The Alchemist
In The AlchemistSir Epicure Mammon plans the sexual conquests he will enjoy after
taking the elixir of youth: ‘I will have all my beds blown up, not stuffed; / Down is
too hard.’ As for diet:
Oiled mushrooms; and the swelling unctuous paps
Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off,
Dressed with an exquisite and poignant sauce;
For which, I’ll say unto my cook, ‘There’s gold;
Go forth, and be a knight.’
The alchemist’s stone, supposed to turn base metal into gold, attracts the para-
sites of London: epicurean merchants, but also such brethren as Tribulation
Wholesome. Tribulation’s Deacon, Ananias, has a line – ‘Thou look’st like Antichrist
in that lewd hat!’ – which strikes the note of crazed disproportion which delighted
Jonson. He is the first critic of puritan capitalism, yet his critique of human nature,
though ‘terribly modern’, is as old as the view of Rome taken by the first-century
poet Martial.Volpone
Volponeis darker than The Alchemist, but the rich Volpone (Italian for ‘old Fox’) is a
cousin of Sir Epicure. He begins with ‘Good morrow to the day; and next, my gold!
/ Open the shrine, that I may see my saint.’
He and his servant Mosca (Fly) trick a series of fortune-hunters, Voltore,
Corbaccio and Corvino: each makes him a gift in the hope of becoming his heir.
Corvino (Raven) is persuaded that the bedridden Volpone is so deaf that he must be
at death’s door: Mosca yells into Volpone’s ear that his ‘hanging cheeks ... look like
frozen dish-clouts, set on end.’ Corvino tries comically hard, but cannot match
Mosca’s Cockney insults. Mosca suggests Corvino invite Volpone to enjoy his young
wife Celia. Before taking advantage of Corvino’s generosity, Volpone sings a sprightly
song, adapted from Catullus: ‘Come, my Celia, let us prove / While we may, the
sports of love. / Cannot we delude the eyes / Of a few poor household spies?’ His
rape is foiled, but his fantastic tricks come to an end only when, in order to enjoy the
discomfiture of the birds of carrion, he makes Mosca his heir and pretends to die.
Mosca tries to double-cross Volpone, and so, in a court-room climax, Volpone has
to prove he is alive. Put in irons until he is as ill as he pretends to be, he exits with:
‘This is called mortifying of a Fox.’ This savagely moral caricature on avarice is also
wonderfully entertaining; Volpone is allowed to speak the witty Epilogue.nFurther reading
Alexander, M.,Reading Shakespeare(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
Dobson, M. and S. Wells (eds),The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare(Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001).
Gurr, A.,The Shakespearean Stage, 1574–1642, 3rd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1992).
Smith, E. (ed.),The Cambridge Shakespeare Guide(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2012).138 4 · SHAKESPEARE AND THE DRAMA