I wish / that the cultured and charitable critic has so much faith in me / as to think that it was made by industry. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on " Why should violent video games not be banned"? Get an original essay: Ben Jonson, lines 110-112 of the prefatory epistle to Volpone Ben Jonson's play Volpone, or "Sly Fox", was first performed on stage in London in 1605. It marked a moment of both critical and popular success for Jonson that led to a decade of his greatest successes as a playwright. Jonson's next play to be produced was Epicene, or “The Silent Woman.” , in 1609; the two plays, curiously juxtaposed in chronological order, also share a strangely similar dramatic arc, at least until their respective epilogues. Essentially, both plays are driven by deception (or, as Jonson's Volpone defines it, by “ gullage” (V.xi.12)) used for reasons of financial or sexual gain, but often also just for fun. Yet in Volpone the cheaters, although initially successful, are discovered and punished rather severely, while in the later Epicene each deception is paid off quite completely and without significant setbacks. Why, then, does Jonson choose to so unreservedly penalize one group of swindlers while rewarding the other trio engaged in a similar occupation? And why, again, when the means and ends of the two groups are, at least on the surface, so similar? Volpone focuses on the elderly, miserly, magnificent titular, or Venetian nobleman, and his plans to increase his already vast wealth. He does this by pretending to be on his deathbed while his clever and perceptive "parasite" (Ii68), Mosca, coordinates the arrivals, departures, and gift exchanges of three other nobles. Each of the nobles is led to believe that they, in exchange for their servile gifts, will be named heirs of the supposedly dying and decidedly childless Volpone and that their gifts will "then return / tenfold upon them" (Ii80-81). A subplot later reveals that Volpone's lust extends to fleshier goals than mere gold, and Mosca manages to get one of the three nobles to offer up his wife, Celia, the target of Volpone's desires. The agreement fails due to the resistance of the virtuous woman and the unexpected intervention of Bonario, son of one of the other nobles. Nonetheless, Mosca skillfully seduces all three would-be heirs in the next embarrassing and perjury-filled scene, in which they turn against their son, wife, and themselves at Mosca's mere suggestion. The maneuvers of Volpone and Mosca, from that moment, transform into simple harassment towards these "seagulls" in Act V. Volpone, short-sighted and in a state of questionable sobriety, decides to have him declared dead, telling Mosca to present himself as the heir, simply to “torture them more” (V.iii.106). Epicene similarly addresses a question of legacy regarding the major arc of the drama. In this case, however, it is the heir presumptive, Dauphine, who along with a pair of friends, Truewit and Clerimont, drives the action of the play by attempting to foil her uncle's efforts at marriage for the sake of subsequently fathering a son . The birth of a legitimate child for Dauphine's uncle, Morose, would disinherit Dauphine. However, the trio's methods are rarely direct and are more often, as in Volpone's Act V, focused simply on harassing and distressing the other characters, particularly Morose. With Truewit at the helm, the trio deceives a series of characters into self-degradation and humiliation, whether for the trio's amusement, Dauphine's sexual advancement, or both. Furthermore, much of the action takes place, intentionally, in the house oflonely and noise-hating Morose, to whose house they diverted a party with the express purpose of tormenting him with "many different noises" (II.vi.37). So, while the position of the deceivers is, in some respects, reversed in Epicene (from the old man deceiving potential heirs to the potential heir deceiving the old man), the ultimate goal of deceiving people out of their wealth remains, and on a larger scale the The trajectories of the stories are therefore more or less the same. Likewise, a significant subplot in the main arcs of both plays focuses on Volpone and Dauphine, the intended beneficiaries of the deceptions, who realize their sexual aspirations through the wiles of their colleagues. And finally, both Epicene and Volpone are filled with almost meaningless and unnecessary irritations of many of the show's participants at the hands of the two groups of cheaters. However, these previous paragraphs have only attempted to address the major and nascent actions. of the two comedies, since the comparison does not hold up in the epilogues. The consequences of the actions of the two groups of seagulls are radically different, despite the parallels in their crimes. On the one hand, Mosca and Volpone were finally accused of fraudulent identity theft and imposture respectively and were sentenced to the equivalent of death sentences. Mosca, “being a man without birth or blood” (V.xii.112) is condemned for having worn “the dress of a gentleman of Venice” (V.xii.111), also at the behest of his master, in order to appear as Volpone's heir. Volpone is punished for making money by “feigning lameness, gout, paralysis, and similar diseases” (V.xii.121-122). That Mosca was also guilty of extortion and Volpone of attempted rape matters less, since they were never charged with those crimes and there was little evidence that would fully support any claims on the matter. The question still remains: why does the scythe of judgment rest so squarely on both necks for seemingly harmless crimes? The severity of the punishment for Mosca and Volpone contrasts sharply with the multiple successes of Truewit, Clerimont and Dauphine. That trio manages to secure a guarantee for Dauphine's inheritance, humiliate myriad characters without earning their animosity, and win the affections of every desirable woman for Dauphine to the point that they "persecute him like fairies and give him] Jews - /els” (V.ii.46-47). (In contrast, Volpone is reduced to a failed rape attempt, which in many ways serves as the first indicator of his impending downward spiral.) quarry unscathed. Yet, were they not equally guilty of impersonation, fraud and extortion. Essentially, it would appear that, from a broad view, the first two-thirds of the plots indicate or suggest almost equal culpability for both groups of fraudsters, or at least one less fundamentally abrupt difference in their consequences. However, the texts themselves provide a number of examples or circumstances that make the action less plausible and somewhat justifiable, if not entirely satisfying completely different in kind from those in Volpone, they are at least different in degree. It is also quite clear from the introductory material of the two plays that the author, Jonson, has quite distinct end goals for the two plays and that his hand will, if necessary, force the action to suit his needs or desires (a attribute that (is quite common in the unpredictable and often jarring and angular trajectories of Jonson's plots) In an edition of Volpone published about a decade after its initial staging, Jonson includes a rather long introductory epistle dedicating the operates at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, thanking the institutions for their supportanonymous contemporary colleagues, stating: "it is certain... that the excessive license of the poets in this time has greatly distorted their mistress" (prefatory epistle, 12-14). He defends his game and his goal of acting as “a teacher of things divine as well as human, a master of good manners” (28-29). More specifically, it affirms the fact that Volpone is a moral work - a work that will "inform men about the best reason for living" (108) since "the task of a comic poet [is] to imitate justice and instruct in life " (120-121). Therefore, in this play, Jonson made explicit the task of "mixing profit with pleasure" (Prologue, 8), but above all of keeping at bay those criticisms of his unaware colleagues and, by extension, of theater and poetry in general, against the statement that poets and playwrights “never punish/vice” (prefatory epistle, 115-116). Jonson punishes vice in Volpone even if it means the loss of verisimilitude, credibility, the understood laws of comedy and a happy ending suitable for the audience. Epicene's introductory material, while at the same time stating a desired end of both "profit and pleasure" (Another, 2), seems to show much less concern with conveying a moralistic theme. Morose is the only character who suffers real, tangible loss, and his worst crime is his desire to escape the world and gain an heir. So if you want to draw a moral from this play, it is that you should not live solitary. While not an entirely ridiculous point for Jonson to make, it seems unlikely that an anti-antisocial idea was what drove him to create this play. Indeed, given the play's final twist, in which Morose is revealed to have married a cross-dressing boy chosen by Dauphine, the play is reduced to farce and carries little weight in the realm of morality. And Jonson is also clear that “The ends of all who write for the stage / Are, or ought to be, to profit and delight” (Another, 1-2). So, while Jonson is aware that he “ought” to provide profit to the public, and although perhaps this thought lingers in the back of his mind, his main goal is stated in the first Prologue as the desire to provide entertainment “suitable for women; some for lords, knights, squires, / [But also,] some for thy maid and the city cables, / some for thy men and thy daughters of Whitefriars" (Prologue, 22-24). In Epicene, when Truewit he tricks two of the presumptuous knights into symbolically and publicly castrating themselves (giving up their swords) and severely discrediting their own titles, he attributes the trick to Dauphine. The ladies of the college do not see "Dauphine's" deception of the two knights as malicious or dishonest, even if he seems completely cruel, but they praise his wit and intelligence and are immediately attracted to him. The success of the team of con artists in Epicene is based on mutual respect and friendship, allowing the emergence of a true teamwork. Conversely, despite Volpone's claim that he wishes he could "turn [Moscow] into a Venus" (V.iii .104) to also have him as a sexual partner, he is impressed by his lackey only as Mosca continues to be profitable and submissive. It is an isolating greed that has always existed between the two that allows Moscow's treacherously insatiable greed to bring down everything they had worked for. Mosca, the true spirit of Volpone, incurs the utmost contempt when he discovers that he "had been the prime minister" (V.xii.108), and suffers the harshest punishment as a result. It therefore becomes clear that Jonson's purpose with the two plays were distinct: Volpone served as an anti-greed moralistic guide and Epicene as a long-winded farce about a society.