Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- 1 Introduction: Jonson and Comedy
- 2 ‘For pleasing imitation of greater men’s action’: Nano the Anamorphic Ape
- 3 ‘Think me cold, frozen, and impotent, and so report me?’: Volpone and His ‘Castrone’ Complex
- 4 ‘The case appears too liquid’: The Two Sides of Androgyno
- 5 ‘I fear I shall begin to grow in love with my dear self’: The Parasite and His ‘Mirror Stage’
- 6 Jonson’s Comedy of Bastardy
- 7 Conclusion: ‘Fools, they are the only nation’: Rereading the Interlude and Beyond
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - Conclusion: ‘Fools, they are the only nation’: Rereading the Interlude and Beyond
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 May 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- 1 Introduction: Jonson and Comedy
- 2 ‘For pleasing imitation of greater men’s action’: Nano the Anamorphic Ape
- 3 ‘Think me cold, frozen, and impotent, and so report me?’: Volpone and His ‘Castrone’ Complex
- 4 ‘The case appears too liquid’: The Two Sides of Androgyno
- 5 ‘I fear I shall begin to grow in love with my dear self’: The Parasite and His ‘Mirror Stage’
- 6 Jonson’s Comedy of Bastardy
- 7 Conclusion: ‘Fools, they are the only nation’: Rereading the Interlude and Beyond
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
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
NANO Now room for fresh gamesters, who do will you to know
They do bring you neither play nor university show;
And therefore do entreat you that whatsoever they rehearse
May not fare a whit the worse for the false pace of the verse.
If you wonder at this, you will wonder more ere we pass,
For know [Pointing to Androgyno], here is enclosed the soul of Pythagoras,
That juggler divine, as hereafter shall follow;
Which soul (fast and loose, sir) came first from Apollo,
And was breathed into Aethalides, Mercurius his son,
Where it had the gift to remember all that ever was done.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Volpone's BastardsTheorising Jonson's City Comedy, pp. 145 - 167Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2018