Volpone critical opinion

Question 1

“the link between the main plot and the sub plot is tenuous”

Answer 1

Diane Maybank on the link between the main and sub-plot

Question 2

“In its concentration on English folly as opposed to Italian vice it provides a foil for the grimmer main plot”

Answer 2

Diane Maybank on the sub plot as relief

Question 3

“Sir Pol can be seen as a comic distortion of Volpone”

Answer 3

Diane Maybank on the link between Volpone and Sir Poltic

Question 4

“Their (Sir Pol/LWB) marital roles are reversed, LWB having the upper hand”

Answer 4

Diane Maybank on confusion of gender in the sub plot

Question 5

“The ending of the sub plot in some ways reflects the ending of the main plot”

Answer 5

Diane Maybank on the link between the endings of the main and sub-plot

Question 6

“they provide a geographical bridge between the world of the play and the world of an audience,

Answer 6

Diane Maybank on the importance of the English in Volpone

Question 7

-connection on a ‘thematic level’

Answer 7

Jonas A. Barish on connection between main and sub plot -

Question 8

• Mosca functions as a conventional vice figure often found in Medieval and Renaissance literature

Answer 8

Glynne Wickham

Question 9

• Jonson attempts to generate moral impulses in his audience by dramatising a world which has lost all ability to do so

Answer 9

Hiscock on Johnson’s provocative writing

Question 10

…the entire ambience of the play undergoes a profound change

Answer 10

A critic on the rape scene as a watershed

Question 11

Jonson’s characterisations enable the audience to understand…the same feat was later accomplished in poetry with Milton’s Satan

Answer 11

Campbell on Jonson’s characterisation of the evil doers

Question 12

• Volpone is a satanic challenger to God’s order and society

Answer 12

Knapp on Volpone as a challenge to society

Question 13

Competitive masculine energies are displayed by most of the major characters

Answer 13

Huebert on masculinity

Question 14

Celia is a strong minded character who plays not only a pivotal role in the plot but an important thematic one as well

Answer 14

Maus on Celia

Question 15

The audience in Tyrone Guthrie’s 1964 in Minneapolis famously applauded the rape

Answer 15

McEvoy on the Minneapolis audience

Question 16

Jonson found to his annoyance that some playgoers thought Volpone’s treatment too harsh for comedy…presumably due partly to admiration for the daring and panache of the rogue

Answer 16

A critic on Jonson’s audiences’ favouring of Volpone

Question 17

Jonson’s characters take the classics far less seriously than Jonson did and this explains how the behaviour of those characters often falls short of classical ideals

Answer 17

Lyne on the character’s contempt for the classics

Question 18

Not only are the theatrical skills of Volpone and Mosca expertly deployed to the maximum profit of the play; we also see a delight in self-transformation which cannot be separated from the energy of capitalist accumulation…

Answer 18

McEvoy on the relationship between capital accumalation and self-transformation