Ben Jonson
Classical learning and the working stage
Ben Jonson lived from 1572 to 1637. His education at Westminster School brought him under the influence of the scholar William Camden. He worked as a bricklayer, served as a soldier in Flanders and became an actor and playwright. The classical learning and practical theatre experience both matter to a career in which literary form and performance were closely connected.
Every Man in His Humour established an important early success in 1598. Volpone followed in 1606 and The Alchemist in 1610, among the comedies through which he became a major figure of the London stage. Royal patronage under James I supported another part of his career. His poetry, criticism and relationships with fellow writers extended his literary identity beyond the theatre. That range helps explain the precision with which his plays examine language as something people use to display knowledge, gain influence and create belief.
Desire helps the deceiver
The deceivers in these comedies do not simply impose a story on passive victims. They discover what an audience wants and supply a performance that makes the desire seem attainable. Follow the cooperation between the promise and the listener. An implausible claim can become persuasive when rejecting it would also mean surrendering an attractive picture of the future.
This makes the theatre audience’s position interesting. We may recognize the trick and enjoy the skill with which it is performed. That pleasure does not have to make us identical with the victims, but it complicates an easy sense of superiority. Jonson can invite admiration for comic invention while showing the appetite that gives invention its opportunity.
A household business and a wealthy man’s appetite
The Alchemist places its fraudulent enterprise in a London house whose owner has left during plague. The servant who calls himself Face works with Subtle and Doll Common to turn successive visitors into opportunities. The changing visitors allow you to compare different forms of expectation, while the shared setting makes the deceivers’ coordination visible. Keep track of what version of the enterprise each arrival is allowed to see.
Volpone begins with an already wealthy man whose desire for wealth has not been satisfied by possessing it. Read the language of value with that fact in mind. Money is not merely a means of meeting a need; its pursuit becomes a performance in which other people’s wishes can be used. Compare the pleasure of having with the pleasure of manipulating.
The two plays offer different arrangements of appetite and theatrical skill. Read them as carefully timed encounters as well as satires: entrances, interruptions and the need to sustain a role help turn an idea about greed into action.
Track the promise and the role
For each person drawn into a scheme, identify the promised benefit and the assumption that makes the promise believable. The assumptions need not be the same. A successful deceiver adjusts the performance to the listener.
Notice when specialized language creates authority. Does the listener understand what is said, or treat the inability to understand as evidence of the speaker’s expertise? The sound and abundance of words can become part of the trick.
Read a scene aloud with attention to interruptions and changes of audience. A character may have to maintain more than one identity in quick succession. The comic energy comes partly from watching that work happen under pressure.