characters then read the will; they understandably react with shock, and demand an explanation. Mosca replies to each of them in turn, reminding them in a short speech of the lies and other immoral acts each of them committed. Lady Politic apparently offered to provide Mosca with sexual favours in return for Volpone's estate. Corvino, of course, unjustly declared his wife an adulterer and himself a cuckold; Corbaccio disinherited his son. For Voltore, Mosca is somewhat sympathetic; he expresses sincere regret that Voltore will not be made heir. After Mosca is finished to talking to a character, that character leaves. After Voltore leaves, Mosca and Volpone are again alone, and Volpone congratulates Mosca on a job well done. Volpone wants to gloat directly in the faces of the four dupes, so Mosca suggests that he disguise himself as a commandadore (a sergeant or guard), and approach them on the street. Volpone congratulates Mosca on his excellent idea.
Analysis
The intention of Jonson throughout the play has been to satirize greed in all its forms. At first, Volpone was the instrument of Jonson's satire; he turned the greed of the legacy hunters against itself, creating a situation where greed resulted in not only a complete loss of dignity on the part of the legacy hunters but also, ironically, the loss of the very thing they were seeking to gain: money. But now, Volpone has succumbed to his own form of greed; greed driven by his private desires and appetites for Celia. Because of this, he has defamed two innocent characters, Celia and Bonario. In the moral universe of Jonson's comedy, this transgression cannot go unpunished or uncommented upon; Celia and Bonario were guilty of nothing except dullness; their imprisonment is, to put it simply, "not funny". So Volpone is no longer the instrument of Jonson's satire. In fact, he is now made the target of it, and the attack proceeds, again, through irony.
A central motif in the final act is that of the disguise-made-reality; Volpone has convinced so many people of his lies that his falsehoods now come to stand in the public sphere as truth, with terrible consequences for Volpone. Volpone wishes to be done with his con-game clearly indicates his wish to be done with his con-game, but we receive indications that it will not be so simple, that the lies Volpone has told are too powerful and too widely accepted to simply disappear. He returns from the senate complaining of cramps and aches that roughly coincide with those he has been imitating; the "cramp" and the "palsy," which he had mocked Corbaccio for succumbing to in Act I. These may be indications of a guilty conscience; but they also stand as a metaphor for the way in which Volpone has successfully blurred the line between lies and reality. Again, we can use the metaphor of stagecraft here: in Act IV, Volpone crosses boundary between the "stage" (Volpone's private life) and "reality" (the public realm of the Scrutineo), by carrying his "play" into the world and appearing sick in public. Ironically, it is at this moment that Volpone impulsively decides to kill himself off, and he does it using the medium of the playwright, the written word (the will).
So when Volpone thinks he is writing himself out of his deceitful game, his "play," he is actually writing himself out of reality altogether. The "exit from reality" occurs when Volpone goes behind the arras, he for a moment becomes a member of the audience of Volpone, the drama written by Ben Jonson; in other words, he is a spectator, not a participant, in his own life. Mosca, at this stage, assumes Volpone's role both as the center of the play's action and as its (admittedly dubious) moral voice; it is he who scolds each legacy hunter in turn for their hypocrisy. Volpone delights-almost sadistically—in the vindictiveness with which Mosca reminds each character of the callous and immoral acts they committed in the pursuit of Volpone's treasure. But the irony of the situation is encapsulated by Volpone's statement "Rare, Mosca! How his villainy becomes him!" which foreshadows the events later in the act.
Related link: Summary of Volpone
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Summary: Volpone by Ben Johnson
Plot OverviewThe following note is a note which tell about the summary of Benjamin Johnson's Drama entitled Volpone. Volpone was published in 1606. I copy this note from google site that is
sparknotes. If you are interested about it you may read or copy it. Volpone takes place in seventeenth-century Venice, over the course of one day. The play opens at the house of Volpone, a Venetian nobleman. He and his "parasite" Mosca—part slave, part servant, part lackey—enter the shrine where Volpone keeps his gold. Volpone has amassed his fortune, we learn, through dishonest means: he is a con artist. And we also learn that he likes to use his money extravagantly.
Soon, we see Volpone's latest con in action. For the last three years, he has been attracting the interest of three legacy hunters: Voltore, a lawyer; Corbaccio, an old gentleman; and Corvino, a merchant—individuals interested in inheriting his estate after he dies. Volpone is known to be rich, and he is also known to be childless, have no natural heirs. Furthermore, he is believed to very ill, so each of the legacy hunters lavishes gifts on him, in the hope that Volpone, out of gratitude, will make him his heir. The legacy hunters do not know that Volpone is actually in excellent health and merely faking illness for the purpose of collecting all those impressive "get-well" gifts.
In the first act, each legacy hunter arrives to present a gift to Volpone, except for Corbaccio, who offers only a worthless (and probably poisoned) vial of medicine. But Corbaccio agrees to return later in the day to make Volpone his heir, so that Volpone will return the favor. This act is a boon to Volpone, since Corbaccio, in all likelihood, will die long before Volpone does. After each hunter leaves, Volpone and Mosca laugh at each's gullibility. After Corvino's departure Lady Politic Would-be, the wife of an English knight living in Venice, arrives at the house but is told to come back three hours later. And Volpone decides that he will try to get a close look at Corvino's wife, Celia, who Mosca describes as one of the most beautiful women in all of Italy. She is kept under lock and key by her husband, who has ten guards on her at all times, but Volpone vows to use disguise to get around these barriers.
The second act portrays a time just a short while later that day, and we meet Sir Politic Would-be, Lady Politic's husband, who is conversing with Peregrine, an young English traveler who has just landed in Venice. Sir Politic takes a liking to the young boy and vows to teach him a thing or two about Venice and Venetians; Peregrine, too, enjoys the company of Sir Politic, but only because he is hilariously gullible and vain. The two are walking in the public square in front of Corvino's house and are interrupted by the arrival of "Scoto Mantua," actually Volpone in diguise as an Italian mountebank, or medicine-show man. Scoto engages in a long and colorful speech, hawking his new "oil", which is touted as a cure-all for disease and suffering. At the end of the speech, he asks the crows to toss him their handkerchiefs, and Celia complies. Corvino arrives, just as she does this, and flies into a jealous rage, scattering the crows in the square. Volpone goes home and complains to Mosca that he is sick with lust for Celia, and Mosca vows to deliver her to Volpone. Meanwhile, Corvino berates his wife for tossing her handkerchief, since he interprets it as a sign of her unfaithfulness, and he threatens to murder her and her family as a result. He decrees that, as punishment, she will now no longer be allowed to go to Church, she cannot stand near windows (as she did when watching Volpone), and, most bizarrely, she must do everything backwards from now on–she must even walk and speak backwards. Mosca then arrives, implying to Corvino that if he lets Celia sleep with Volpone (as a "restorative" for Volpone's failing health), then Volpone will choose him as his heir. Suddenly, Corvino's jealousy disappears, and he consents to the offer.
The third act begins with a soliloquy from Mosca, indicating that he is growing increasingly conscious of his power and his independence from Volpone. Mosca then runs into Bonario, Corbaccio's son, and informs the young man of his father's plans to disinherit him. He has Bonario come back to Volpone's house with him, in order to watch Corbaccio sign the documents (hoping that Bonario might kill Corbaccio then and there out of rage, thus allowing Volpone to gain his inheritance early). Meanwhile Lady Politic again arrives at Volpone's residence, indicating that it is now mid-morning, approaching noon. This time, Volpone lets her in, but he soon regrets it, for he is exasperated by her talkativeness. Mosca rescues Volpone by telling the Lady that Sir Politic has been seen in a gondola with a courtesan (a high-class prostitute). Volpone then prepares for his seduction of Celia, while Mosca hides Bonario in a corner of the bedroom, in anticipation of Corbaccio's arrival. But Celia and Corvino arrive first—Celia complains bitterly about being forced to be unfaithful, while Corvino tells her to be quiet and do her job. When Celia and Volpone are alone together, Volpone greatly surprises Celia by leaping out of bed. Celia had expected and old, infirm man, but what she gets instead is a lothario who attempts to seduce her with a passionate speech. Always the good Christian, Celia refuses Volpone's advances, at which point Volpone says that he will rape her. But Bonario, who has been witnessing the scene from his hiding place the entire time, rescues Celia. Bonario wounds Mosca on his way out. Corbaccio finally arrives, too late, as does Voltore. Mosca plots, with Voltore's assistance, how to get Volpone out of this mess.
A short while later, in the early afternoon, Peregrine and Sir Politic are still talking. Sir Politic gives the young traveler some advice on living in Venice and describes several schemes he has under consideration for making a great deal of money. They are soon interrupted by Lady Politic, who is convinced that Peregrine is the prostitute Mosca told her about—admittedly, in disguise. But Mosca arrives and tells Lady Politic that she is mistaken; the courtesan he referred to is now in front of the Senate (in other words, Celia). Lady Politic believes him and ends by giving Peregrine a seductive goodbye with a coy suggestion that they see each other again. Peregrine is incensed at her behavior and vows revenge on Sir Politic because of it. The scene switches to the Scrutineo, the Venetian Senate building, where Celia and Bonario have informed the judges of Venice about Volpone's deceit, Volpone's attempt to rape Celia, Corbaccio's disinheritance of his son, and Corvino's decision to prostitute his wife. But the defendants make a very good case for themselves, led by their lawyer, Voltore. Voltore portrays Bonario and Celia as lovers, Corvino as an innocent jilted husband, and Corbaccio as a wounded father nearly killed by his evil son. The judge are swayed when Lady Politic comes in and (set up perfectly by Mosca) identifies Celia as the seducer of her husband Sir Politic. Further, they are convinced when Volpone enters the courtroom, again acting ill. The judges order that Celia and Bonario be arrested and separated.
In the final act, Volpone returns home tired and worried that he is actually growing ill, for he is now feeling some of the symptoms he has been faking. To dispel his fears, he decides to engage in one final prank on the legacy hunters. He spreads a rumor that he has died and then tells Mosca to pretend that he has been made his master's heir. The plan goes off perfectly, and all three legacy hunters are fooled. Volpone then disguises himself as a Venetian guard, so that he can gloat in each legacy hunter's face over their humiliation, without being recognized. But Mosca lets the audience know that Volpone is dead in the eyes of the world and that Mosca will not let him "return to the world of the living" unless Volpone pays up, giving Mosca a share of his wealth.
Meanwhile, Peregrine is in disguise himself, playing his own prank on Sir Politic. Peregrine presents himself as a merchant to the knight and informs Politic that word has gotten out of his plan to sell Venice to the Turks. Politic, who once mentioned the idea in jest, is terrified. When three merchants who are in collusion with Peregrine knock on the door, Politic jumps into a tortoise-shell wine case to save himself. Peregrine informs the merchants when they enter that he is looking at a valuable tortoise. The merchants decide to jump on the tortoise and demand that it crawls along the floor. They remark loudly upon its leg-garters and fine hand-gloves, before turning it over to reveal Sir Politic. Peregrine and the merchants go off, laughing at their prank, and Sir Politic moans about how much he agrees with his wife's desire to leave Venice and go back to England.
Meanwhile, Volpone gloats in front of each legacy hunter, deriding them for having lost Volpone's inheritance to a parasite such as Mosca, and he successfully avoids recognition. But his plan backfires nonetheless. Voltore, driven to such a state of distraction by Volpone's teasing, decides to recant his testimony in front of the Senate, implicating both himself but more importantly Mosca as a criminal. Corvino accuses him of being a sore loser, upset that Mosca has inherited Volpone's estate upon his death, and the news of this death surprises the Senators greatly. Volpone nearly recovers from his blunder by telling Voltore, in the middle of the Senate proceeding, that "Volpone" is still alive. Mosca pretends to faint and claims to the Senate that he does not know where he is, how he got there, and that he must have been possessed by a demon during the last few minutes when he was speaking to them. He also informs the Senators that Volpone is not dead, contradicting Corvino. All seems good for Volpone until Mosca returns, and, instead of confirming Voltore's claim that Volpone is alive, Mosca denies it. Mosca, after all, has a will, written by Volpone and in his signaure, stating that he is Volpone's heir. now that Volpone is believed to be dead, Mosca legally owns Volpone's property, and Mosca tells Volpone that he is not going to give it back by telling the truth. Realizing that he has been betrayed, Volpone decides that rather than let Mosca inherit his wealth, he will turn them both in. Volpone takes off his disguise and finally reveals the truth about the events of the past day. Volpone ends up being sent to prison, while Mosca is consigned to a slave galley. Voltore is disbarred, Corbaccio is stripped of his property (which is given to his son Bonario), and Corvino is publicly humiliated, forced to wear donkey's ears while being rowed around the canals of Venice. At the end, there is a small note from the playwright to the audience, simply asking them to applaud if they enjoyed the play they just saw.
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Irony in Jane Austen's Novel
The Use of Irony in Jane Austen's NovelIn the context of Austen, irony is best understood as a mode of expression that calls into question the way things appear. As Marvin Mudrick remarks, ‘irony ... consists in the discrimination between impulse and pretension, between being and seeming, between ... man as he is and man as he aspires to be’ (3). irony, he adds, is not always comic: ‘it becomes comic when its very neutrality is exploited as a kind of relief from man's conventional response of outrage and involvement toward delusion and error’ (3). Austen, however, used irony for satiric as well as comic effect. Often, then, the ironic comments in her novels do more than expose her characters' misguided assumptions; irony helps her condemn the social norms that help foster such beliefs.
In Austen's novels, irony can appear in innumerable ways. It can occur during a verbal exchange. For instance, in Sense and Sensibility, this is how Elinor defends Colonel Brandon's use of a flannel waistcoat: ‘Had he been only in a violent fever, you would not have despised him half so much. Confess, Marianne, is not there something interesting to you in the flushed cheek, hollow eye, and quick pulse of a fever?’ (Austen, Sense 38). Obviously, the real object of Elinor's remark is to reveal the absurdity of Marianne's romantic sensibilities. Sometimes Austen's irony is visual. For example, in Emma, the fact that Emma blithely idealizes a portrait of Harriet Smith underscores the fact that Emma imagines much that is not true about her new friend. Austen's irony may also depend upon a disparity between what can be seen and what is invisible. Willoughby's ‘person and air’ are ‘equal to what [Marianne's] fancy had ever drawn for the hero of a favourite story’ (Austen, Sense 43); however, he behaves like a cad. The disparity between Willoughby's appearance and character calls into question readers' assumptions about what heroes ought to look like and casts doubt onto novels that glorify excessive sensibility.
In Emma, the heroine's ignorance of her own heart is suggested thus:
Emma continued to entertain no doubt of her being in love [with Frank Churchill]. Her ideas only varied as to the how much. At first, she thought it was a good deal; and afterwards, but little. She had great pleasure in hearing Frank Churchill talked of ... she was very often thinking of him, and quite impatient for a letter. ... But, on the other hand, she could not admit herself to be unhappy, nor, after the first morning, to be less disposed for employment than usual; she was still busy and cheerful; and, pleasing as he was, she could yet imagine him to have faults. [Austen, Emma 264]
By the end of this passage, the only thing more apparent than Emma's indifference to Frank Churchill is the absurdity of her criteria for judging the extent of her own affections. As Rachel Brownstein points out, the danger facing Emma, and all of Austen's heroines, is that they may ‘let the right man and the chance for action pass them by’ (90). Consequently, she adds, the happy conclusions of the novels depend upon the heroines' ability to know their own hearts and to interpret the world around them correctly (91). Often, as in Sense and Sensibility or Emma, this requires that the heroines reject romantic conventions. Despite her earlier prejudice against them, Marianne finally realizes that second attachments may actually work while Emma eventually accepts the difference between her real and imagined worlds.
Emma is a story about how a girl learns to be kind. Set on a pedestal by virtue of her social position, spoiled by her father, Emma ‘dangerously imagines herself a splendid free young goddess whose connection to most people is an amused puppeteer's’ (Brownstein 104). Throughout the novel, Emma gradually learns that she is like everyone else. However, until she learns to value and join a community, the third-person narration mercilessly exposes Emma's delusions and satirizes the social conventions that nurture them.
Austen herself wrote that Emma was a heroine that ‘no one but myself will much like’ (quoted in Austen-Leigh 157), and to all intents, she should have been right.
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Essay: Self-deception in Jane Austen's Emma
Emma as a Novel of Self-deceptionBy:
Penguin ClassicIntroductionThough her novels are known for their relatively small scale and controlled emotion, few authors inspire such extremes of feeling as Jane Austen. Self-professed "Janeites" form societies in her honor, while detractors call her fiction insular and trivial. Because Austen's name and a general idea of the world of her fiction are common cultural currency, it is difficult for readers to approach her novels without preconceptions but essential that they do so to appreciate her art. Emma opens as if it will be a simple narrative about a young woman who is "handsome, clever, and rich" (p. 7), but it becomes instead a penetrating study of the human capacity for self-deception, self-knowledge, and love.
The novel is dominated by Emma Woodhouse, a young woman who possesses great social and personal advantages but no awareness of her limitations. We learn in the opening chapter that Emma has "lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her" (p. 7)—an indication that something soon will. The story's action begins when Isabella Taylor, Emma's former governess and current companion, leaves the household to marry. Long motherless, Emma is now left with only a well-meaning father who imposes no restraint on her.
One of the most important lessons Emma must learn is the folly of plotting the fates of others. She begins the novel determined to "improve" and make a brilliant marriage for Harriet Smith, the illegitimate young woman new to Highbury. Emma believes she is acting solely for Harriet's benefit, but the narrator makes clear Emma's unacknowledged motives. Emma declares matchmaking "the greatest amusement in the world!" (p. 13), and her failure to take seriously the marriage market's strictures leads to Harriet's humiliation and threatens her with permanent unhappiness. Emma cannot see the intentions of Mr. Elton and Frank Churchill, believing both are smitten with Harriet even as clues to their true feelings abound. Why is Harriet's future so important to Emma that she is blind to many of the realities of her world, even disregarding the warnings of her old friend Mr. Knightley?
If Emma represents a restless personality often impatient with social expectations, Mr. George Knightley embodies the rational embrace of those expectations. Sixteen years older than Emma, Mr. Knightley is the only character in the novel able to see Emma's faults and rebuke her for them. He warns Emma that her friendship with Harriet will harm both of them and predicts that Mr. Elton will never marry a woman who is not his social equal. When, despite Emma's efforts, Mr. Elton proposes to her rather than to Harriet and, rebuffed, goes on to marry the socially superior if personally odious Miss Hawkins, Emma is shocked, but not enlightened. Mr. Knightley's coolness toward newcomer Frank Churchill, whose impetuousness and flirtatious manner attracts Emma, distances them further. Because the reader understands early on that it is Mr. Knightley who loves Emma and whom she loves, we wonder when she will realize this.
Austen never allows us to forget how high the stakes are for marriageable young women, whose only power in this society is consenting to or refusing the men they attract. A woman's social, economic, and emotional future is almost wholly determined by her marriage, as illustrated by the marriages of Mr. Elton and Miss Hawkins, Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax, and Robert Martin and Harriet Smith. Emma's own development is revealed primarily through her reactions to her romantic prospects. In the course of the novel she receives a proposal from Mr. Elton, which she refuses; recognizes that she does not want to marry Frank Churchill if he asks her; and, at long last, realizes that it is Mr. Knightley she loves.
Emma's final realization is delayed until the last chapter, when a group outing to Box Hill leads her to reassess Frank, Knightley, and herself. Led on by Frank's flirtatiousness, Emma makes a joke at the expense of her old friend Miss Bates, an aging spinster whose prolix rambling irritates Emma. Despite Miss Bates's blushing embarrassment, Emma does not realize she has pained her friend until Mr. Knightley asks, "How could you be so insolent in your wit to a woman of her character, age, and situation?" (p. 351). Mr. Knightley's rebuke awakens Emma to the reality of social status, and to her unthinking abuse of her advantages over Miss Bates. Emma can no longer ignore Mr. Knightley's advice; he has shown her where her attitudes lead.
Whether Austen's novels endorse or critique the class system that they depict has been the subject of much scholarly debate. Emma's marriage to Mr. Knightley weds high social status to worth of character. Yet the novel also makes us aware of how often social class and true worth are not united. Mr. and Mrs. Elton, for example, are in every way but social status far inferior to Robert Martin and Harriet Smith. Does Austen's depiction of the range of worth within each social class imply criticism of the class system itself?
Emma also illustrates the potential conflicts between an ethical life and society's demands. Emma and Mr. Knightley's marriage unites the two, but the convoluted plot leading to it implies the unlikeliness of such a pairing. The novel suggests that true communication and real connections between people are difficult to achieve. The misunderstandings that drive much of the plot, while superficially comic, also highlight the disasters that can result from miscommunication. To what extent misunderstandings are inevitable and to what extent they result from a society's way of organizing itself is a puzzle that lingers long after we lay the book aside.
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Dedication, Argument, and Prologue
