Volpone/ WOB Criticism

Question 1

Mike Brett

Answer 1

‘on a very basic level, Volpone can be considered a trite, but more importantly, instructive comedy’

Question 2

Martin Ingram

Answer 2

Many saw legal system as ‘guilty of corruption and lax administration’ (although went on to prove that this is not entirely true)

Question 3

Neil King

Answer 3

Volpone is a ‘satirical manifestation of inward corruption’

‘Horseplay is rarely free of malice’

Question 4

Spectator 1923

Answer 4

‘The characters represent definite and docketed ‘humours’’

Question 5

Sean McEvoy

Answer 5

Both LPWB and WOB ‘demonstrate that in order to achieve some kind of freedom… [they] must first turn [themselves] into commodities’

Question 6

La Vielle (Romance of the Rose)

Answer 6

‘All men betray and deceive women; all are sensualists, taking their pleasure anywhere. Therefore we should deceive them in return, not fix our hearts on one. Any woman who does so is a fool’

Question 7

Robert Watson

Answer 7

‘Gold replaces God, as it does for Volpone in the opening lines, though it can buy nothing except more gold. Opulent possessions become the new form of demonic possession’

Question 8

Robert Watson (2)

Answer 8

‘The play’s primary satiric target is greed, but it also recognises that greed is merely one facet of the insatiable human desire to continue desiring… and the fundamental human tendency… to live in grandiose egotistical fantasies rather than the real world’

Question 9

S Musgrove

Answer 9

‘Jonson’s aim, in his great satirical comedies, is deeply serious: he is moved by a stern passion of moral indignation at the crimes and follies of men, and his laughter is curative and purgative, not frivolous or accommodating’

Question 10

Jackie Shead

Answer 10

‘Given her uninhibited shamelessness, the Wife reveals much more than she consciously intends- her garrulousness, cunning, infidelities and cruelty.

Question 11

Stephen Lowden

Answer 11

‘Satirical inversion is recognisable everywhere’ (see examples)

Question 12

Stephen Lowden (2)

Answer 12

‘The Wife’s satire is forceful, but she is herself a satirical portrait of boastful, greedy, extravagant aggression… yet she is no mere caricature’

Question 13

Campbell

Answer 13

Volpone is ‘repugnant’ but creates ‘sympathetic understanding’

Question 14

Huebert

Answer 14

‘Competitive masculine energies’

Question 15

McEvoy

Answer 15

‘1964 applauded the rape’