Patricia J. Rivera
EN 205-001
March 4, 2011
Weekly Essay #6
Ben Jonson’s Volpone is a satiric story about the vivacity of some persons to attain easy money. One believes that Jonson named his characters after an animal due to their rapacity or the animal instincts each of the characters had. Besides greed, animalization, parasitism, it is easy to see that some of the characters on this comedy tend to have as one of their peculiar characteristics sadism, masochism or sadomasochism. Even though Jonson does not mention it explicitly, the theme is more than tacit.
At some point of the story one might think that by pretending to be sick to get money Volpone himself is being a sadist, because he inflicts pain and desperation in others, and gets favors from them, which apparently brings him pleasure in form of gold and gems. However the characters that jump of the page are Celia and Corvino. After Act 2, in scene 5, Corvino threatens Celia to lock her up, because earlier she threw her handkerchief to the mountebank who was Volpone under a disguise. Corvino states: “I think you’d rather mount? Would you not mount?/Why, if you’ll mount, you may; yes truly, you may” (2.5.18-19), Corvino is suggesting that Celia should get on the mountebank stage or take the top in the sexual position, and by calling her “Lady Vanity”(2.5.21) Corvino was actually calling her a harlot, which proves how Corvino abuses Celia verbally, one could call him a sadist. Another part of the story suggesting that Corvino is a sadist is when he states: “Thy prospect- all be backwards; and no pleasure/That thou shalt know but backwards. Nay, since you force/ My honest nature, know it is your own” (2.5.60-62). This passage suggests that he’s going to force her to have “backward sex” against her will, because she abused his trust earlier. At this point one might think that Celia is the masochist of the story, and this is apparently true.
