Are `volpone` And `the Alchemist` The Same Play?

Jonson`s plays are full `Of pisse, and eggs-shelles` which his avaricious cast hope to transmute into gold. `Volpone` and `The Alchemis`t are a specific brand of social satire alike in their employment of vicious comedy. `Volpone` and `The Alchemist` bear certain structural, stylistic and thematic commonalities. I would argue that the plays expose Jonson`s rather fraught relationship with moral authority. `Volpone` has an aesthetic conclusiveness where `The Alchemist` remains morally absurd. Jonson relinquishes the position of a moral arbiter in the `The Alchemist` as he loses himself in a cacophony of profanity and ambiguity.

A comparison of `Volpone` and `The Alchemist` can offer interesting insights into Ben Jonson`s relationship with authority. Jonson`s comedies could be said to exist within a moral hierarchy: `Volpone` the most satisfying and `Bartholomew Fair` the most bewildering. `The Alchemist` exists in the peculiar middle land between the two. Although it is not devoid of order but the sense of justice is rather nebulous. In `Volpone` one senses that Jonson feels better able to pass moral judgement on his characters by implementing a very clear poetic justice at the close of the play. The wrong-doers are awarded punishments fashioned with close respect to their crimes. Volpone, for feigning illness and death, is awarded imprisonment in an infirmary whilst Mosca, the fly, is to be held prisoner in the galleys. In `The Alchemist`, however, there is none of this satisfying resolution. Love-wit returns to implement his own alternative justice by seizing the woman and the profits and returning the trickster to their original state of affairs. There is, however, no real attempt to punish the rogues in any judicial way. The presence of the Advocates at the finish of `Volpone` is suggestive of a judicial resolution. This imbues the play`s conclusion with a greater sense of moral authority. Love-wit`s justice is comparatively whimsical. He appears to consider the whole business an amusing charade which he should settle for the sake of convenience. This shift could suggest Jonson`s growing uneasiness with notions of judgement and righteousness. He shirks responsibility as an arbiter of justice by concluding the play in accordance with wit and chance. `The Alchemist` differs from `Volpone` in that it is completely devoid of any notion of social improvement. The gull`s foolishness is exposed but society has not been purged of trouble makers.

At first one may be inclined to treat `Volpone` as the most morally satisfactory of the two. It is certainly capable of generating an aesthetic conclusiveness which is superficially pleasing. `The Alchemist` is more full of the spectacle of vulgarity which creates the overall impression of immorality. I would argue, however, that both `Volpone` and `The Alchemist` are governed by a central preoccupation with alchemy. Everybody is trying, by various means, `to transmute their base metal into the gold of beauty, learning, sophistication [and] love.` Their aspirations are sometimes corrupt, as with Volpone`s desire to dominate, or bizarre in the case of Dapper`s desire to meet the queen of the fairies. The absence or presence of real treasure is somehow irrelevant to this universal desire to excel in the atmosphere of capitalist anxiety. Jonson`s depiction of voracity are heavily ambivalent. He is at once tantalised by desire and by ethical remorse. It is more difficulty for Jonson to supply any judgement in `The Alchemist` which is ultimately more human but both plays are subject to vast ambiguity. Despite the enthusiastic instrumentation of punishment at the close of `Volpone` I do not believe that Jonson has been able to consolidate his ideas about the manifestation of base desires in humans.