Category Archives: Stylistic qualities

Greed Doesn’t Pay

As we have recently seen in The Changeling, villainous greed is not a successful route to obtain your goals.  The same theme is reinforced here by Sir Giles Overreach in A New Way to Pay Old Debts.  Massinger’s Overreach makes it known his true colors of extortion and abuse of power; “‘Twas for these good ends/ I made him a justice. He that bribes his belly/ Is certain to command his soul” (2.1.8–10).  Going as low as helping his nephew Wellborn relieve himself of all his worth.  Overreach goes on to reveal pride that he “value not an atom” of the religious right and wrong, (2.1.26).  He creates devious plans to obtain the wealth of those around him concerned only with his position in the end.  However, just like Beatrice, all his scheming is for naught.  Overreach’s own greed becomes his downfall as he loses to the very people, good people, he planned to sabotage.

Happily, we end the semester with a comedy.  One with a valuable lesson.  Be weary of the over ambitious ones surrounding you, there is a fine line between ambition and greed.  Greedy people will walk all over you if allowed and we should all be aware of them.  I am glad to end with a play that didn’t require anyone’s tongue being cut out or children threatened to prove a point.  Somehow, this 400 year old play says a lot for what a group of good people can do regardless of the position held by the opposition.  Without becoming political, it amazes me how this play points out that if one greedy tyrant is stopped, many other lives can flourish.

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Overreach’s Honesty versus Allworth’s Poetry

In A New Way to Pay Old Debts, two characters speak with a similar grandeur, yet with different connotations. One character speaks with confidence and snobbery, while the other lacks such confidence and substitutes it with poetic words. Sir Giles Overreach is pompous, ruthless and honest. He speaks in a shameless way as if he lacks a conscience. “Nay, when my ears are pierced with widows’ cries/ and undone orphans wash with tears my threshold/…Makes me insensible of remorse, or pity/ Or the least sting of conscience,” responds Overreach when questioned whether he is affected by his sinister actions (4.1.125-130). It is a poetic speech, filled with statements of arrogance, but concealed by the grandeur of his words. Each of his speeches have these certain points that give such great insight into the mind of Overreach with statements, such as “I am marble” (4.1.133), or when speaking to Lord Lovell about Lovell’s nobility, “the immaculate whiteness of your fame/ Nor your unquestioned integrity…” (4.1.94-95). His speeches are astounding because they exude so much confidence and are so beautifully worded that it takes a few readings to realize that what Overreach is actually saying is completely awful and brutal.

On the other hand, Tom Allworth lacks that confidence, which was on display during his conversation with Lovell in scene 3.1. Allworth feels that he would be unable to woo his love Margaret if Lovell would ever decide to take up Margaret’s father Sir Overreach’s offer to marry her. Allworth speaks with a desperation, yet the choice of words that he uses is mature and poetic, concealing his insecurities of being a young man without much to offer Margaret. Allworth describes Margaret with illustrations of her beauty, such as “Though mounted high, commanding all beneath it/ And rammed with bullets of her sparkling eyes…” (3.1.62-63), and also “But when the well-tuned accents of her tongue/ Make music to you…” (3.1.66-67). He is trying hard to sound wise beyond his years, making it difficult to read into what he is saying. His lack of confidence is masked by the poetic speech, which emits a sense of overreaching, while the character Overreach does not seem to try so hard with brutal words that illustrate how he truly feels. It is contrasting feature that I found interesting in both characters.

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Entering the Scene in Volpone

The flow of the staging of the various scenes for Volpone seems both more fluid and more punctuated at times than in the usual English Renaissance play.  In many of the acts, the scenes continue from without actual break or stoppage, only marked by the entrance of a new character, as can be seen in transition between Scene 1 and 2 of Act 2, as the scene continues when Mosca and Nano join Sir Pol and Peregrine.  Yet, this seemingly fluid momentum of the play is also paralleled against the decisively jarring entrances that many of the characters make.  Sir Pol and Peregrine’s initial foray into the play gives them no introduction or previous announcement.  Their plot line, for the moment, seems completely irrelevant to the previous scenes concerning Volpone.  This occasional inharmonious transition between scenes breaks the stagnation of the fluidity that is established by Jonson’s other means of continuing scenes.

The most explicit example of these polarized transitions is seen in Corvino’s reaction to the attempted wooing of his wife, Celia.  He enters Act 2 at the beginning of Scene 3, interrupting Volpone’s solicitation of Celia which ends the previous scene.  His entrance marks an important change in the tone of the section, and an important movement towards catalyzing the plot between the fox and his prey.  The prose-filled, beautiful entreaty of Volpone is thus paralleled against the caustic and violent rantings of Corvino.  “Spite o’the devil, and my shame!” (2.3.251).  Corvino’s sudden appearance does not punctuate the necessity for a break in scene though, as that would provide too stagnant a pace for Corvino’s reaction.  The interesting pacing of both of these kinds of breaks between scenes becomes necessary in Jonson’s style in order to properly allow the characters to interact and to act.

The sudden appearances of characters, who often jump into the scene without truly understanding the situation, provides the perfect amount of disaster to counteract the seemingly perfect ploys of Volpone and Mosca.  Bonario’s early entrance into the scene between Volpone and Celia exemplifies this, allowing the heroic character to fend of Volpone’s web if only for awhile.  The continuous scenes that each act contains, which seem to flow into one another allows the grande stratagem that Volpone and Mosca have created to exemplify the fluidity of the nature of actions.  Thus does Jonson’s structure of the play serve as another example of the morals of the play.  The structure of the play, which allows characters to weave and tangle themselves within this masterful tapestry, becomes a foundational aspect for the meaning of the play.  The success of greed and the success of these theatrical cons is based upon these brief moments of spontaneity where the characters must act upon their baser instincts, revealing some small portion of their true nature in these actions.  Corvino’s impulsive and destructive nature becomes apparent in Scene 3, just as Bonario’s sense of honor and justice are apparent in his actions when he stops Volpone from grabbing Celia.

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Volpone Scene Study

Volpone Scene Study

Our interpretation of the text focuses on four variations of honor, represented by specific colours which appear on the background as they do in the text. They run together essentially to form Venice, or a very abstract Venice at least, to emphasize the allure of the location, which drives much of the spirit of the play. It was filmed in this staggered way to make an uncomfortably noticeable irony between the motion of the text, and the incredibly interwoven plots that layer upon one another. It also allowed us to play with the timeline and perspective by forcing the viewer into a forced dialogue with each character simply by isolating them. The players are separated so as to better see the visual representation of their effect on their surroundings and company. Only when rapidfire conversation or necessary contact must be made are they staged together.

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