SOURCE: "Facts of the Matter: Satiric and Ideal Economies in the Jonsonian Imagination," in Ben Jonson's 1616 Folio, edited by Jennifer Brady and W. H. Herendeen, University of Delaware Press, 1991, pp. 64-86.

In the following essay, Maus explores the relationship between genre and economics in Jonson's work, suggesting that the "satiric economy" of the plays is absent from the allegorical masques and the idealistic poems of praise.

For those of you who are interested in getting ahead, I have one suggestion: have a father who owns the business and have him die.

—Malcolm Forbes

In tragedy, characters die; in comedy, they do not. Though Jonson observes this generic rule scrupulously—Puntarvolo's dog, in Every Man Out Of His Humour, is his only real casualty—death nonetheless looms unusually large as a plot device in many of his comedies. In Volpone most of the characters are waiting for the hero...