How, then, can these variations on Volpone's bastards enrich our understanding of the interlude in Act I scene ii? How can we see the interlude as the centre of the play? In this concluding chapter, I shall answer these questions through a rereading of the interlude. While the concept of metempsychosis relates to the debasement of souls, I will illustrate how it can be seen as a comedic metaphor, suggesting that the interlude develops from the importance of theatricality and emphasises its relationship to sex, language, coining and the diffusion of fixed identity. This diffusion suggests a logic of slippage, which is not unlike the power of epicene that we see in Chapter 4. The thinking of metempsychosis as demonstrated in Volpone is carnivalesque and full of deferral. The interlude and the transmigration described in it suggest how Jonson's comedy dissolves organic unity. Using Susan Sontag's concept of ‘Camp’, this chapter argues that Jonson's comedies represent a celebration of an epicene style. Moreover, this chapter uses the reading of Volpone's bastards to rethink some theories of comedy and modern film comedies. Finally, it suggests how some of the representations of the bastards can be seen in other early modern city comedies, such as those of Thomas Middleton. In sum, this chapter attempts to think about bastardy as a multivalent trope to discuss the city, capitalism, and comedy and jokes themselves as improper, bastard forms of utterance. Indeed, madness and folly are inseparable. There is only a very fine line between the two concepts.

A Rereading of the Interlude