I wish / that the erudite and charitable critic had as much confidence in me / think that this was done by the industry. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"? Get the original essay - Ben Jonson, lines 110-112 of the Preliminary Epistle to VolponeBen Jonson's play, Volpone, or "Sly Fox", was performed for the first time on stage in London in 1605. This marked a moment of both critical and popular success for Jonson which led to a decade of his greatest achievements as a playwright. Jonson's next play was Epicene,. or "The Silent Woman", in 1609; the two plays, interestingly juxtaposed in chronology, also share an eerily similar dramatic arc, at least until their respective denouements. Essentially, both plays are motivated by deception (. or, as Jonson's Volpone puts it, by "gullage" (V.xi.12)) used for financial or sexual gain, although often also just for entertainment. Yet in Volpone the swindlers, although initially successful, are discovered and punished quite severely, while in the later Epicene all deception bears fruit quite fully and without significant setbacks. Why, then, does Jonson choose to unreservedly penalize one group of crooks while rewarding the other trio engaged in similar activity? And why, again, when the means and ends of the two groups are, at least in appearance, so similar? Volpone focuses on the titular, aging and miserly Venetian nobleman and his plans to increase his already considerable wealth. He does this by pretending to be on his deathbed while his very adept and perceptive "parasite" (Ii68), Mosca, coordinates the comings and goings and gifts of three other nobles. Each of the nobles is led to believe that in exchange for their flattering gifts, they will be named heirs of the supposedly dying and decidedly childless Volpone, and that their gifts will then "return / upon them tenfold" (Ii80-81). A subplot later reveals that Volpone's lust extends to meatier targets than simple gold, and Mosca manages to arrange for one of the three nobles to offer his wife, Celia, the object of the desires of Volpone. The arrangement fails due to the resistance of the virtuous woman and the unexpected intervention of Bonario, the son of one of the other nobles. Nevertheless, Mosca shrewdly lures the three potential heirs into the ensuing embarrassing and perjury-filled courtroom scene, in which they turn on their son, their wife, and themselves at Mosca's mere suggestion. Volpone and Mosca's stratagems now turn into simple harassment of these "seagulls" in Act V. Volpone, with little foresight and in a state of questionable sobriety, decides to have him declared dead, telling Mosca of presenting himself as the heir, simply to “torment them further” (V.iii.106). Epicene similarly addresses a question of inheritance with respect to the major arc of the drama. In this case, however, it is the heir apparent, Dauphine, who, along with two friends, Truewit and Clerimont, propels the action of the play by attempting to thwart her uncle's marriage efforts in order to beget then a child. The birth of a legitimate son to Dauphine's uncle, Morose, would disinherit Dauphine. Nevertheless, the trio's methods are rarely direct and are more often, as in Volpone's Act V, focused simply on harassing and distressing other characters, particularly Morose. With Truewit at the helm, the trio incite a number of characters into self-degradation and humiliation, either for the trio's amusement or tothe sexual advancement of Dauphine, or for both. Furthermore, much of the action takes place, purposefully, in the house of the lonely, noise-hating Morose, at whose house they have thrown a party with the express purpose of tormenting him with "so much noise" (II .vi.37). ). So even though the position of the deceivers is, in some ways, reversed Epicene (from the old man deceiving the potential heirs to the potential heir deceiving the old man), the ultimate goal of deceiving people and taking away their wealth remains, and on the broadest scale, the trajectories of the stories are therefore more or less the same. Likewise, an important subplot in the main arcs of both plays focuses on Volpone and Dauphine, the intended beneficiaries of the deceptions, realizing their sexual aspirations through the wiles of their colleagues. And, finally, both Epicene and Volpone are plagued by almost pointless and unnecessary aggravation of many of the play's participants from both sets of tricksters. However, these previous paragraphs have only sought to deal with the main and rising actions. of the two plays, since the comparison is not verified through their endings. The consequences of the actions of the two groups of kidnappers are radically different, despite the parallels present in their crimes. On the one hand, Mosca and Volpone are ultimately accused of fraudulent identity theft and imposture respectively, and they are sentenced to the equivalent of the death penalty. Mosca, “being a man without birth or blood” (V.xii.112), is condemned for donning “the habit of a gentleman of Venice” (V.xii.111), even at the request of his master , in order to appear as Volpone's heir. Volpone is punished for winning “by feigning lameness, gout, paralysis and other illnesses” (V.xii.121-122). The fact that Mosca was also guilty of extortion and Volpone of attempted rape matters less, since they were never charged with these crimes and there was little evidence that would have fully confirmed their allegations. The question remains, however: why does the scythe of judgment fall so directly on both their necks for seemingly harmless crimes? The severity of the punishment meted out to Mosca and Volpone contrasts sharply with the multiple successes of Truewit, Clerimont and Dauphine. This trio succeeds in obtaining a guarantee for Dauphine's inheritance, in humiliating a myriad of characters without attracting their animosity, and in winning the affection of all the women desirable to Dauphine to the point that "they haunt him like fairies and give him jewels. /els” (V.ii.46-47). (By contrast, Volpone is reduced to a failed rape attempt, which in many ways is an early indicator of his impending downward spiral.). The Epicene trio gets through without any problem. Yet weren’t they also guilty of identity theft, fraud and extortion? Essentially, it would seem that, from a general perspective, the first two-thirds of the plots indicate or suggest almost equal culpability for both groups of crooks. , or at the very least a less fundamentally abrupt difference in their consequences. However, the texts themselves provide a number of examples or circumstances that make the action less implausible and somewhat justifiable, if not entirely satisfactory. And if the actions of the Epicene trio are not entirely different in nature from those of Volpone, they are at least different in degree. It is also clear from the preliminary material of both plays that the author, Jonson, has quite distinct end goals for the two plays and that his hand will force, if necessary, to adapt the action to his needs or desires (a attribute which is quite common in unpredictable trajectories and oftencorners of Jonson's plots). In an edition of Volpone published about a decade after its initial production, Jonson includes a fairly lengthy introductory epistle that dedicates the play to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, thanking the institutions for their support. He then condemns his anonymous contemporaries, asserting: "it is certain... that the excessive license of the poets at that time greatly distorted their mistress" (preliminary epistle, 12-14). He defends his game and his goal of acting as “a master of things divine as well as human, a master of good manners” (28-29). Plushe states in particular that Volpone is a morality play – a play that will “inform men about the best reason to live” (108) because “the function of a comic poet [is] to imitate justice and to instruct society. life” (120-121). Thus, in this play, Jonson made it his explicit mission to "mix profit with your pleasure" (Prologue, 8), but more significantly to withhold criticism from his unwitting colleagues and, by extension, from the theater and the poetry in general, against the assertion that poets and playwrights "never punish vice" (preliminary 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, friendly ending. Epicene's preliminary material, while similarly asserting 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 the desire to flee the world and find an heir. So, if we have to take away one moral from this play, it’s that we shouldn’t live a recluse. Although this is not an entirely ridiculous argument on Jonson's part, it seems unlikely that an antisocial idea drove him to create this piece. In fact, given the play's final twist, in which Morose is discovered to have married a transvestite boy chosen by Dauphine, the play is reduced to a farce and carries little weight in the moral realm. And even Jonson is clear that “the end of all who write for the stage / Are, or should be, profit and pleasure” (Another, 1-2). So, even though Jonson is aware that he "should" bring benefits to the audience, and even though this thought perhaps persists in his mind, his main goal is stated in the first prologue as wanting to provide entertainment "fit for women ; some for the lords, the knights, the squires, / [But also,] some for your waitress and the sons of the city, / Some for your men and daughters of Whitefriars” (Prologue, 22-24). In Epicene, when Truewit tricks two of the arrogant knights into symbolically and publicly castrating themselves (by giving up their swords) and severely discrediting their own titles, he attributes the trick to Dauphine. The ladies of the collegiate church do not view "Dauphine's" deception with the two knights as malicious or deceitful, even though it seems downright cruel, but they praise his wit and skill and are immediately attracted to him. The success of Epicène's team of crooks is based on their mutual respect and friendship, allowing true teamwork to emerge. On the other hand, despite Volpone's assertion that he wished he could "transform [Mosca] into Venus" (V.iii.104) to also have her as a sexual companion, he is only impressed by his lackey to the extent where Mosca continues to be profitable and servile. It is an isolating greed that has always existed between the two that allows Mosca's treacherous and insatiable greed to allow everything they had worked towards to collapse..