Renaissance Literature

Ben Johnson

        Benjamin Jonson was an English playwright, poet, actor, and literary critic, whose artistry exerted a lasting impact upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours.

His major works 

⬛️ A Tale of a Tub

⬛️Volpone of a Tub

⬛️The Masque of Blackness

⬛️Volpone 

⬛️The Alchemist 

⬛️Bartholomew Fair 

Here is some famous works in brief 

⬛️ A Tale of a Tub 

           A Tale of a Tub (play) A Tale of a Tub is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy written by Ben Jonson. The last of his plays to be staged during his lifetime, A Tale of a Tub was performed in 1633 and published in 1640 in the second folio of Jonson's works.

            Although it was questioned sharply by W. W. Greg, the idea that A Tale of A Tub is Jonson's earliest surviving play, antedating even The Case Is Altered, seems to have acquired the status of a fact. Collier was the first to query its chronological position in the posthumous Second Folio of 1640, where it appears between The Magnetic Lady and the unfinished pastoral The Sad Shepherd as Jonson's last complete play. Jonson's Oxford editors, however, are really responsible for what has become widespread acceptance of the notion that, although the dramatist tinkered with this piece of ‘juvenilia’ in the early 1630s in order to make it accommodate a satire on Inigo Jones, and although its first known performance was by Queen Henrietta's Men at The Cockpit in 1633, it should be assigned substantially to the beginning of his career as a dramatist, probably about 1596. In support of this contention, Herford and Simpson point to what they see as two distinct verse styles in the comedy, one Elizabethan and the other typical of late Jonson, the supposedly colourless nature of the characters, and ‘Archaism carried to a point where the allusions would hardly be intelligible in 1633’ (H. & S., vol. IX, p. 275).

In fact, this charming and unjustly neglected play makes sense only when read – in its entirety – as a Caroline work.

⬛️Volpone 

            In the first few scenes of the play, the audience is treated to a display of Volpone's confidence game. First, the lawyer Voltore comes in and presents Volpone with an 'antique plate bought of St. Mark.' To Volpone's face, Voltore wishes 'Would to heaven, I could as well give health to you, as that plate!' Then, privately to Mosca he says, 'Am I inscribed his heir for certain?' Mosca promises him that he is, prompting Voltore to continue, 'But am I sole heir?' Mosca assure him that he is, and he responds 'Happy, happy, me!'

        Next, Corbaccio enters. Not only does Mosca accept a bag of cecchines (valuable coins) from Corbaccio, he also convinces Corbaccio to disinherit his son, Bonario, and name Volpone heir to his estate. Corbaccio agrees to this under the reasoning that sick Volpone will die long before him, so he will actually be doing his son a favor. In reality, Mosca informs the audience that Corbaccio is actually 'more impotent than this [Volpone] can feign to be.'

               Finally, Corvino, a merchant, brings Volpone a diamond and a pearl. When he's gone, the discussion between Volpone and Mosca turns to Corvino's wife, Celia. Mosca informs Volpone that she is the most beautiful woman in Italy. Volpone's covetousness turns suddenly from Corvino's property to Corvino's wife, and he decides that he must see her. He disguises himself as a mountebank - a quack doctor who puts on a show to sell useless medicines - named Scoto of Mantua and performs a medicine show beneath Celia's window.

           Celia drops her handkerchief from her window to make a purchase from the mountebank (who is actually Volpone of course). But then, her husband, Corvino, comes out in a rage. He accuses Scoto of Mantua (not knowing he is Volpone) of trying to cuckold him. The audience sees for the first time here that Corvino is an extremely jealous man and very possessive of Celia.

               In the next scene, Volpone confesses to Mosca that he is in love with Celia. 'Angry Cupid, bolting from her eyes, hath shot himself into me like a flame.' He then asks Mosca to help him steal Corvino's wife! Mosca devises a plan for this. He goes to Corvino and tells him that Scoto of Mantua's oil has cured Volpone. The final part of the doctor's plans, Mosca tells him, is to find a beautiful woman for Volpone to sleep with in order to 'warm his blood.' Still eager to be the heir in Volpone's will, Corvino offers up his own wife: 'the party you wot of shall be my own wife, Mosca.'