Ben Jonson’s Volpone – Hypocrisy and Greed Satirized

Last year I picked up Harold Bloom’s book on Shakespeare, which got me on a serious Shakespeare kick. I had not read any of his works since high school, and, rereading them, I found them enormously entertaining. Another Elizabethan playwright mentioned by Bloom was Ben Jonson, so I decided to check out something of his. His most popular play is Volpone, which was first performed in 1605.

While Jonson is certainly no Shakespeare (who is?), Volpone is quite a fun play to read. All of the characters’ names reference animals: Volpone is a “sly fox”; Mosca, his servant, is a “fly”; Voltore, a lawyer, is a “vulture”; Corbaccio, a greedy old man, is a “raven”; and Corvino, a merchant, is a “crow”. The basic plot is one of Volpone and Mosca leading on Voltore, Corbaccio, and Corvino, making them think each one is the sole heir of Volpone’s estate. Volpone enjoys pretending to be at death’s door while his would-be heirs outdo each other bringing him gifts to influence him.

Their greed exposes their hypocrisy, as Voltore is willing to perjure himself in court, Corbaccio disinherits his own son, and Corvino offers his virtuous wife, Celia, to Volpone – all in the hopes of being named Volpone’s beneficiary. Of course everything falls apart, not least because of Volpone’s need to gloat over the subjugation of his suitors. He disguises himself, goes out into the street, and says that he has died and left everything to Mosca. Mosca tries to betray him and actually claims title to Volpone’s estate, but the court manages to see through the web of lies and deceit he and Volpone have weaved.

There are some minor characters who are great fun – Sir Politic Would-Be, an absurd knight who is much taken with his business acumen and political knowledge; his wife, Lady Would-Be, whose incessant talking drives Volpone to distraction; and Peregrine, a travelling merchant who meets Sir Would-Be and is amused by his boasting.

There are lots of double entendres and subtle digs at the old men’s lust for women and wealth. When Mosca persuades Corvino to offer his wife to Volpone, he assures Corvino that nothing physical will actually occur:

He knows the state of’s body, what it is; That nought can warm his blood sir, but a fever; Nor any incantation raise his spirit: A long forgetfulness hath seized that part.

Ben Jonson. Complete Works of Ben Jonson (Kindle Locations 13592-13593). Delphi Classics. Kindle Edition.

Mosca and Volpone take almost sadistic glee at driving Voltore, Corbaccio, and Corvino to greater and greater acts of depravity in order to acquire Volpone’s wealth:

VOLP: I shall have instantly my Vulture, Crow, Raven, come flying hither, on the news, To peck for carrion, my she-wolfe, and all, Greedy, and full of expectation —

MOS: And then to have it ravish’d from their mouths!

VOLP: ‘Tis true. I will have thee put on a gown, And take upon thee, as thou wert mine heir: Shew them a will; Open that chest, and reach Forth one of those that has the blanks; I’ll straight Put in thy name.

MOS [GIVES HIM A PAPER.]: It will be rare, sir.

VOLP: Ay, When they ev’n gape, and find themselves deluded —

MOS: Yes.

VOLP: And thou use them scurvily! Dispatch, get on thy gown.

Ben Jonson. Complete Works of Ben Jonson (Kindle Locations 14270-14276). Delphi Classics. Kindle Edition.

A couple of completely innocent persons are almost sentenced to torture and imprisonment through the machinations of Mosca and Volpone – Celia, the wife of Corvino, and Bonario, Corbaccio’s son, who rescues her from Volpone as he is about to assault her. Fortunately, this is a comedy, and all is set right in the end.

Elizabethan England must have been a wondrous time for theatergoers. Even an understandably overshadowed talent like Jonson produced really high quality drama for the masses. I enjoyed Volpone a lot, and I’m looking forward to reading more of his work.

Charles Williams’ Many Dimensions – More Weird Fantasy From a Christian Perspective

Many Dimensions is Charles Williams’ second novel – published in 1931 – and it is quite good. In an earlier post, I reviewed his first novel, War In Heaven. Williams was an Inkling – the group of writers and thinkers that included J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Owen Barfield. While Williams wrote fantasy, his work is about as far from Middle Earth and Narnia as one can imagine.

The story begins with Sir Giles Tumulty, who returns from War In Heaven. He is a thoroughly repellent character, who is completely materialistic and amoral. In Many Dimensions, he has, through unexplained but probably unethical means, obtained the Stone of Solomon. It is a small cube of milky white substance with the letters of the Tetragrammaton inscribed on its faces. The stone seems to have unlimited powers, including the ability to transport its bearer to any location on earth instantaneously. Giles also suspects it can travel through time, and he intends to test his thesis on some innocent subject. He is being pursued by agents of the Persian government, who have safeguarded the stone for many centuries.

As Giles and his nephew, Reginald Montague, begin an analysis of the stone, they soon discover that they can strike off pieces of it which are identical to it in mass, size, appearance, and powers, while the original stone maintains its mass. Reginald immediately starts cooking up schemes to profit off of this seemingly limitless source of transportation.

Meanwhile, England’s Chief Justice, Lord Arglay, who is a brother-in-law of Sir Giles, comes into possession of one of these stones. He and his secretary, Chloe Burnett, soon realize how dangerous the proliferation of these stones of infinite power is to world stability. Arglay, Chloe, and the Hajji – a very old and wise Persian – decide to oppose Sir Giles, various government agencies interested in the stone’s millitary and intelligence applications, an American millionaire and his wife whom Montague snookered into paying 70,000 guineas for one, and various other antagonists who all want stones for selfish reasons.

I have already mentioned how awful a person Sir Giles is, but he ends up being one of those villains you love to hate. As Lord Arglay puts it,

“Giles always reminds me of the old riddle, ‘Would you rather be more abominable than you sound, or sound more abominable than you are?’ The answer is, ‘I would rather be neither, but I am both.'” (Charles Williams. Many Dimensions (Kindle Location 598). Delphi Classics. Kindle Edition.)

Williams gives Giles terrific epithets, curses, and insults to hurl at everyone around him:

“broken-down Houndsditch sewer rat”, “Blast your filthy gasbag of a mouth!”, “Encyclopedias are like slums, the rotten homes of diseased minds”, “you baboon-headed cockatoo”, and “half-caste earthworms” are just a few examples of his picaresque language.

That said, Sir Giles is quite evil in his single-minded pursuit of knowledge and power. In a conversation with some government secretaries, he illustrates what a monster he is:

‘You might,’ Sir Giles said, ‘use it as the perfect contraceptive.’ Mr. Sheldrake looked down his nose. The conversation seemed to him to be becoming obscene. ‘Under control,’ Lord Birlesmere said thoughtfully, ‘always, always under control. We must find out what it can do; you must, Sir Giles.’ ‘I ask nothing better,’ Sir Giles said. ‘But you Puritans have always made such a fuss about vivisection, let alone human vivisection.’ ‘No one,’ Lord Birlesmere exclaimed, ’is suggesting vivisection. There is a difference between harmless experiments and vivisection.’ ‘I can have living bodies?’ Sir Giles asked. ‘Well, there are prisons — and workhouses — and hospitals — and barracks,’ Birlesmere answered slowly. (Charles Williams. Many Dimensions (Kindle Locations 1850-1856). Delphi Classics. Kindle Edition.)

One thing I admire about Many Dimensions is Williams’ thoughtful treatment of the impications of time travel. Lord Arglay soon realizes that if a person were to use the stone to travel back to a time before he or she had the stone, they would have to live up to the point where they got the stone and traveled back in time. In other words, they would be trapped in an endless loop, forever reliving the point in time where they decided to go back in the past. Sir Giles reaches the same conclusion, and he tricks a gullible lab assistant into doing just that. Giles attempts to go thirty minutes into the future himself, but the stone only takes him ten minutes. He is soon haunted by the uncertainty of whether he is actually experiencing life, or recalling his memories of the past ten minutes.

As in War In Heaven, spirituality pervades Many Dimensions. However, where the spirituality in War In Heaven is explicitly Christian, in Many Dimensions it is a strange mix of Sufism and Judaism. The hero, Lord Arglay, is an agnostic who gradually comes around to believing in God through the faith of Chloe. The stone itself seems to be the First Matter, that which God created from nothing.

If I go any further, I’ll have to give spoilers, and I don’t want to do that. Suffice it to say that Many Dimensions is an excellent tale that leaves the readers pondering some weighty concepts. I highly recommend it to readers who enjoy considering the implications of what would happen if mankind had access to something that granted its every wish. Williams makes a strong case that the result would not be a utopia, but rather a hell.

John Wyndham’s Foul Play Suspected: An Entertaining Early Effort

John Wyndham (1903 – 1969) is best known for his science/speculative fiction books, of which The Day of the Triffids is the best known. Foul Play Suspected was his second novel (the less said of his first, The Secret People, the better), published in 1935, is not science fiction at all, but rather a mystery/suspense tale set in England between the two world wars.

It opens with Phyllida Shiffer – yikes, what a name to burden a woman with! – returning home after a three year stint in India. She is now a widow, and it soon becomes clear that her husband is not mourned by her at all. Her father, Henry Woodridge, is a somewhat eccentric scientist who has a laboratory on the grounds of his estate, The Grange. When Phyllida arrives, the place is empty with all the furniture under sheets, as if her father had planned to leave for an extended period of time.

She can’t get any information about where he might have gone, so she goes to London to see her cousin, Derek Jameson, and find out if he knows anything. He is living in a flat with his friend Barry Long, whom Phyllida dumped to marry Ronald Shiffer. Neither of them have any clue as to where her father might be. She returns to The Grange, and as she is about to eat a quick dinner in the empty house, there’s a knock on the door, and she is swiftly abducted.

From that promising beginning, there unfolds a tale of industrial espionage, murder, and the potential end of the human race. Unfortunately, when he wrote this novel, Wyndham still hadn’t developed a distinctive style. I can tell he’s trying to create a Dorothy Sayers or Agatha Christie type of story, but none of the characters are really fleshed out. Derek, the putative hero, makes all kinds of wisecracks, but instead of making him endearing, he just comes across as insensitive and snarky. Barry might as well be a piece of furniture. The villain, Ferris Draymond, Director of Amalgamated Chemicals, is as clichéd as his company’s name.

The most interesting character, Detective-Inspector Jordan of Scotland Yard, is very good. Taciturn, smart, and empathetic, he redeems the novel. However, despite his best-laid plans, Draymond manages to outwit him in the end. There is a relatively satisfying ending, but it doesn’t resolve the main issue, which is what will become of a formula for an incredibly lethal poison gas.

Wyndham wrote this in 1935, when it was becoming more and more clear that Germany was re-arming for another war. He includes some prescient commentary on how arms races escalate, and how fragile civilization is. Here’s Jordan talking about how bleak things look for the twentieth century:

“The twentieth century,” said Jordan, “looks like being the bloodiest century on record before it is finished — and I’m not thinking of the war. The system’s rotting. It’s like a city of great buildings. Up in the turrets, on the roof gardens there is clean air in which thrives a clean culture of magnificent possibilities; down below is the accumulated filth and stench of centuries with the foundations rotting among it. … You nicely comfortable people like to think of the bad old days, you pat yourselves on the back because there is more freedom, less cruelty, less meanness in high places than there was a couple of centuries ago. There isn’t. But you’re shut off from it all — you don’t see it. We do. It’s there, and it’s growing. Right under the noses of the really educated class — who, I grant you, aim at a high standard — there is a moral rot spreading like a slow disease. Don’t ask me where it comes from, I don’t know, but it’s there. A callousness, a careless, unnecessary cruelty, a return to Nature. The barriers which civilized, educated men have tried to raise against the raw, the savage and the cruel have never been consolidated, and now they’re giving way. You don’t see quite so much of it in this country yet, but before the end of the century people in your circumstances will be brought face to face with it. You’ll put up shutters on your houses; you’ll go in twos at night.” Location 2558, Kindle edition

Unfortunately for us all, Wyndham’s predictions largely came true. In a few years, he would hit his stride penning such dystopian bestsellers as The Day of the Triffids, The Midwich Cuckoos, and Chocky. Foul Play Suspected is a flawed early attempt at what he would later excel at – creating believable and disturbing speculative fiction that makes the reader think.

Churchill’s Marlborough I: A Vindication

Book number 18 of 2024!

The older I get, the more I like nonfiction, especially history. One of my favorite historians is Winston Churchill. The first thing I read of his was A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, which I enjoyed so much that I next read his The Second World War, then The World Crisis – his account of the First World War. It’s fascinating to read history that is written by a major actor in it. It doesn’t hurt that Churchill is a terrific writer with a wicked sense of humor. I’m not the only one to recognize his talent – he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.

Marlborough I is the first of a four-volume biography of Churchill’s ancestor, John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough (1650 – 1722). Apparently, a big reason for his taking on this huge project was to “clear the name” of Marlborough. The historian Thomas Babington Macaulay had written a biography of Marlborough that was very popular and extremely critical of the British soldier and statesman. Macauley doesn’t escape Winston Churchill’s withering contempt:

It is beyond our hopes to overtake Lord Macaulay. The grandeur and sweep of his story-telling style carries him swiftly along, and with every generation he enters new fields. We can only hope that Truth will follow swiftly enough to fasten the label “Liar” to his genteel coat-tails.

WINSTON S. CHURCHILL. Marlborough I (Kindle Locations 2140-2142). Delphi Classics. Kindle Edition.

The first third of Marlborough I is taken up with a lot of conjecture, because there simply isn’t much documentation of John Churchill’s early life. He is appointed as a page to one of King Charles II’s dukes, and he quickly makes a name for himself as a dashing young man who has integrity, relatively speaking, given the time of Charles II’s Bacchanalian court. He gets involved with Barbara Villiers, a mistress of the king, but once he meets Sarah Jennings, he woos her until they marry, and he remained devoted to her the rest of his life.

Marlborough manages to navigate the perilous political waters that were roiling England at this time. Here is where my ignorance of British history handicaps my full enjoyment of the book. Churchill assumes the reader is familiar with the various administrations, party politics, and machinations of the different factions that were competing during Charles II’s and James II’s reigns. I’m not, so I found myself turning to Wikipedia a lot. Who was Danby? Shrewsbury? Halifax? The Jacobites? I didn’t know, and Churchill doesn’t provide much background to these major figures and movements in British history. However, I still enjoyed learning about them on my own.

John Churchill slowly makes a name for himself as a military leader and strategist. He and Sarah become close friends with Princess Anne, who is the sister of Mary, the wife of William of Orange. When William becomes King of England in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, John Churchill finds favor with him after successfully tamping down James’ potential rebellion in Ireland. Unfortunately, William doesn’t think much of English generals, and he refuses to give Churchill any real command of forces out of fear that his Dutch generals might suffer in comparison.

William doesn’t really care that much about the British; his main concern is to build an alliance to challenge France’s Louis XIV. Winston Churchill is definitely NOT a fan of the Sun King:

During the whole of his life Louis XIV was the curse and pest of Europe. No worse enemy of human freedom has ever appeared in the trappings of polite civilization. Insatiable appetite, cold, calculating ruthlessness, monumental conceit, presented themselves armed with fire and sword. The veneer of culture and good manners, of brilliant ceremonies and elaborate etiquette, only adds a heightening effect to the villainy of his life’s story.

WINSTON S. CHURCHILL. Marlborough I (Kindle Locations 3806-3809). Delphi Classics. Kindle Edition.

It should be noted that Churchill wrote those words in 1933, before Hitler tried to conquer Europe himself!

As William continued to award honors and positions to his fellow Dutchmen, alienating his British subjects, John Churchill (Lord Marlborough) began publicly speaking out against him. Meanwhile, Queen Mary insisted that her sister, Princess Anne, get rid of Sarah as her lady-in-waiting. Anne refused. In early 1692, things came to a head, and William stripped Marlborough of all his offices and commands.

Marlborough remained in limbo while William authorized a disastrous invasion of France at Brest. The British forces sustained very heavy losses. Later historians alleged that Marlborough and other British nobles deliberately delayed the preparation of the invasion forces, allowing Louis XIV time to prepare for it. Winston Churchill makes a strong case that the documents this accusation is based upon were forged or made up.

Meanwhile, William’s wife, Queen Mary, died of smallpox, making Princess Anne the next in line for the British throne. Suddenly, she became popular in high society again, and William and Marlborough made an uneasy reconciliation. James and his Jacobite supporters tried to assassinate William, but the plot was discovered and the men involved arrested and imprisoned. One of them, John Fenwick, accused Marlborough and a few men who were close advisors of William of being involved in the plot, but no one believed him. Marlborough’s reputation and honor survived.

William III and Louis XIV made peace, and several other treaties gave Europe a ten-year breather. As Churchill notes, in 1699,

William was now at the height of his glory. He seemed about to outshine even the Sun King himself. In the east, in the north, and now in the south and west of Europe he seemed about to lay, after generations of religious, dynastic, and territorial wars, the foundations of a lasting peace for the whole world.

WINSTON S. CHURCHILL. Marlborough I (Kindle Locations 7294-7296). Delphi Classics. Kindle Edition.

Now that William and Marlborough were reconciled, William appointed Marlborough the governor of Princess Anne’s son, the very young Duke of Gloucester (keeping up with all these noble personages is something!). By 1698, William was relying on Marlborough’s counsel more and more; When William traveled to Holland, Marlborough was one of nine lords given sovereign power. However, he had to perform a tricky balancing act: remaining loyal to his Tory party which was in conflict with William’s aims in Europe, while serving as a member of the royal court.

In 1700, the eleven-year-old Gloucester died of smallpox, throwing the British line of succession into confusion. Parliament passed the Act of Settlement, which made the House of Hanover the royal house. Meanwhile, Charles II of Spain died, and Louis XIV installed his grandson as king of Spain, destroying the balance of power. William realized he didn’t have many years left to rule, and he made Marlborough Commander-In-Chief of English forces in Holland. As Churchill observed, “The formation of the Grand Alliance had begun.”

Marlborough, authorized by William, concluded treaties with the states that remained opposed to France. In September, 1701, James II died, and Louis announced that he recognized James’ son as the rightful king of England. This arrogant declaration galvanized parliament, and William soon had all the financial support he needed to oppose Louis. In 1702, William’s horse threw him, he broke his collarbone, and not long after died. All the pieces were in place for the War of Spanish Succession – an even stronger France, with Spain on its side, was ready to overrun Holland. On Marlborough’s shoulders rested the job of leading the Alliance against an incredibly powerful foe.

That is where Marlborough I ends. A couple of final thoughts: first, an unexpected benefit of reading Winston Churchill is that the reader receives a course in English vocabulary. For example, how often do you see the word inexpugnable (it means impregnable)? That word, phlegmatic, obdurate, and puerilities all appear in the span of a few paragraphs.

Second, I have often wondered how Churchill seemed to instinctively comprehend – before anyone else – Hitler’s threat to European peace. After reading this first volume of his biography of Marlborough, it’s clear that Churchill’s understanding wasn’t instinctive but rather the result of his immense knowledge of history. He already knew how William III and Louis XIV had vied for supremacy in Europe at the turn of the eighteenth century, and how delicate the balance of power always is. He also recognized Britain’s inclination to turn inward as soon as peace is achieved:

The wars were over; their repressions were at an end. They rejoiced in peace and clamoured for freedom. The dangers were past; why should they ever return? Groaning under taxation, impatient of every restraint, the Commons plunged into a career of economy, disarmament, and constitutional assertiveness which was speedily followed by the greatest of the wars England had ever waged and the heaviest expenditure she had ever borne. This phase has often recurred in our history.

WINSTON S. CHURCHILL. Marlborough I (Kindle Locations 7301-7304). Delphi Classics. Kindle Edition.

As our current geopolitical situation heats up faster and faster, I wonder if there is anyone on the world’s stage with as much historical knowledge as Winston Churchill had in 1933. We certainly could use someone like him again.