Volpone

Commentaries on Plays by Shakespeare’s Contemporaries

Jonson, Ben. Volpone. (New Mermaids/Methuen Drama, 2019.)

Of Interest: RSC Resources | ISE Resources | S-O Sources | 1623 Folio 619-48 (Folger)

Ben Jonson’s Volpone

ACT 1

Following are comments on Ben Jonson’s Volpone, or The Fox, Act 1

Act 1, Scene 1. “Good morning to the day; and, next, my gold”: Volpone greets his beloved gold and, with Mosca’s assistance, muses on the shape and quality of his life for the near term.

In Act 1, Scene 1, Volpone’s startling apostrophe to the morning sunshine and his golden treasure tells us quite a lot about him: “Good morning to the day; and, next, my gold: / Open the shrine, that I may see my saint” (9, 1.1.1-2). We see that this wealthy, single, childless man cherishes having a direct relationship to his money, his gold. He venerates it even as he plays the charlatan to acquire still more of it.

Volpone casts himself as a sun-worshiper, and he figuratively associates the sun’s golden color with the precious metal that he so loves, treating both as an object of worship. On one track, Volpone is an energetic grifter, and on the other we might think he’s a pure miser, but he insists to Mosca that what he really values isn’t so much the solid gold he sees before him, but the getting of it. As he puts the case, “I glory / More in the cunning purchase of my wealth, / Than in the glad possession …” (11, 1.1.30-32).

Why is that, we may ask? Well, Volpone explains, it’s because he has always earned his money without exploiting truly innocent people: he is not what today we would call an abusive “captain of industry” who makes his living by ruthlessly exploiting common laborers, laying dangerous ventures upon merchants, or anything of that sort. He isn’t even a usurious banker or money-lender. It seems as if Volpone is admitting that he has earned his money by carrying out con-jobs against other people who are at least as greedy as he himself is. (Either that, or he inherited money and later went into business as a con artist.)

Ben Jonson, like Shakespeare and his fellow Elizabethan-Jacobean playwrights, lived during the Early Modern Age, which saw proto-capitalist practices and mindsets beginning to flourish in England, even though the Elizabethan Age marked the beginning of the Mercantilist Period emphasizing trade balances to grow the nation’s wealth and capitalize on colonial exploration and acquisition. Jonson’s protagonist Volpone participates is this current of action and thinking: he is a sort of entrepreneur who thrives on his nimble wits, his “cunning,” as he calls it, and gets the advantage of the grifters and squirming human bags of appetite who congregate around him.

In The Communist Manifesto of 1848, Karl Marx describes well the dynamic quality of the capitalist order, its productivity twinned with its breakneck instability. There is something of that, however prematurely, in the frantic chasing after money that we see in Volpone. Jonson’s Venice is a society in which, to borrow Marx’s language, “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.” In Marx’s hopeful, almost messianic vision, the upshot would be that “man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind,” thus paving the way for the coming-on of a new age in which exploitation will be no more.

Well, let’s put a pin in paradise for now, and note instead that in Volpone, everyone is frantically running around trying to find ways to make their identity and their circumstances less unstable than they presently are. What is Volpone’s game at the play’s outset? He is an old bachelor with no children, and he’s sitting on a pile of gold. Lately, it has occurred to him to start a con job against those nasty human “birds of prey” Voltore, Corvino, and Corbaccio, among other characters: for three years now, he has been staying home and pretending to be nearing his miserable end, sick of many ailments.

This con-artist project seems to be working like a life-saving elixir, too. Volpone’s “marks” keep dropping by to check up on their poor suffering (rich) friend, hoping all the while that he’ll soon wheeze his last, right after their personal warmth and lavish offerings deliver his treasure into their waiting laps. Jonson’s era shared an obsession with health and the lack thereof. In spite of its being the beginning of the scientific age, which brought many new advances, doctoring was still not sufficiently better than witchcraft to make a person anything less than profoundly anxious whenever the topic of health arose.

The plague was still a going thing and a menacing one at that, and doctors, for all their bold experimentation during the Renaissance, were as likely to kill the patient as mitigate or remove the diseases they confronted. Volpone uses his own faked ill-health, his phony imminent demise, to great psychological effect, and it should be no surprise that when in the second act he needs to disguise himself to get a love interest’s attention, he chooses to adopt the identity of one Scoto of Mantua, quack seller of worthless medicines.

A third interest is of course the lust of the eyes, sex, a taste for variety, however we want to define this interest. Volpone describes himself as a seeker of pleasure, a hedonist: he says to Mosca, “What should I do, / But cocker up my genius, and live free / To all delights my fortune calls me to?” (12, 1.1.70-72). His status as an allegedly ailing, definitely rich bachelor, he chortles, makes him interesting; it makes him the center of a fair number of people’s attention.

In a sense, then, this huckster Volpone is, as we would say, “in it for the likes,” and as such he resembles some modern people who get a rush from others’ attention to their podcast or YouTube channel. At the heart of Volpone’s enterprise, we may surmise, is a deal of vanity twinned with just as much insecurity. In the end, he has no legitimate heirs, so what’s it all for, aside from this invented drama stemming from the silly play-acting of an English malade-imaginaire? There seems to be a hole, a zone of sterility, at the center Volpone’s enterprise.

And what are we to make of Mosca so far, Volpone’s parasite, his “fly”? It’s hard to miss the sycophancy of this character’s additions to the Fox’s self-congratulatory musings about the wholesomeness of his profession: he tells Volpone, “You loathe, the widow’s, or the orphan’s tears / Should wash your pavements …” (11-12, 1.1.49-50). To borrow a definition from Oscar Wilde, a disciple is someone who “stands behind one’s throne, and at the moment of one’s triumph whispers in one’s ear that, after all, one is immortal” (The source of that gem is Wilde’s “A few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated” The Saturday Review, 1894).

Like so much else in the play, however, our view of Mosca is bound to change. He will begin to place himself near the epicenter of the action and assert more control over events.

Act 1, Scene 2. “Here is enclosed the soul of Pythagoras, that juggler divine”: Volpone watches a show put on by his entertainer-servants Nano and Androgyno, apparently at Mosca’s direction.

In Act 1, Scene 2, Volpone’s servants Nano and Androgyno, with Castrone playing his part silently, put on a show for him grounded in the transmigrations of Pythagoras’s soul over time. Methuen/New Mermaids editor Robert Watson remarks astutely of this strange little episode that it functions in part as an introduction or “overture” to Jonson’s inclusion of the style of hashing out the comically convoluted “moot cases at the Inns of court” (Introduction xx) that lawyers-in-training used to sharpen their skills. It also seems reasonable to suppose that Ben Jonson likes the scene’s Pythagorean emphasis on change, or, to use that favorite Ovidian word, metamorphosis.

Much of the entertainment revolves around insults made against Protestants, as Ben Jonson had converted to Catholicism while in prison for the killing of Gabriel Spencer in 1598 in a duel. But the upshot of it all is a song that one or two of the performers apparently sing, about the superiority of the Fool’s position and perspective in life: the song runs in part, “Fools, they are the only nation / Worth men’s envy, or admiration; / Free from care, or sorrow-taking, / Themselves, and others merry-making; / All they speak, or do, is sterling” (17, 1.2.66-80).

Volpone is pleased, perhaps because the Fool is granted a good deal of liberty to say and do as he pleases. Does our Fox, with his love of the freedom money can buy, connect himself with this vision of Fools? Most likely. There is something about the flow of Pythagoras’s identity, perhaps, that seems like the exchanges that come with the career or life, so to speak, of a bit of money: from one “cash nexus” to the next, it goes on its merry way.

Mosca even claims that wealth is even better than learning—a view which, surprisingly, he takes farther than Volpone, who had said, “Yes, to be learnèd, Mosca” (19, 1.2.109). In any case, it’s time for the Fox to get down to the business of pretending to be at death’s door. But it’s nothing he can’t do—he has, he tells us at the end of Act 1, Scene 2, been pulling it off for three years now (20, 1.2.124-128).

Act 1, Scene 3. “You are his heir, sir”: Mosca tells Voltore the Attorney that he will be Volpone’s inheritor, and Volpone collects a silver plate as the reward for his strenuous efforts at playing a man near death.

In Act 1, Scene 3, Voltore the Attorney, or “Advocate,” arrives to hand over to Volpone a plate of solid silver. Taking him aside as Volpone runs through his false sickness paces, Mosca tells Voltore that he is in fact the Fox’s heir, and leans on him to make him a servant of his family, telling him, “I am lost, / Except the rising sun do shine on me” (22, 1.3.36-37).

Mosca repeats this request in a more poetical, if rather grotesque, patch towards the scene’s end: “When you do come to swim, in golden lard, / Up to the arms, in honey, that your chin / is borne up stiff with fatness of the flood, / Think on your vassal” (24, 1.3.70-73). Does this honey-drenched imagery indicate how deranged Mosca thinks the sensibilities of the greedy advocate Voltore must be? What sane person would want to swim in a sticky vat of honey?

Act 1, Scene 4. “What a rare punishment is avarice, to itself!” Mosca tells Corbaccio to pressure Volpone by naming him as his heir, and the old man goes off eager to do so.

In Act 1, Scene 4, Corbaccio visits Volpone, and Mosca’s opening tack is to commiserate with the old gentleman Crow over the increasingly sick Volpone’s apparent dislike of doctors and their medicines. As he hears Mosca relate Volpone’s symptoms, Corbaccio says he feels younger by the minute: “This makes me young again, by a score of years (27, 1.4.56).

But Mosca’s main thrust is to advise Corbaccio to go home and change his will so that it names Volpone—and not his own son, Bonario—as his heir: he tells him, “frame a will; whereto you shall inscribe / My master your sole heir (30, 1.4.93-94). He also flatters Corbaccio, steeped in age as he is, that he is certain to outlive the supposedly dying Volpone.

Volpone is delighted with Mosca’s clever performance, and exclaims, “What a rare punishment is avarice, to itself!” (32, 1.4.142-143). Old Corbaccio sincerely believes that if he can just get hold of Volpone’s fortune, he will feel years younger as if by a miracle. The man is delusional—but then, that’s a common affliction in comedy of all sorts, from the sentimental to the harshly satirical. We could say the same of Shakespearean drama in all its generic diversity. Rhodri Lewis (spelling …) is one critic who has concentrated insightfully on the power of delusion in Shakespeare’s tragedies.

Act 1, Scene 5. “I must see her—”: Mosca tells Volpone about Corvino’s supremely beautiful wife, Celia, and his obsession shifts at once from acquiring more gold to acquiring her.

In Act 1, Scene 5, it’s time for the merchant Corvino, the crow, to pay his respects to Volpone by giving him a large pearl from the East. Mosca’s shift with Corvino is to pretend that he has favored him by fraudulently interpreting Volpone’s every mention of his name as signalling the intention to make him his heir. “I asked him, / Whom would he have his heir?” says Mosca, and always, he insists, came to him the name “Corvino” (35, 1.5.31-32). He even incites this man to sling verbal abuse at Volpone, on the pretense that the sufferer can’t hear him anyway.

When Corvino departs, Mosca’s mention of Lady Politic Would-be as a beauty leads him to introduce Volpone to the excellence of one Celia, Corvino’s wife. Mosca calls this young woman “The blazing star of Italy! A wench / O’ the first year, a beauty, ripe, as harvest!” He also appeals to Volpone’s love of a certain precious metal when he describes Celia as “Bright as your gold, and lovely, as your gold!” (39, 1.5.108-109, 114).

Volpone’s immediate response is, “I must see her—” (39, 1.5.123). And with that impulsive utterance, the con-based plot shifts seismically. The Fox has been outfoxed by his “parasite,” Mosca. From now for much of the play, Volpone’s attentions will be centered on this new obsession, the heavenly Celia, and his own plotting to gain additional wealth by feigning illness will be enlisted in the service of this obsession.

ACT 2

Act 2, Scene 1. “This Sir Pol will be ignorant of nothing”: the gentleman Sir Peregrine meets a remarkable fellow Englishman, the knight Sir Politic Would-Be, who has quite a penchant for being in the know.

In Act 2, Scene 1, an English gentleman who has only been in Venice for just under two months enters conversing with the English knight Sir Politic Would-Be. Peregrine can hardly believe his ears when he listens to some of the nonsense that “Sir Pol” talks about their mutual country and Venice alike.

The typical English person in Jonson’s time was fond of serving up correspondences between the heavens and the earth, high and low, and so forth—it was part of that age’s faith in the general coherence of things thanks to the so-called Great Chain of Being. (The concept is well covered in Arthur O. Lovejoy’s detailed book The Great Chain of Being and E. M. W. Tillyard’s essential study The Elizabethan World Picture.) But Sir Pol takes this tendency to ridiculous lengths, and he may remind us of our own era’s fascination with often-dubious or even flat-out ludicrous “conspiracy theories” about virtually everything of note that happens.

This mention of our own era may be useful to us in our thinking about Sir Politic Would-Be. What inspires or drives people to take up the conspiratorial mindset? It seems as if there is a strong need in human beings to be “in the know,” especially about things that we think are critical but that others misunderstand. Having a “theory” about such things may allow us to feel somewhat superior to others, to the “non-cognoscenti,” the dupes and grand innocents around us who don’t understand what we think we understand.

Another way to put the appeal is that conspiracy theories lend us a feeling of coherence. If we can draw together all sorts of disparate and dissonant bits of knowledge, factoids, and whatnot so that together they point us towards some brilliant, absolutely comprehensible version of events, we feel empowered and happy. If we can’t do that, our maddeningly complex world starts to seem distressingly incoherent to us.

Well, it doesn’t take the genial Peregrine long before he realizes that Pol is quite the know-it-all: “This Sir Pol will be ignorant of nothing” is his quick and accurate judgment of the eccentric fellow (45, 2.1.98). If Volpone’s obsessions are money and sex, Sir Pol’s is “intelligence” in the sense of information-gathering and information itself. He fancies himself a foreign spy. We shall have to keep our eyes on him, then!

Act 2, Scene 2. “They are the only knowing men of Europe!” To Peregrine’s astonishment, Sir Politic Would-Be is delighted by “Scoto of Mantua,” Volpone’s fraudulent disguise to get Celia’s attention.

In Act 2, Scene 2, we are treated to a sample of just how terrible Sir Politic Would-Be’s judgment of other people really is, as his mania for inside information begins to collide with Volpone’s quest to gain the attentions of Corvino’s heavenly wife, Celia.

It seems that together with Mosca, Volpone has cooked up a crazy spectacle for the citizens of Venice—he means to attract Celia’s attention by impersonating a well-known mountebank named Scoto of Mantua, who, by the way, actually visited England and performed for Queen Elizabeth I in the 1570s. (See Readingnorton.wordpress.com, entry dated 5/15/2016.) Sir Pol is enraptured and thoroughly convinced by the ludicrous barking of this quack, saying, “They are the only knowing men of Europe!” (47, 2.2.9).

As for what Volpone-Scoto says about his own qualities and the virtues of his medicine, perhaps it’s best to sit back and let it roll over yourself like a wave, at least initially. Quack-specifics aside, reading Volpone’s fraudulent “pitch” reminds us that nothing much has changed about the rhetoric of salesmanship in hundreds of years.

There’s the familiar tactic of “dissing” one’s competitors as dishonest hacks and, conversely, distinguishing oneself as diligent, honest, or even famous. There’s the matter of praising the virtues of one’s product and offering it at a certain price “for a limited time only,” or—like late-night television ads—setting the price very high at first and then lowering it or offering three times the product for the price of one, and so forth. Operators are standing by! Or at least in this case, Mosca and Nano are waiting to sell you Volpone’s fraudulent cure-all.

Volpone’s act works splendidly since, after all, the whole point was to catch Celia’s eye. That’s why “Scoto” is hawking his oglio del Scoto right below her window, and he gets her to toss her handkerchief down to street-level. First contact has been made, so maybe oglio is worth something after all.

Act 2, Scene 3. “What, is my wife your Franciscina? sir?” Corvino goes into a jealous rage when he catches Celia tossing her handkerchief down to the public square to Volpone as Scoto the mountebank.

In Act 2, Scene 3, Corvino drives Volpone/Scoto down from his “bank” or raised platform and beats him from the city square. Corvine is humiliated at this turn of events, and refers to himself as being cast in the commedia dell’arte rold of the eminently cuckoldable character il Pantalone, with Celia playing the rather tricky role of the servetta or servant Franceschina, of doubtful loyalty and morals. (See, for example, italiancarnival.com’s entry on the servant character.)

Sir Politic Would-Be thinks the awful scene has something to do with him, most likely because he thinks that about everything. He says to Peregrine, “Some trick of state, believe it. I will home” (57, 2.3.10). Peregrine’s genial way of conversing doesn’t prevent him from rather meanly deciding, “This knight, / I may not lose him, for my mirth, till night” (58, 2.3.15-16).

As the play moves on, it becomes easier and easier to see that Sir Politic’s function in this satirical comedy is to be the dupe who’s always more of a dupe than even the other gecks and gulls in the play. He thinks himself mighty clever, but nearly everyone else runs circles around him.

Act 2, Scene 4. “I will not bid you to despair of aught”: Mosca encourages Volpone to persist in his love pursuit of Celia.

In Act 2, Scene 4, Volpone is more smitten than ever with Celia, and Mosca simply encourages him to keep on trying, building on the partial success gained through his mountebank disguise. Mosca says, “I will not bid you to despair of aught, / Within a human compass” (59, 2.4.18-19). Volpone’s so-called parasite seems more and more to be in control of events, at least where his master is concerned.

Act 2, Scene 5. “Thy restraint, before, was liberty”: Corvino expresses groundless rage at Celia for what he considers her reckless disloyalty to him.

In Act 2, Scene 5, Corvino issues a diatribe to make the angels weep against his long-suffering wife, Celia. The entire scene is filled with references to whoredom and prostitution, and all Celia can do is endure the onslaught. Corvino’s insecurity shows plainly: “Death of mine honour, with the city’s fool?” (60, 2.5.1) he asks histrionically. He threatens Celia with “the murder / Of father, mother, brother, all thy race …” (61, 2.5.27-28) Or rather, he threatens to threaten her with all this, but since, as he says, Celia must not think him an Italian man, he doesn’t see the point in bothering.

When Celia mildly volunteers that she never goes out except to attend Church services, Corvino only becomes angrier, saying, “thy restraint before was liberty, / To what I now decree …” (62, 2.5.48-49), and the scene ends with Corvino ominously, if not convincingly, taunting her with the vile thought of killing her and performing a public autopsy on her corpse. At least the mad King Lear only threatened to have someone else “anatomize Regan” to find the cause of her hard heart! Well, it’s easy to tell that Corvino is all talk—he’s giving a performance for himself and Celia—but what he says is no less ugly for that.

Act 2, Scene 6. “Wherefore should not I as well command my blood, and my affections …?” Corvino’s competitive spirit and complete lack of integrity spur him on to new lows where Celia is concerned.

In Act 2, Scene 6, Mosca tells Corvino that his rivals have somewhat revived Volpone with Scoto’s oil that they bought. But now, he continues, the only way to “preserve” the invalid,  “some young woman must be straight sought out— / Lusty, and full of juice—to sleep by him …” (64, 2.6.34).

When Corvino hears that Lupo the doctor has offered up hisown daughter for the purpose, he springs into thoroughly amoral action: “Wherefore should not I / As well command my blood, and my affections, / As this dull doctor?” (66, 2.6.70-72). After all, he reasons, how is there any more or less honor in serving up one’s wife as one’s daughter? Corvino clearly understands nothing of honor, and is driven by the spirit of competition, just like almost everyone else in Jonson’s Venice.

Act 2, Scene 7. “It shall appear how far I am free from jealousy or fear”: Corvino decides that it would be entirely acceptable to prostitute his wife, Celia, to get Volpone’s gold.

In Act 2, Scene 7, we see Corvino doing that thing that trolls always do—pretending he was “only joking” when he said all those vile things before to Celia about her being a shameless slut and prostituting herself  to the crowd of leering men gathered outside below their apartment window. Now he plays nice, and tells her to go put on her most alluring attire so they can attend a dinner at Volpone’s place. There, he tells the unsuspecting Celia, “it shall appear / How far I am free from jealousy or fear” (68, 2.7.17-18).

ACT 3

Act 3, Scene 1. “O! your parasite is a most precious thing”: Mosca steps out in soliloquy and praises his own skills as Volpone’s clever servant.

In Act 3, Scene 1, our “fly” Mosca shows us that he is a more complex and dynamic creature than we could have guessed. “O! your parasite / Is a most precious thing dropped from above, / Not bred ‘mongst clods and clodpoles here on earth” (3.1.7-9).

It may startle us to see him step into the spotlight and bespeak himself so boldly, but that is no doubt because until now, he has done such a great job of remaining behind the scenes, and serving Volpone’s interests.

What Mosca says by way of praising himself illuminates the nature and role of a “parasite” as he sees it. Fundamentally, he describes his position as involving a core level of selfishness that easily rivals that of Volpone and the men (that is, the vulture, crow, and raven) who pursue his wealth even as he pursues theirs. The finest parasites, says Mosca, aren’t just in it for the table scraps or the tips—no, he says, the best one “had the art born with him” (69, 3.1.30). This claim may remind us of the Roman tag line, “Poeta nascitur, non fit”—a poet is born, not made.

In his 1528 Book of the Courtier, or Il Libro del cortegiano, The sixteenth-century Italian Renaissance writer Baldassare Castiglione described the perfect courtier as practicing a kind of “easy-seeming grace,” which nicely translates the Italian term sprezzatura, spelled s-p-r-e-z-z-a-t-u-r-a.Mosca seems to capture the essence of this quality when he says that as for the true parasite’s art, he “Toils not to learn it, but doth practise it / Out of most excellent nature” (69, 3.1.31-32).

In sprezzatura, there’s an interplay, perhaps, between artifice and nature, but the artifice itself flows from natural felicity of word, dress, gesture, action. Whatever amount of effort goes into a courtly (or parasitical) performance, then, seems not like vulgar straining, but instead seems to come, and for the most part really does come, naturally.

Renaissance Italian concepts aside, our first look at Mosca, man and parasite, here in Act 3, Scene 1 tells us that we should expect him to exploit his supposedly superior overlords until he begins to take command of the play’s action. For a good while in this play, Mosca will ride the desire-driven chaos he partly sows, mostly for his own benefit.

Act 3, Scene 2. “These imputations are too common, sir”: Mosca steers Corbaccio’s son Bonario from contempt to appreciation when he informs him of Corbaccio’s plan to disinherit him.

In Act 3, Scene 2, Mosca springs into action when he meets Corbaccio’s son Bonario (meaning in Italian “good man”). At first, Bonario distrusts and despises Mosca, thinking ill of his groveling ways with his superiors. But Mosca is more than a match for the innocent Bonario, and he turns the situation around deftly by informing him that his father is just about to cast him aside in his will in favor of Volpone.

He says to the young man, “This very hour, your father is in purpose / To disinherit you” (71, 3.2.43-44). Now Bonario is hooked, and Mosca prepares him—if the thing be possible—to hear his own father proclaim him “The common issue of the earth” (72, 3.2.63-64). Of course, Mosca neatly avoids mentioning that he himself is the rascal who suggested that Corbaccio should inflict this very injury on his son.

Act 3, Scenes 3-5. “Lord, how it threats me, what I am to suffer!” Volpone’s enjoyment of the diversion provided by Nano, Androgyno, and Castrone is followed by the entrance of the philosophical chatterbox Lady Would-Be. 

In Act 3, Scene 3, Nano, Androgyno, and Castrone kick things off by entertaining Volpone, who is waiting for Mosca to return. Nano articulates the subject of the entertainment, which concerns which of them can claim “precedency” in their competition to please their employer (72, 3.3.6). Nano seems poised to win, since he sings or recites some verse arrogating to himself all the best qualities and advantages over his rivals.

Soon, though, Lady Would-Be shows up, which distresses Volpone no end since he considers her a pointless chatterbox. “Lord, how it threats me, what I am to suffer!” he exclaims (74, 3.3.31).

In Act 3, Scene 4, Lady Would-Be does not disappoint in her capacity to hold the conversational floor. Referring to just about every ancient and modern philosopher under the sun in no particular order, she drives Volpone into notably sexist paroxysms of self-pity and despair. When will this talkative woman depart and leave him in peace? he wonders in anguish.

Finally, in Act 3, Scene 5, Mosca rescues Volpone by falsely claiming that her husband, Sir Pol, was last seen rowing through the great City’s canals with “the most cunning courtesan of Venice” (80, 3.5.20). That’s all it takes to send her off in pursuit of her allegedly wayward partner.

Meanwhile, Mosca continues to place himself closer to the center of the action. He has undeniably got Volpone out of a tough situation with Lady Would-Be, and now he leverages that good deed by playing the bearer of excellent news: “Corbaccio will arrive straight, with the will; / When he is gone, I’ll tell you more” (82, 3.5.33-34). Upon hearing that, Volpone declares, “My spirits are returned: I am alive …” (82, 3.5.35).

Act 3, Scenes 6-7. “O! I am unmasked, unspirited, undone”: Mosca positions Bonario to overhear Corbaccio disinherit him, but instead Corvino shows up early to offer his wife Celia to Volpone; when that gambit fails, Volpone tries to rape Celia, but is prevented by Bonario.

In the very brief Act 3, Scene 6, Mosca hides Bonario in a spot where he expects to hear himself disinherited by his father, Corbaccio. Bonario has trouble taking in this betrayal, saying, “Yet, / Cannot my thought imagine this a truth” (82, 3.6.3-4).

The action that transpires at the outset of Act 3, Scene 7, however, is different: Corvino arrives early to offer up his wife, Celia, to the carnal enjoyment of Volpone. Mosca thereupon sends Bonario off to sample the books in a gallery at some distance from the present spot, and then Corvino and Celia get into a protracted tussle over what he expects of her and how it reflects on him.

Poor Celia shows us that she is utterly clueless about the true nature of her conniving husband Corvino. At one point, her invocation of masculine honor as a reason not to serve her up to Volpone draws the Falstaffian response, “Honour? tut, a breath; / There’s no such thing, in nature: a mere term / Invented to awe fools” (84-85, 3.7.38-40).

For those who are familiar with Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays, it’s impossible to miss the similarity between Corvino’s cowardly scoffing and Sir John Falstaff’s brazen assessment of his attitude towards military honor: “What is honor? A word.” Falstaff ends his shameless “catechism” with the wonderful anti-sententia, “Honor is a mere scutch- / eon” (Norton Histories, I Henry IV 687, 5.1.134, 138-139).

Things only go downhill from there, with Corvino offering Celia specious bits of egotism and relativistic drivel, and responding to her continued defense of virtue with what can only be called the force of a violent imagination. At one instant, Corvino threatens Celia as follows: “I will drag thee hence, home, by the hair; / Cry thee a strumpet through the streets; rip up / Thy mouth, unto thine ears; and slit thy nose …” (87, 3.7.96-98). All this because Celia dares to sustain the concept of chastity that Corvino himself has been using to control her every movement.

From her raging husband, Celia, unable to escape, is delivered to the miraculously revivified lecher Volpone, who at once enters into a long and distressing rhetorical performance to overcome the lady’s unshakeable virtue. Volpone serves up a carpe diem-style song inspired by the Roman poet Catullus, whose fifth Ode begins, “Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus” (Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love …). It fails to move Celia from the firmament of her goodness.

Volpone’s offer of himself as a virile lover and opulent provider to replace the unworthy Corvino also fails miserably, as does the Fox’s straightforward contempt for the kind of virtue that Celia so steadfastly maintains. Ditto for the litany of erotic role-playing scenarios he trots out, hoping one of them will spark something in the less heaven-tending, more exotic parts of her imagination.

All of these shifts fail in the most humiliating way, provoking Celia to offer her longest speech of the entire rhetorical battle. In the course of that speech, she invites Volpone to destroy the beauty that supposedly incites him to such immoderate conduct. She begs him, “flay my face, / Or poison it, with ointments, for seducing / Your blood to this rebellion …” (94, 3.7.251-253). Volpone’s answer to Celia’s plea is truly disgusting: he says in exasperation, “Yield, or I’ll force thee” (94, 3.7.265).

And with those words, Volpone attempts to rape Celia. Just as he begins this attempt, though, in rushes Bonario, who proceeds to play the hero. He denounces Volpone and says he’s only refraining from killing the man so he can render him over to justice in the courts. Volpone is plunged instantly into despair. His rash and criminal assault on Celia’s virtue, he feels certain, will be his ruin, and he cries out, “O! / I am unmasked, unspirited, undone, / Betrayed to beggary, to infamy—” (95, 3.7.277-278).

Act 3, Scene 8. “Let’s die like Romans, since we have lived like Grecians”: Mosca pretends to be deeply distressed at Volpone’s present downfall, but continues acting in the service of his own interests.

In Act 3, Scene 8, Mosca says what we would expect him to say to Volpone—he apologizes abjectly for the recent disastrous turn of events with Celia, even offering Volpone his throat to be cut and insisting, “Let’s die like Romans, / Since we have lived like Grecians” (96, 3.8.14-15).

But by the end of this brief scene, when a knock is heard at the door, Volpone follows Mosca’s advice to jump back into bed and play the invalid once more.

Act 3, Scene 9. “You are his, only? and mine, also? are you not?”: Mosca must manage both Corbaccio and Voltore at the same time, while still advancing his own and Volpone’s interests.

In Act 3, Scene 9, we see Mosca navigating deftly in a whirlpool of competing interests and passions. Corbaccio hands over the will disinheriting Bonario and making Volpone his heir, but Voltore hears what’s going on and flies into a rage. Even so, this “vulture” is easily convinced that what Mosca is doing is actually—however it looks or sounds—for the success of his suit.

Mosca tells Voltore that his plan to expose Corbaccio’s will-trading to Bonario was for his good—the son, he explains, might have done violence to his father and both thereby would lose out on Volpone’s inheritance: he says, “My only aim was, to dig you a fortune / Out of these two, old, rotten sepulchres” (98, 3.9.38-39). Voltore believes it all. Such is the power of desire to underwrite even the most obvious misprision.

Mosca also draws Voltore into his lie about how Bonario forced Celia to make up a story about Volpone trying to rape her. Since Mosca knows that Bonario has said he intends to turn Volpone over to the Venetian justice system, he is enlisting Voltore in an attempt to delay or turn away justice altogether from Volpone. If Volpone goes down, of course, nobody inherits his wealth but the state. And with that consideration, the third act comes to an end.

ACT 4

Act 4, Scene 1. “I told you, sir, it was a plot”: Sir Politic Would-Be is again holding forth for the alleged benefit of the English traveler Peregrine.

In Act 4, Scene 1, Sir Politic Would-Be insists that the whole mountebank scene a while back was some sort of plot to entrap him. Why he thinks that is anybody’s guess, but still he says, “I told you, sir, it was a plot: you see / What observation is” (100, 4.1.102). As always, Sir Pol is mighty pleased with himself for thinking as he does: the world revolves around him.

Sir Pol also has a notion that Italians are very jealous about their culture, and ruthless in exposing those who don’t understand it. Might this be projection on his part, this Englishman who desperately wants to be considered an insider in another people’s culture? He boasts to Peregrine that “Within the first week of my landing here, / All took me for a citizen of Venice …” (101, 4.1.37-38). Based on everything we know about Sir Pol, that hardly seems likely.

Master Would-Be fancies that he has a knack for getting by, and he details his three “big beautiful ideas” for making a basket of ducats from Venice. The first is to sell the Venetian state large quantities of red herrings. The second is to advise the state that it should restrict possession of common tinderboxes to Venetians of known loyalty. Why, he says, anyone could walk into the City’s Arsenale and blow the whole bundle of munities sky-high! Even those approved to carry these items, he says, should only be allowed to possess them “at such a bigness, / As might not lurk in pockets” (104, 4.1.98-99).

Brilliant! And redolent, perhaps—as the Methuen/New Mermaids editor points out—of the November 1605 “Gunpowder Plot” in England that almost resulted in the assassination of King James I and the entire Parliament. Ben Jonson, as the editor says, almost found himself accused of being involved with the conspirators, so there is a bit of auteur-like self-reference on Jonson’s part at this moment in the play.

Sir Pol’s third idea is even sillier: he has, he tells Peregrine, devised a scheme whereby ships entering Venice can be tested for plague by means of onions and bellows. If only he had his notebook so he could show the plans to the incredulous Peregrine!

As for Sir Pol’s personal diary, he’s eager to show that clever account to his English acquaintance Peregrine. As the latter reads an itemized section of the diary, its contents are no more than references to unconnected trivialities, events and remains of the day, and no more. Sir Pol evidently writes down absolutely everything that occurs to him, and everything that happens to him. This seems consistent with his narcissism, so, no surprises there.

Act 4, Scene 2. “This cannot be endured, by any patience”: Lady Would-Be is set upon catching Sir Politic Would-Be in the act of courting a prostitute, and mistakes Peregrine for his lover.

In Act 4, Scene 2, Sir Pol begins by praising his approaching wife as a woman he would boldly compare for beauty and fashion with any other, but she is on a mission to humiliate him based on the false claim made by Mosca in Act 3, Scene 5 that he has been seen together with a Venetian courtesan, in a gondola. Unable or unwilling to view the scene before he accurately, Lady Would-Be launches into poor Peregrine, calling him “your light land-siren here, / Your Sporus, your hermaphrodite …” (109, 4.2.47-48).

Sir Pol makes a feeble attempt to rescue Peregrine, but the Lady continues to hurl abuse at him as “a lewd harlot, a base fricatrice, / A female devil, in a male outside” (110, 4.2.55-56). This is too much even for the amiable Peregrine to tolerate, so he takes up his own defense, attacking her “fair” complexion with the catty observation, “your nose inclines / (That side, that’s next the sun) to the queen-apple” (111, 4.2.72-73). Lady Would-Be is duly scandalized, saying, “This cannot be endured, by any patience” (111, 4.2.74). No matter that she started the whole fracas.

Act 4, Scene 3. “’Pray you, sir, use me”: Lady Would-Be is cured of her error in perception by Mosca, but continues to embarrass herself.

In Act 4, Scene 3, Lady Would-Be comes to Mosca, and presents Peregrine to him with another dose of insults. Mosca cures her present misperception with another, thanks to his lie about Celia. The latter is in fact the prostitute who was seen with Sir Pol, says he, and she is “apprehended, now, / Before the Senate …” (112, 4.3.7-8).

Lady Would-Be is deeply embarrassed by her mistake, but loses no time in compromising her integrity and generally making an ass of herself. She says to Peregrine, “’Pray you, sir, use me. In faith, / The more you use me the more I shall conceive / You have forgot our quarrel” (112, 4.3.17-19). The sexual connotations of a phrase like “use me” are impossible to miss—unless, of course, one is the oafish much-talker Lady Would-Be.

The connotation is not, however, lost on Peregrine, who finally takes offense at this ridiculous person’s slights and—he thinks—come-hitherings. Or rather, he takes offense at what he construes as Sir Pol’s attempt to prostitute his wife to him: “Sir Politic Would-Be? No, Sir Politic Bawd! / To bring me, thus, acquainted with his wife!” (112, 4.3.20-21). If that’s how it is, he says, he will work up a “counter-plot” (24) to put this immoral man to the test.

It isn’t easy to make an enemy of someone like Peregrine, but the absurd and obnoxious Sir Pol and his Lady have done it. Perhaps we can even say that a little of Sir Pol’s conspiracy-theory addiction has rubbed off on Peregrine since he uses the term “counter-plot.” But more likely, the young man uses the term with ironic humor.

Act 4, Scene 4. “Mercury sit upon your thund’ring tongue”: the legal battle is about to begin, and Mosca has all his false-witness ducks lined up in a liars’ row, with Voltore as counsel leading the charge.

In Act 4, Scene 4, Mosca’s plan to condemn the titular plaintiffs Bonario and Celia in court and thereby protect Volpone is to line up Corvino, Corbaccio, and Voltore—the latter as counsel for the defense—on his and Volpone’s side, with Lady Would-Be waiting in the wings as yet another “witness” to the misdeeds they will allege against Bonario and Celia, no matter the facts.

Mosca cheers on Voltore the attorney, with “Mercury sit upon your thund’ring tongue, / Or the French Hercules, and make your language / As conquering as his club to beat along, / As with a tempest, flat, our adversaries …” (114, 4.4.21-24). This is lawyering with a premonitory nod to certain modern advocates: never admit wrong—always attack the other side, preferably with some crime worse than the one your client committed.

Act 4, Scene 5. “This woman, please your fatherhoods, is a whore”:  in court, Voltore counter-accuses the plaintiffs, Bonario and Celia, in the most vicious and slanderous terms.

In Act 4, Scene 5, the Avvocatori don’t know what to make of the case getting underway before them, but Voltore wastes no time. The first order of business is to settle the issue of Volpone’s absence from court. Voltore and Mosca do their best, but the Avvocatori command that he be fetched.

In the meantime, Voltore assails Celia as “known a close adulteress” and Bonario as a “lascivious youth” who has been “known; and taken, in the act” of adultery with Celia (116, 4.5.37-39). Corvino he paints as a patient, put-upon husband, and Corbaccio a heartbroken father driven to disinherit Bonario once he realizes what the young man has done and how ungrateful he is to his father.

Voltore further accuses Bonario of showing up at Volpone’s home in the expectation of murdering Corbaccio. Enraged when that worthy could not be found, says Voltore, Bonario dragged Volpone from his bed and conspired with Celia to accuse him—a dying man!—of attempting to rape Celia. Corbaccio steps up to lie in asseveration of this lurid account, and so does Corvino, slandering his helpless wife: “This woman, please your fatherhoods, is a whore, / Of most hot exercise, more than a partridge …” (120, 4.5.116-117).

Faced with such savage persecution, Celia swoons before the court. Mosca repeats Voltore’s claim that Celia has falsely accused Volpone of rape, and for one more nail in the coffin, Voltore mentions that Lady Would-Be is available to tell the court that she, just as Mosca saw her flirting with Sir Pol beforehand, saw Celia committing improprieties with her wayward husband in a gondola. The Avocatori definitely want to hear from this woman.

Act 4, Scene 6. “See here, grave fathers, here is the ravisher”: when Volpone is carried in to play his role as an invalid, Celia and Bonario are crushed under the weight of what Voltore makes of the Fox’s skillful performance.

In Act 4, Scene 6, Celia and Bonario do themselves no favors by simply being “heavenly” and “good” as their names imply. The court begins to turn against them when Lady Would-Be tells them the lurid “facts” about what she saw going on between Celia and Sir Pol in that accursed gondola. Things go farther south when the allegedly “impotent” or prostrate Volpone is carried in, and his death’s-door appearance seals the case as far as the Avocatori are concerned.

Voltore, pointing to the supposedly dying wreck of a man near him, plays the opportunity as skillfully as Marc Antony at Caesar’s funeral, saying to the Avocatori, “See here, grave fathers, here is the ravisher, / The rider on men’s wives, the great impostor, / The grand voluptuary!” (124, 4.6.23-25)

Confronted with this performance, Bonario and Celia’s fates are sealed. The Avocatori have the two onetime “plaintiffs” led away in shame, and sentence will be rendered that very evening. The dial is set to “triumph” for Volpone and Mosca. The latter speaks briefly with Corvino, Corbaccio, Voltore, and Lady Would-Be, and sends them all away thinking it’s set to “triumph” for them, too.

ACT 5

Act 5, Scene 1. “Well, I am here, and all this brunt is past!”: Volpone is victorious in playing the invalid, but chafes to get back to cozening.

In Act 5, Scene 1, Volpone can’t help chortling over his triumph in getting out of the criminal charges lodged by Celia and Bonario. All he had to do was continue playing the part of a dying man. “Well, I am here, and all this brunt is past!” he exclaims. But right after this high moment, he admits that he’s bored half to death. In the medieval beast fables, Reynard the Fox is always up to no good, and his human namesake is no different.

Truth be told, Volpone is what today we would call an “adrenaline junky.” He lives for the thrill of the con, and lying around playing sick has begun to make him actually feel sick. A glass of wine brings him back to himself, and he has the antidote: “I shall conquer. / Any device, now, of rare, ingenious knavery, / That would possess me with a violent laughter, / Would make me up again!” (128-129, 5.1.13-16). And that’s when he calls for Mosca.

Act 5, Scene 2. “We cannot think to go beyond this”: Mosca and Volpone celebrate their triumph over their enemies, but the latter can’t stop there: he will give out that he is dead, and enjoy the chaos that ensues.

In Act 5, Scene 2, Mosca and Volpone laugh it up at the expense of their enemies Bonario and Celia. What makes this play a satire is the deep-down wickedness of both Mosca and Volpone: Mosca says, “Nay, sir, / To gull the court,” and Volpone adds, “And quite divert the torrent / Upon the innocent.” Mosca perfects the thought with, “Yes, and to make / So rare a music out of discords” (129-130, 5.2.15-18). They take immense pleasure in subverting justice and harming the truly innocent. How deplorable!

Then a more or less serious topic arises, which is why did Mosca’s scheme work? Mosca pipes up with a thoughtful answer: “each of ‘em / Is so possessed, and stuffed with his own hopes, / That anything unto the contrary, / Never so true, or never so apparent, / Never so palpable, they will resist it—” (23-27). To put it simply, people’s hopes, ambitions, and desires blind them to all “inconvenient truths.” They see what they want to see, what they need to see, to be happy, or rich, or whatever state of being they spend their lives and substance chasing.

Straightaway, Volpone sends Nano and Castrone out into the streets to proclaim his death. He will have them “Impute it to the grief / Of this late slander” lodged by Bonario and Celia (132, 5.2.62-63). As for Mosca, he is to put on the clothing of an upper-class Venetian, and let it be known that he is none other than Volpone’s heir. It’s only meant to be a performance, but we can tell that trouble is coming when Volpone naively says he’ll fill in a blank will to lend Mosca more authority. “But, Mosca,” says the Fox, “Play the artificer now, torture ‘em, rarely” (134, 5.2.110-111). What could possibly go wrong?

Act 5, Scene 3. “The fox fares ever best when he is cursed”: Mosca enacts the supposedly dead Volpone’s instructions to perfection, sending each of the suitors away in utter humiliation.

In Act 5, Scene 3, Mosca busies himself with the reckoning-up of all that he has supposedly inherited, and deals successive blows to Volpone’s expectant suitors: Corbaccio, Corvino, Lady Would-Be, and last, Voltore. He offers each of them acerbic counsel as he dispatches them, and off they go, more than disappointed—they’re devastated.

Volpone is delighted with what he sees, and is intent upon plaguing the whole pack of them even more, saying, “Mosca, go, / Straight, take my habit of clarissimo, / And walk the streets; be seen, torment ‘em more: / … Who would / Have lost this feast?” (140, 5.3.104-108).

Volpone, we sense already, is taking this all too far: he is a glutton for feasting on others’ distress, which is bound to come back to bite him. Jonson knows that his audience recognizes as much—the point is to maintain their pleasurable anticipation of his protagonist’s downfall.

Volpone, as yet, fears nothing from his foes, as he says, “The fox fares ever best when he is cursed” (141, 5.3.120). But does he? That sounds like something Reynard would say—hubris is never far from the schemer’s mind. Volpone’s decision to retire from being dead will seal his fate.

Act 5, Scene 4. “Now, Sir Pol, we are even”: Peregrine disguises himself and, with the aid of some merchants, drives Sir Politic Would-Be into the illusory safety of an oversized tortoise-shell.

In Act 5, Scene 4, Peregrine’s time for revenge against Sir Pol has come. He disguises himself and tells the hapless Pol that the English chap he met a while back (meaning Peregrine himself) was in fact a spy. This “spy,” claims the disguised Peregrine, has turned him in to the Venetian government for working up a plot “to sell the state of Venice to the Turk” (143, 5.4.38). It would be hard to imagine a plot that, if discovered, would more enrage the Republic of Venice since the Turks were longtime enemies.

Sir Pol is appropriately alarmed, not least because the stupid plot in question sound like exactly the sort of thing he would dream up and then blab to someone he just met. But not to worry too much: this smooth operator has thought of everything. He has a very large tortoise-shell to hide in, and promptly locates it and goes under the shell. Peregrine’s merchant assistants prod and poke him, and finally take away his shell.

Peregrine undisguises himself, too, and declares, “Now, Sir Pol, we are even …” (146, 5.4.74). As for Pol, his main thought is that he will become a byword for dupes everywhere, and a subject for endless gossip. What is his resolution? Why, to end his pseudo-diplomatic sojourn in Venice: he will, he says, “shun this place and clime forever; / Creeping, with house on back; and think it well / To shrink my poor head, in my politic shell” (147, 5.4.87-89). It is as if Sir Politic Would-Be has become one with his animal alter-ego.

Act 5, Scene 5. “My fox is out on his hole”: Mosca declares his intention to take full advantage of the predicament that Volpone’s recklessness has created for him.

In Act 5, Scene 5, Volpone and Mosca go out and about, and Volpone heads for court, where he will be able to take in the sentencing of Bonario and Celia for the heinous crime of being innocent. Once Volpone leaves, Mosca says, “My fox / Is out on his hole, and, ere he shall re-enter, / I will make him languish, in his borrowed case, / Except he come to composition with me” (148, 5.5.5-9). Mosca will, he says, keep up his disguise as Volpone’s heir “till he share at least” (148, 5.5.15).

Act 5, Scenes 6-9. “A strange, officious, / Troublesome knave!”: Volpone, disguised as a sergeant of the court, stirs up the anger of Corvino, Corbaccio, and Voltore.

In Act 5, Scene 6, Volpone, dressed as a commandatore or sergeant of the court, enjoys tormenting Corvino and Corbaccio with witty insults about their supposed inheritance of Volpone’s estate and their other problems.

In Act 5, Scene 7, he continues this device, this time irritating Voltore with great precision.

In Act 5, Scene 8, Volpone spars again with Corvino and Corbaccio, and then in Act 5, Scene 9, Voltore enters and is targeted. When the lawyer calls him in exasperation, “A strange, officious, / Troublesome knave!” Volpone responds, “It cannot be, sir, that you should be cozened …” (154, 5.9.17). He’s really enjoying this business of casting his enemies’ stupidity and incapacity in their teeth.

Act 5, Scene 10. “Here I prostrate / Myself, at your offended feet, for pardon”: Voltore, driven over the edge by his disappointment and Volpone’s taunting behavior, issues a confession that threatens to incriminate all the guilty parties.

In Act 5, Scene 10, Voltore scares everyone at court half to death when he issues an abject confession, pleading with the avocatori, “here I prostrate / Myself, at your offended feet, for pardon” (156, 5.10.11-12). Why does Voltore do it? Well, he claims it’s conscience that drives him to finger Mosca for much of the wrong-doing that has occurred, but surely things are more complicated than that.

For one thing, Voltore is incensed that so base-born a man as Mosca should inherit rather than himself, a prominent lawyer. He wants revenge against this “parasite.” For another, he is distressed that he did not inherit Volpone’s estate when he was the last person to give up that vain hope.

Act 5, Scene 11. “To make a snare for mine own neck!”: Volpone recognizes his dire circumstances, and pins his hope for rescue on negotiating with Mosca and mollifying Voltore.

In Act 5, Scene 11, Volpone realizes the predicament he’s in, and cries out, “To make a snare for mine own neck! and run / My head into it, wilfully! with laughter! / When I had newly ‘scaped, was free, and clear!” (158, 5.11.1-3). He got away with playing the invalid—Celia and Bonario are on the verge of being sentenced instead of him. But then he had to go and play dead, and worse yet, come back from the dead in the form of that sassy commandatore or sergeant disguise!

It would be hard to put the matter more concisely or accurately than Volpone himself when he says, “What a vile wretch was I, that could not bear / My fortune soberly?” (159, 5.11.15-16). His immoderate desire for pleasure at the expense of others is now likely to cost him dearly.

Act 5, Scene 12. “This is called mortifying of a fox”: Volpone is unable to refrain from further misdeeds against his foes, and so he and Mosca end up being sentenced to harsh punishments along with those foes.

In Act 5, Scene 12, the avocatori have been poring over the notes that lawyer Voltore has given them, and they contain the truth that Bonario was wronged and that Celia’s husband Corvino brought her to Volpone. The notes do not, however, accuse Volpone of rape since Voltore believes the man was indeed incapable of performing a sexual act.

Before Voltore does still more damage to the case, Volpone (in disguise as the commandatori, whispers to him that Mosca wants him to know his master is still alive and only meant to test his loyalty. It would be best, then, to take his detractors’ hints and fall down as if possessed by the devil. When he comes to, he denies that anything the documents contain is true.

Next, however, when an avocatori points out that Volpone is dead, Voltore denies this as well: “O no, my honoured fathers, / He lives—” (162, 5.12.46-47). In comes Mosca, to whom Volpone whispers, “say I am living” (54). But Mosca is having none of that, and he proceeds to haggle with Volpone over the percentage of his estate he will give up to get out of this pickle. Half? Volpone angrily rejects what seems like a reasonable offer, all things considered.

Things are moving in Mosca’s direction. Everyone still thinks Volpone is just a cheeky commandatori, not a magnifico. Mosca asks that this “commandatori” be taken away and whipped, just as the avocatori have pronounced. One of the avocatori even asks Mosca if he’s married, obviously angling for such an advantageous union with this newly minted gentleman. It is at this point, when he has almost nothing left to lose, that Volpone decides to give up his commoner’s disguise, saying, “The fox shall, here, uncase” (165, 5.12.84).

Volpone, now standing barren of hope before the court, denounces all his onetime suitors as well as Mosca, and asks that sentence be passed on all, including himself. The first avocatore says pointedly, “These possess wealth, as sick me possess fevers, / Which, trulier, may be said to possess them” (166, 5.12.101-102). A medieval religious commonplace was—if we take Chaucer’s example for it—“Radix malorum est cupiditas” (greed is the root of all evil; see The Pardoner’s Tale). What the avocatore says flows from that sensibility.

Celia’s plea for mercy for the offenders falls on deaf ears, and Mosca, for his abuse of the court and the Venetian class system, is sentenced most harshly: he is to be whipped and then condemned to the galleys for life. Voltore, Corbaccio, and Corvine receive appropriate punishments, and Volpone is sentenced to give all his money to the “hospital of the Incurabili” (167, 5.12.120). Worse yet, says the first avocatori, since he got most of his wealth by feigning illness, he will “lie in prison, cramped with irons” until he is “sick and lame indeed” (167, 5.12.123-124). To all this, Volpone says resonantly, “This is called mortifying of a fox” (167, 5.12.125).

The Methuen/New Mermaids editor Brian Parker’s note is excellent in unpacking Volpone’s five-fold pun: mortification, says Parker, can mean “humiliation”; “bringing toward death”; “tenderizing animal meat”; teaching sinners, by punishment, to overcome their worldly appetites”; and, finally, “disposing of property for charitable purposes.” Thus, one word does quintuple duty.

The first two meanings seem to be the most important ones: Volpone has been essentially stripped of his identity as a Venetian gentleman, and he will certainly be brought closer to death by such a harsh punishment. But all five definitions certainly apply. In the end, neither Volpone nor Mosca benefit one iota from their wicked schemes, and neither do Volpone’s inheritance-seekers Voltore, Corvino, and Corbaccio. The Would-Be couple is duly humiliated for their foolishness, and only Celia and Bonario—and possibly Nano, Androgyno, and Castrone—ultimately escape misfortune.

The foregoing material is Copyright 2025 by Alfred J. Drake

For quotations, I have used the 2019 New Mermaids edition of Jonson’s Volpone