VOLPONE:BY BENJAMIN JOHNSON

“Volpone” is a satire on human greed and cunning.

Benjamin Johnson was an Renaissance dramatist,poet and actor. A

contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical
plays,particularly “Volpone”, and “The Alchemist”. A man of vast
reading and a seemiongsly insatiable appetite for controversy, Johnson
had an unparallelled breadth of influence on Jacobean playwrights and
poets.

Volpone is the play, Italian for “ The Big Fox” is a comedy by Ben
Jonson first produced in 1606, drawing on elements of city comedy and
animal fable. A merciless satire of greed and lust, it remains Johnson’s
most-performed play, and it is among the finest Jacobean comedies.

Volpone was a Debauched aristocrat,master of disguise and con artist.

Armed with natural cunning and his wily sidesick Mosca, he tricks and
swindles his way through the greedy and corrupt citizens of Venice.
From flogging snake oil to feigning his own demise, no scheme is too
despicable or too base in “Volpone’s pursuit of iches and excess. Ben
Johnson’s Volpone is a savage and dark satire of greed and lust and
amongst the finest of Jacobean comedies.
 The play’s title character is its protagonist, though an inconsistent one.
He disappears in Act4, seemingly replaced by Mosca, and is first an
instrument and then a victim of Jonson’s satire of money-obsessed
society. He is an instrument of it because it is through his ingenuity and
cleverness that Voltore, Corbaccio, and Corvino are duped and he seems
to share in Jonson’s satiric interpretation of the events, observing “What
a rare punishment? Is avarice to itself.” But the satire eventually turns
back on him, when he becomes a victim of Mosca’s “Fox-trap”. The
reason he is ensnared by Mosca is that he cannot resist one final gloat at
his dupes, oblivious to the fact that in doing so, he hands over his entire
estate to Mosca. This lack of rational forethought and commitment to his
own sensual impulses, is characteristic of Volpone. He enjoys
entertainment, banquets, feats, and love-making. He hates having to
make money through honest labour or cold, heartless banking, but he
loves maikg it in clever, deceitful ways,especially as a means toward
food and lovemaking. He is a creaure of passion, an imaginative
hedonist continually looking to find and attain new forms of
pleasure,whatever the consequences maybe. This dynamic in his
character shapes our reaction to him throughout the play. At times, this
hedonism seems fun,engaging,entertaining, and even morally valuable,
such as when he is fortune hunters. The incident makes him,in the play
moral universe of the play, a worthy target for satire, which is shat
becomes when he because of his lack of restraint he ends up on his way
to prison , the most unpleasurable situation imaginable.

Volpone takes off his disguise and finally reveals the truth about the
events of the past day. Volpone ends up being sent to prison, while
Mosca is consigned to a slave galley. Voltore is disbarred, Corbaccio is
stripped of his property (which is given to his son Bonario), and Corvino
is publicly humiliated, forced to wear donkey's ears while being rowed
around the canals of Venice.SO, this is a dark dark comedy as well as
satire play of Ben Jonson.