ABSTRACT
The first mode, the Aristophanic, is an intellectual, analytic and argumentative form, determined with the greatest clarity it can summon, to convince the audience of its thesis. Volpone is a ‘libidinous swine’, the ‘hand of justice’ will in the play’s conclusion fall heavy on him, his ‘idol’ is ‘dross’ and is as much deflated here as in the opening speeches of the play, but the tone has shifted disconcertingly and we are invited to an altogether different comic response from the irony we share with the dramatist in the first scene. When we pass from the ‘Aristophanic’ to the ‘Shakespearian’ tradition questions of this order are asked with less detached clarity; for we here enter a world not of castigation but of reconciliation, not of reasonable exploration of social follies but of compassionate examination of fallible human relationships.
