The Setting

Commerce, trade, traffic and exchange were as old as society, as old as farmers bartering foodstuffs, as old as Phoenician galleys carrying goods to Sicily, as old as the great annual fairs of medieval Europe, as old as the weekly market in the nearest town. But things had changed in degree. The trade routes had extended to the outer edges of the Continent, then across into Africa, into Asia and then made the great leap into the Americas. Commerce had a global dimension, the sums of money involved had become inconceivably huge and growth and profit had become the new golden idols. Huge ventured sums were also lost, and the greater the volume of trade the more the opportunities for theft and fraud expanded. While foreign populations were exploited as trade spread hand in hand with imperialism, so home populations too were exploited by men who became obsessed with the accumulation of wealth. Within the Court such greed flourished as parasites scrambled for places, pensions and monopolies. In the City something of what we now see in our own ‘Grab, grab, grab’ acquisitive society was already developing. And victims were being created – the poorly paid workers who produced the luxuries the privileged and wealthy lusted after and the fools who got into debt by living on credit. The 1574 Sumptuary Law talked of how young men, addicted to keeping in fashion, ‘consume themselves, their goods, and lands which their parents left unto them, but also run into such debts and shifts as they cannot live out of danger of laws’. Like so many of the better sort they fell into the hands of moneylenders. Big money was being made by a few and the rest all wanted a bit of it. Everyone seemed to be preying on everyone else in a delirious cycle of metaphorical cannibalism. Ben Jonson was sensitive to this, and it informs the narratives and moods of Volpone, The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair. The structure of each play is very different, but the themes are matching – the greed, deceit and vileness of man.