Ben Jonson, Volpone and the Gunpowder Plot

• Introduction; 1. Jonson's life and the Epistle to Volpone; 2. Commendatory verses and 'metempsychosis'; 3. 'Sir Pol': dating, identification and satiric method; 4. Volpone and beast fable; 5. Volpone's Venice; 6. Patronage, plotting, and diabolic possession in the 'main-' and 'bye-plots'; Conclusions and aftermath.

'Professor Dutton's reconstruction of what most engaged Jonson intellectually, emotionally and politically at the watershed moment in his career as a dramatist is never less than fascinating. It is always most persuasive. Ben Jonson, 'Volpone' and the Gunpowder Plot is yet more proof that Jonson's great plays were neither the self-conscious slumming de haut en bas of an anti-theatricalist, nor aloof exercises in the 'timeless' classical style. They were deliberately executed events designed to have an impact in the real political world, and written by a master-craftsman in the living, political art form of the theatre.' Journal of the Northern Renaissance