Introduction to Ben Jonson’s Volpone: Background, Character, Theme and Important Quotations

Ben Jonson’s Volpone; Or, The Fox (1606) is a dark, mercilessly funny masterpiece of Jacobean satire. Unlike the gentle romantic comedies popular during the era, Jonson crafts a fierce “beast fable” in dramatic form, stripping away human dignity to expose the raw, animalistic greed of a society obsessed with wealth.

1. Setting

The play is set entirely in Venice, Italy. To an early 17th-century English audience, Venice carried a double meaning. On one hand, it was a legendary epicenter of global trade, immense luxury, and sophisticated legal systems. On the other, it was viewed as a breeding ground for moral corruption, loose ethics, and Machiavellian deceit. By placing the story here, Jonson safely distances his critique from London while holding up a mirror to the rising commercialism and financial greed of his own country.

2. Background and History

First performed by the King’s Men at the Globe Theatre in 1606, Volpone belongs to the Jacobean era—a period under King James I characterized by darker, cynical, and more pessimistic art compared to the relative optimism of Elizabethan writing.

Jonson constructed the play using two distinct structural traditions:

1. The Beast Fable: A classical literary tradition where characters are given the traits, flaws, and names of animals (e.g., the fox, the fly, the crow) to satirize human behavior.
2. Commedia dell’Arte: A form of Italian improvisational theater utilizing stock character archetypes (like the greedy old merchant or the clever, scheming servant) which Jonson elevates into complex psychological portraits.

3. Major Character Sketch

The main characters are named after Italian animals, perfectly mirroring their predatory instincts:

4. Key Themes

Gold as a Substituted Religion

The play opens with Volpone literally bowing before his gold and exclaiming, “Good morning to the day; and next, my gold! Open the shrine, that I may see my saint.” Jonson demonstrates how a society obsessed with wealth stops worshipping God and starts treating money as a divine entity. Gold distorts and hollows out every basic human institution, including marriage, family, law, and medicine.

The Art of Deception and Performative Sin

Almost every character in Volpone is playing a role. Volpone acts like a dying invalid; Voltore puts on a performance of legal righteousness; Mosca plays the submissive servant. Jonson critiques the theatre of daily life, warning that when people spend all their energy performing lies for financial gain, they eventually lose their true identities entirely.

The Self-Destructive Nature of Greed

The satire operates on a basic principle: a con artist can only trick someone who is already driven by greed. The legacy hunters are only vulnerable because they desperately want something they haven’t earned. Ultimately, Jonson illustrates that avarice is an inherently unstable emotion that inevitably turns inward and destroys the person harboring it.

5. Acts and Scenes Explanation

Act I: Setting the Trap

Volpone and Mosca kick off the play by celebrating their highly profitable scam. Volpone covers himself in ointment and hops into bed, pretending to be on the brink of death.

One by one, the “birds of prey” arrive to circle the dying Fox. Voltore brings an antique gold plate; Corbaccio brings a bag of gold coins and reveals he has rewritten his will to benefit Volpone; Corvino brings a magnificent pearl. Mosca brilliantly plays them against each other, whispering to each one privately that they are guaranteed to be the sole heir.

Act II: The Disguise & The Obsession

Volpone, restless and eager for a new thrill, wants to see Corvino’s famously beautiful and fiercely guarded wife, Celia. He disguises himself as a flamboyant Italian mountebank (a traveling snake-oil salesman) named Scoto Manticu and sets up a stage right outside Celia’s window.

Celia drops her handkerchief to him, infuriating her psychotically jealous husband, Corvino, who storms out to drive the salesman away. Volpone returns to his palace madly infatuated with Celia, demanding that Mosca find a way to secure her for him.

Act III: The Trap Snaps Back

Mosca orchestrates two massive betrayals. First, he convinces Corbaccio’s honorable son, Bonario, to hide in Volpone’s house so he can witness his father disinheriting him. Next, Mosca tracks down Corvino and tells him that Volpone’s doctors have ordered a fresh, young woman to sleep next to him as a health remedy to revive him. Driven by greed, Corvino agrees to drag his horrified wife to Volpone’s bed.

When Celia arrives, Corvino leaves her alone with Volpone. Volpone springs out of bed, completely healthy, and delivers a passionate speech attempting to seduce her. When she firmly refuses, he tries to rape her. Hearing her screams, Bonario bursts out from his hiding place, rescues Celia, and wounds Mosca as they escape to report the crime to the authorities.

Act IV: Corruption in Court

The action shifts to the Venetian courtroom (the Scrutineo). Faced with exposure, Mosca and Voltore execute a brilliant counter-offensive. Voltore uses his rhetorical skill as a lawyer to flip the narrative completely, painting Celia and Bonario as manipulative lovers who framed the innocent, dying Volpone.

To seal the lie, Volpone is carried into court on a stretcher, looking completely paralyzed. Corvino openly slanders his own wife as a whore, and Corbaccio denounces his own son as a monster. Blinded by the web of lies and legal theatrics, the judges throw Celia and Bonario into prison.

Act V: The Fox Unmasked

Not content with merely winning, Volpone pushes his luck too far out of sheer arrogance. He spreads a rumor that he has finally died and names Mosca as his sole heir. He then disguises himself as a low-ranking court officer to wander the streets and mock the devastated legacy hunters to their faces.

However, the trap backfires. Mosca, now legally in possession of Volpone’s immense fortune, refuses to hand it back, blackmailing his master. Realizing his servant has beaten him at his own game, Volpone strips off his disguise in front of the court, exposing the entire conspiracy.

The judges hand down exceptionally severe punishments to match the gravity of the crimes:

• Volpone’s wealth is confiscated, and he is chained in a prison hospital until he becomes genuinely sick and dies.
• Mosca is whipped and sentenced to spend his life as a galley slave.
• Voltore is disbarred and exiled.
• Corbaccio is forced to give his entire estate to his son and confined to a monastery.
• Corvino is publicly humiliated by being paraded through Venice wearing donkey ears.

With the predators destroyed by their own schemes, Bonario and Celia are fully exonerated, restoring a grim sense of order to Venice.

To finish our deep dive into Ben Jonson’s Volpone, let’s break down the underlying social anxieties of Jacobean London, examine the specific dramatic structures Jonson used to sharpen his satire, and unpack the play’s most critical lines.

6. Social Issues

Writing at the dawn of the 17th century, Jonson was deeply alarmed by the rapid transition of England from a traditional, land-based feudal society into a modern, aggressive commercial empire.

• The Rise of Unfettered Consumer Capitalism:
• During the Jacobean era, London was experiencing an explosion in merchant trade, joint-stock companies, and financial speculation. Jonson looked at this boom and saw a spiritual sickness. Volpone critiques a new class of people who no longer produced anything of actual value (like crops or goods), but instead made money purely through manipulation, trickery, and moving wealth around.
• The Decay of the Legal and Professional Systems:
• Through the character of Voltore, Jonson highlights the rampant corruption within the legal profession. Justice in Venice (and, by extension, London) is not blind; it is entirely bought and paid for by the highest bidder. Similarly, the medical profession is satirized as a predatory practice where doctors care more about an invalid’s estate than their health.
• The Collapse of Family and Moral Obligations:
• The most shocking social critique in the play is how easily money dissolves sacred human bonds. Corbaccio is willing to completely abandon and disinherit his loyal son; Corvino is willing to prostitute his own wife. Jonson warns that when a society adopts wealth as its primary metric of success, traditional structures like family duty, marital fidelity, and parental love are completely obliterated.

7. Literary Devices

Jonson was a strict literary neoclassicist who believed that comedy should “instruct through delight.” He utilizes several highly specific artistic devices to achieve this moral goal.

• The Beast Fable Allegory:
• As noted in the character sketches, Jonson maps animal archetypes directly onto human beings. This device allows him to dehumanize his characters slightly, stripping away their dignity so the audience can see their actions for what they truly are: raw, animalistic, predatory instincts.
• The Play-Within-a-Play & Metatheater:
• Volpone and Mosca are essentially a director-actor duo. They plan scenes, wear costumes, apply stage makeup (the ointment on Volpone’s face), and write scripts for the dupes to follow. By turning the play into a meta-commentary on acting and theater, Jonson suggests that deception is fundamentally an act of malicious creativity.
• Comedy of Humours:
• Jonson was famous for his “Theory of Humours,” a psychological framework where a character is entirely driven, or ruled, by one overriding obsession or personality trait. In Volpone, every single antagonist is severely out of balance, completely dominated by the “humour” of avarice (greed).
• Bawdy Imagery & Irony:
• The text is thick with sharp situational irony. For example, Volpone spends months pretending to be a paralyzed, deaf, and dying old man to trick people. His ultimate punishment is to be chained in a prison until he actually becomes the broken, diseased invalid he spent so long pretending to be.

8. Important Quotations & Explanation

“Good morning to the day; and next, my gold! / Open the shrine, that I may see my saint.”

— Volpone (Act I, Scene 1)

• Context: These are the opening lines of the play. Volpone is waking up and commanding Mosca to open his treasure chest so he can gaze upon his accumulated wealth.
• Explanation: This quote sets up the play’s primary theme: the blasphemous worship of money. Jonson explicitly uses highly charged, sacred religious language (“shine,” “saint”) to describe a pile of cold metal. Volpone isn’t just rich; he has replaced God with gold. This sets a tone of spiritual perversion that hangs over the entire play.

“I gain no common way; I use no trade, / No venture in those ships that… / …are drownd, / I turn no monies in the public bank, / Nor usure private—”

— Volpone (Act I, Scene 1)

• Context: Still in the opening scene, Volpone is explaining to Mosca that he doesn’t just love having money—he loves the art of the con that got it for him.
• Explanation: Volpone takes immense pride in the fact that he doesn’t make money through honest hard work, or even through standard merchant investing. For him, the true thrill is intellectual and psychological. He views himself as an elite artist whose medium is the greed of other men. This arrogance is precisely what eventually causes his downfall.

“Riches are in fortune / A higher thing than nature… / You shall be master of the world, / And not be forced to look up to a man.”

— Mosca (Act III, Scene 7)

• Context: Mosca is smoothly flattering Volpone, inflating his master’s ego by explaining how wealth elevates a human being above the laws of nature and society.
• Explanation: This line perfectly encapsulates the Machiavellian philosophy running through the corrupt characters. Mosca argues that money buys absolute freedom and independence from moral accountability. It is a deeply seductive, dangerous idea that tricks Volpone into believing he is completely untouchable by the law.

“I am turned a feather! / I have no hand in my own actions. / This cannot be a plot; it is a destiny.”

— Voltore (Act V, Scene 10)

• Context: Delivered late in the play when the web of lies begins to unravel in court, and Voltore realizes he has completely lost control of his own life and legal scheme.
• Explanation: This quote serves as Jonson’s warning about the chaotic nature of sin. Voltore realizes too late that when you commit yourself to a massive lie, the lie takes on a life of its own. He is no longer a powerful, calculating lawyer; he has become a helpless feather blown around by the storm of his own greed.