PL v Volpone Comparison Flashcards
Control and seduction
Eve to Satan – ‘lead then’, ‘say’
Satan to Eve – ‘Goddess humane, reach then, and freely taste’
Corvino – ‘Mine own free motion’
Corbaccio – ‘Mine own project’
Blasphemy
Satan – ‘O sacred, wise and wisdom-giving fruit’
Volpone – ‘Let me kiss, / With adoration, thee, and every relic / Of sacred treasure in this blessed room’
Physical deception
Satan – ‘Circular base of rising folds, that towered / Fold above fold a surging maze’, ‘carbuncle his eyes; / With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect / Amidst his / circling spires’ (then compared to jewels through epic simile) – bejewelled appearance
Volpone – ‘Letting the cherry knock against their lips, / And draw it by their mouths and back again’
Deception by acting
Volpone – ‘But were they gulled with a belief that I was Scoto?’ – Act 2 Scene 2 metatheatrical, with Volpone as actor and Peregrine and Sir Pol as audience
Satan – ‘with show of zeal and love…New part puts on,…in act / Raised’, compared through epic simile to ‘some orator renowned’
Eve – ‘excuse / Came prologue, and apology to prompt’
Love
Adam to Eve – ‘Our state cannot be severed, we are one, / One flesh, to lose thee were to lose myself’
Corvino to Celia – overprotective then prostitutes her
Sir Pol and Lady Would-Be – ‘let loose their wives to all encounters’, Lady Would-Be = promiscuous, symbolised dramatically by Jonson not positioning them together in any scenes other than Act 4 Scene 2
Seduction techniques - isolation and opening lines
Satan – ‘Beyond his hope, Eve separate he spies’
Mosca – ‘Let us depart and leave her here’
Satan – ‘Wonder not, sovereign mistress’
Volpone – ‘Why art thou ‘mazed…rather applaud thy beauty’s miracle’
Seduction techniques - tempting
Satan – says Eve is looked upon by ‘beholders rude’, and should be a ‘goddess among gods, served by angels numberless’
Volpone – ‘Thou hast in place of a base husband found a worthy lover’
Satan – ‘Ye shall be as gods’, uses pastoral, maternal imagery in simile likening the smell of fruit to ‘the teats / Of ewe or goat dropping with milk at even’
Volpone – entices Celia ‘The heads of parrots, tongues of nightingales, / The brains of peacocks’, but Celia ‘Cannot be taken with these sensual baits’ – reversed foot emphasises this
Eve – tempted with power,
Forbidden love
Volpone – ‘angry cupid, bolting from her eyes / Hath shot himself into me like a flame’
Narrator – Adam’s ‘carnal desire inflaming’, Eve’s eye ‘darting contagious fire’, ‘in lust they burn’
Shame
Adam - ‘cover me ye pines, / Ye cedars, with innumerable boughs / Hide me’
Volpone - ‘Fall on me roof, and bury me in ruin! Become my grave, that wert my shelter’
Adam says Eve is ‘Defaced, deflowered, and now to death devote’
Volpone - ‘I am unmasked unspirited, undone’
Laughter
Laughter
PL – ‘They swim in mirth’
Volpone – ‘Oh, I shall burst! / Let out my sides, let out my sides’
Motives for evil
Motives for evil
Satan – ‘from inward grief / His bursting passion into plaints thus poured’
Volpone – ‘I have no wife, parent, child, ally’
Satan – ‘For only in destroying I find ease / To my relentless thoughts’
Volpone – ‘what should I do but cocker up my genius and live free / To all delights’
Evil characters energetically appealing
Satan – ‘by stealth / Found unsuspected way’
Volpone – ‘I gain no common way’
Satan – ‘Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen’
Mosca – ‘I could skip out of my skin, like a subtle snake’
Celia vs Eve contrast
Celia - described as the ‘blazing star of Italy’: destructive beauty that corrupts
Eve - ‘sweet recess of Eve’
Form and general themes PL
A consciously moral poem with acknowledged didactic religious purpose
Clear reference to the Bible and consciously creating a new epic in the style of the Classics
Theoretical sin/simple disobedience/failure of a test
Form and general themes Volpone
Theatrical entertainment with immorality mixed with morality, making moral judgments awkward
Draws from a theatrical tradition of comedy sourced in the commedia dell’arte, continued through renaissance drama
Cornucopia of sin, deceit, lust, pride
