The Double Plot

Abstract

It was accepted practice in the Elizabethan theatre for a playwright to take his plot or story from another work and elaborate on this basic structure. So, for most of the plays of Shakespeare we can point to a particular source. But in Volpone (as mentioned in section 1, Introduction, above), though it draws on many elements from its author’s wide learning, the action is Jonson’s own. T. S. Eliot* insists that Jonson’s dramatic skill lies not so much in writing a good plot as in doing without a plot. What plot there is in Volpone is just enough to keep the players in motion, and should rather be called an ‘action’ than a ‘plot’.