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Studying Ben Jonson’s Volpone and Congreve’s
Way of the World as a commentary on avarice
Cheena Chawla
Assistant Professor
Patel Memorial National College
Rajpura
Punjab
Abstract:
The present paper attempts an analysis of Ben Jonson’s comedy of humours ‘Volpone’(1606)
and William Congreve’s ‘The Way of The World’(1700) in terms of avarice. In both comedies,
avarice functions as the intrinsic element in the personalities of various characters and the
primary force guiding their lives to the extent that hoarding money and fortune and devising
plans and schemes to snatch other people’s fortune and property becomes the foremost aim of
their lives. This aspect is brought about substantially through the characters of Volpone, Mosca,
Corvino, Corbaccio, Voltore, Lady Would-be- Politic in Jonson’s ‘Volpone’ and Mr. Fainall
and Mrs. Marwood in Congreve’s ‘The Way of The World’. Depicting that in the end this
avarice and desire to possess more and more become self- destructive and destroy the debased
characters, both the playwrights show their disapproval of avarice.
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Avarice or greed is considered to be a deadly sin according to the Holy Bible :
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that
some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.
(Timothy 6:10, The Holy Bible)
Literary works over the centuries are replete with the themes of greed and depiction of
characters consumed by avarice. Yet the characters in Ben Jonson’s ‘Volpone’(1606) and
William Congreve’s ‘The Way of The World’(1700) find no parallel when it comes to the
portrayal of avarice as the most powerful motivation in their personalities and lives. The
present paper attempts to bring out certain similarities in Ben Jonson’s ‘Volpone’ and William
Congreve’s ‘The Way of the World’. Although representatives of different types of comedyone a comedy of humours, other a restoration comedy of manners, one cannot miss out on
certain glaring similarities between the two plays, the most important being greed and love for
money acting as a major controlling factor guiding the thoughts and actions of the characters.
In the play Volpone, Volpone’s character is completely characterised by greed. The opening
speech of the play is completely illustrative of this:
Good morning to the day; and, next, my gold:
Open the shrine, that I may see my saint
Haile the worls soule, and mine! (ActI sceneI page 2)
Volpone rejects laws of nature and human values in favour of gold. He has made gold his
god, worthy of being worshipped. Donald Gertmenian opines:
Thus Volpone exalts gold above Christian values, above benign nature and her law, above the
laws that govern human society...Volpone turns the world upside down, flouts the solemn
pieties of universal order and swims in delight...we begin to fear the implications of violating
the traditional order. Thus our response is divided between pleasure in Volpone’s lively way
of life, and unease with its immorality (Gertmenian248-49).
To satiate his own greed for gold and wealth, he exploits and plays upon the greed of others.
He does this by trapping them in the false promise of giving away his property to them as
inheritance. In this particular play- the playwright presents a full spectrum of characters like
Mosca,Voltore, Corbaccio and Corvino to show how avarice acts as a powerful agent in
forming and transforming human character.Voltore proves to be a disgrace to his profession,
Corbaccio readily agrees to disinherit his son of his entire wealth and to write the will in
Volpone’s name. Corvino is a very jealous husband as is evident from his treatment of his wife
after the mountebank scene.
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Death of mine honour, with the cities foole!
A juggling, tooth- drawing, prating mountebanke!
And, at a public window!
... and you smile,
Most graciously, And fan your favours forth,
To give your hot spectators satisfaction!(ActIIsceneIII 20-21)
But overpowered by his greed to acquire Volpone’s inheritance, he is even ready to send his
wife Celia to Volpone’s bed and coaxes her for the same:
... if I thought it were a sin,
I would not urge you. ..
... but here, ‘tis contrary,
A pious work, mere charity, for physic,
And honest polity, to assure mine own.(ActIIIsceneIII 31)
Lady Would-be Politic who is Celia’s polar opposite in grace, virtue and piety compromises
her honour and goes to the length of accusing her falsely in court. Mosca too proves himself to
be a true parasite. He completely teams up with his master Volpone and amazes the reader with
the ingenuity of his plans and schemes. Volpone points out, “Rare Mosca! How his villainy
becomes him!”(ActVsceneIIIpg52). He single-handedly manipulates all the legacy hunters and
in the end does not even hesitate to double-cross his master Volpone. And Volpone himself
will be baited with craft for craft by Mosca. Mosca becomes master of his master by double
crossing Volpone:
So, now I have the keys, and am possesst
Since he will needs be dead afore his time,
I’ll bury him, or gain by him.
I’m his heir:...
Let his sport pay for it, this is call’d the Foxe-trap.(ActVsceneIV 54)
Avarice for money acts as a powerful catalyst and makes all the characters (except Bonario and
Celia) perform certain actions which are not becoming of a good human being. It drives a
person to readily become a cuckold, another person to willingly disinherit his son from his will
and yet another person to fight a false case in favour of Volpone thus falsely implicating
Bonario and Celia- the two characters in the entire play who maintain their essential goodness
and righteousness against all odds. Although the play does maintain poetic justice in the end
and concludes with giving justice to all the good and honest characters and harsh punishment
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to the evil-doers. As Harriett Hawkins observes, “The wealth, which throughout the play, has
been described as a cure for all ills is at last seen as a disease:
These possesse wealth, as sick men possesse feuers,
Which, trulyer, may be said to possesse them”(Hawkins346).
Ironically enough, Gold which is the cause of all the deceit, scheming and pain in the play is
sent to the Hospital of the Incurables. Edward B. Partridge here opines, “Jonson uses irony to
expose how far short of the ideal is the world of play and thus celebrates the ideal
indirectly”(Quoted in Gertmenian247).Yet the reader can’t escape the bitter truth strongly
manifested throughout the play- that overcome and captured by avarice, almost all the
characters in the play behave worse than animals and have no qualms in behaving inhumanely
with their fellow beings. Avarice proves to be a great corrupting agent. In this regard,
Congreve’s Way of the World can be regarded as a continuation to Johnson’s view of the
potency of avarice to alter and debase human motivations. Much of the action in the play
revolves around money or Fortune – Lady Wishfort’s, Mrs. Fainall’s and that of Millamant.
Though none of the characters seem to be perfect, Mr. Fainall and Mrs. Marwood are the two
characters who are ready to stoop to any level consumed by greed. The love pair of Mirabell
and Millamant comes as a breath of fresh air in a world where everything revolves around and
is governed by greed and love for money. Mirabell’s character is not flawless but it cannot be
denied that his love for Millamant is steadfast and constant. The same can be said of
Millamant’s love for Mirabell as her confession to Mrs. Fainall is clearly suggestive: “Well, if
Mirabell should not make a good husband, I am a lost thing - for I find I love him
violently.”(Act IV scene I), although she denies it at first to have an upper hand over Mirabell.
In Act IV, she tells Mirabell very confidently:
...There is not so impudent a thing in nature as the saucy look of an assured Man
confident of success. The pedantic arrogance of a very husband has not so pragmatical
an air. Ah, I’ll never marry unless I am first made sure of my will and pleasure.”(Act
IV scene I 150)
But Mirabell wants both Millamant and her fortune. To this end, he hatches a plan of making
Waitwell disguise as Sir Rowland and court Lady Wishfort. Lady Wishfort in her unfathomable
desire for a man, falls prey to the illusion that a man like Mirabell could actually fall head over
heels in love with her. Her reason clouded by her lust, she is not even able to look through
Rowland’s disguise. Mirabell remarks in this regard, “
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An old woman’s appetite is depraved like that of a girl. ‘tis the green- sickness of a
second childhood, and, like the faint offer of a latter spring, serves but to usher in the
fall, and withers in an affected bloom.”(Act II scene II 76)
But Mr. Fainall would not let this happen so easily and surmounts hurdles upon hurdles in
Mirabell’s way. True to a villain’s traits, possessed by greed, jealousy and insecurity, he with
his accomplice Mrs. Marwood tries to disrupt and ruin everybody’s life.
Mrs. Marwood: I will contrive a letter which shall be delivered to my lady at the time
when that rascal who is to act Sir Rowland is with her. It shall come as from an unknown
hand- for the less I appear to know of the truth the better I can play the incendiary.
Besides, I would not have Foible provoked if I could help it, because, you know, she
knows some passages. Nay, I expect all will come out. But let the mine be sprung first,
and then I care not if I am discovered.(Act III scene III 137)
Fainall: If the worst come to the worst, I’ll turn my wife to grass - I have already a deed
of settlement of the best part of the estate, which I wheedled out of her, and that you
shall partake at least.(Act III scene III 137)
Interestingly enough, Mrs. Marwood though being in relationship with Fainall, secretly
harbours feelings for Mirabell and deep down Fainall too senses Mrs Marwood’s physical
attraction towards Mirabell.
Fainall: And wherefore do you hate him? He is insensitive, and your resentment
follows his neglect. An instance !The injuries you have done him are a proof : your
interposing in his love. What cause had you to make discoveries of his pretended
passion? To undeceive the credulous aunt and be the officious obstacle of his match
with Millamant?(Act II scene I 65)
Kroll observes in this regard that her subjugation to the natural world of desire and passion, her
inability to escape or socialize it, is suggested when she changes color on the mention of
Mirabell.(Kroll743), thereby pointing towards her greed to recapture youth and time, a greed
quiet discernible in the character of Lady Wishfort too. But they somehow choose to be together
in the pursuit of their common evil scheme of acquiring the wealth and fortune of other people.
Fainall readily agrees to marry Mrs. Fainall even though he is completely aware of her affair
with Mirabell because his avarice overshadows his manliness. Money becomes more important
to him than the sanctity of the marital bond. He has his eyes set not only on his wife’s fortune
but also Millamant’s and then Lady Wishfort’s too. As in the case of Volpone, the desire to
possess more and more possesses him. As Basye rightly observes, “But when does the desire
to simply possess something turn into unchecked greed? That is easy when the things that you
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possess start possessing you.(quoted in Hooti and Fakhri79) Similar to the devilish pair of
Volpone and Mosca, both Fainall and Mrs. Marwood are desirous of crookedly acquiring other
people’s fortune which leaves them bereft of any moral scruples. Promiscuity, deception,
hypocrisy, insecurity and greed find abode in the characters of Fainall and Mrs. Marwood.
They are slaves to their avarice which ends in their utter failure, disgrace and humiliation made
possible because of Mirabell’s thorough understanding of the way of the world he lives in. And
as in Volpone, evil consumes itself. Rosowski avers:
Mirabell produces Mrs. Fainall’s deed made while she was a widow, in which she
conveyed her estate to him as a trustee; with this deed he frees Mrs. Fainall and Lady
Wishfort from unjust control by Fainall, and Millamant from unjust control by her aunt.
And here the essential difference lies: while Fainall seeks to destroy individuality,
making other people dependent upon him, Mirabell seeks to protect individuality,
making others independent. (Rosowski404)
Fainall, the typical restoration rake, is rendered powerless since his ultimate trump of the threat
of divorce has been played and lost. Mirabell, the reformed rake leaves his libertine ways to
marry Millamant and to become a husband and a father. In words of Richard Braverman:
The married woman becomes the object of the quest because she is the way to power,
as property: she is the conduit through which sovereign power is both produced and
legitimated. Hence, her erotic power of attraction as a wife rather than a mistress
reflects her new position in the altered family romance.(Braverman154-55)
It is precisely the lack of this knowledge that leads to Fainall’s defeat and the grasp of it results
in Mirabell winning over Millamant and her property in the end. Braverman opines,
“Compatibility is the primary requisite of the relationship of Mirabell and Millamant that
balance between love and property which is the basis of domestic ideal.”(Braverman155)
Although masters of two very different kind of comedies, through the triumph of good over
evil and greed consuming itself, both the playwrights make clear the seriousness of their comic
purpose. Indicting the faulty values of society, in this context – avarice, seems to be the primary
concern for both the playwrights and they choose the comic way to convey a sense of
disapproval towards the ways of society.
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Works Cited and Consulted
Braverman, Richard. “Capital Relations and The Way of The World” ELH 52.1(1985) :135158. Jstor. Web. 20 November 2014
Congreve, William. The Way of The World. www. pinkmonkey. com/dl/library 1/ book 0615.
Pdf. Web. 19 March 2015
Gertmenian, Donald. “Comic Experience in Volpone and The Alchemist” Studies in English
Literature, 1500-1900, 17.2 Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (1977) : 247- 258. Jstor. Web.
5August 2014.
Hawkins, Harriet. “Folly, Incurable Disease and Volpone” Studies in English Literature, 15001900, 18.2 Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (1968) : 335 -348. Jstor. Web. 5 August 2014.
Hooti Noorbakhsh, Rashin Fakhri . “The Sense of Paranoia in William Congreve’s The Way
of The World.” Journal of Social Issues and Humanities. 1.6 (2013) . www. Academia. Edu .
Web. 10 March 2015.
Jonson, Ben. Volpone or The FOX . www. 202.74.245..22 : 8080/ xmlui/... Ben % 29 Jonson
% 20 Volpone. Pdf ?....Web. 19 March 2015.
Kroll, Richard W. F. “Discourse and Power in the Way of the World.” ELH 53.4 (1980): 727
– 758. Jstor. Web. 20 November 2015.
Rosowski, Susan J. “Thematic Development in the Comedies of William Congreve: The
Individual in Society.” Studies in English Literature, 1500- 1900, 16.3, Restoration and
Eighteenth Century (1976) : 387 – 406. Jstor. Web. 13 March 2015.
Smith, Stephen. Ed. “What does the Bible say about greed?”. www. openbible. info. Web. 20
March 2015.
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