Plot Summary: Volpone, by Ben Jonson

ISBN-13: 978-0713654332 Ben Johnson was an Elizabethan English poet, dramatist and actor. A peer of William Shakespeare, Johnson was born in 1572 and died 65 years later. He was a man of extraordinary literary talents and despite the fact that he didn’t go to university he was acknowledged as one of the most learned men of his day. He was friends with many of the other well known Elizabethan writers like Bacon, Shakespeare and Donne; in fact, Shakespeare even acted in the 1616 production of Johnson’s play ‘Every Man in His Humour’. Johnson is best known for his poems and satirical plays, of which the 1606 ‘Volpone’ is considered to be one of his best examples; it is a comedy/satire about avarice and lust

The play takes place over 24 hours in seventeenth-century Venice, and opens at the home of a nobleman from the city – Volpone (the ‘fox’). Seemingly, this nobleman is actually a con artist who has gained his impressive wealth through deception and other dishonest ways. As the play starts, Volpone is with his servant Mosca entering the shrine where Volpone keeps all his wealth and treasures. The reader learns that Volpone is about to deceive yet more people as he tries to trick his alleged friends - Voltore (the 'vulture'), Corbaccio (the 'raven') and Corvino (the 'crow') - into believing that each is Volpone’s heir and that he is actually on his deathbed. What these three men do not know is that Volpone is in perfect health and feigning his illness to receive expensive “get well” gifts from these fortune hunters. Mosca, Volpone’s “parasite” tells each of the men individually that they are heir to Volpone’s fortune so that they will return with yet more gifts. Voltore, who is a lawyer by trade, offers the ‘dying’ man a gift an expensive platter, the old gentleman. Corbaccio is talked into disinheriting his son Bonario by Volpone and Mosca in favour of Volpone; Corbaccio thinking that Volpone is dying is not concerned about this. This leaves the third man – Corvino, a penny-pinching merchant with a beautiful young wife, Celia, whom he guards closely; however despite him being such a jealous husband his greed lead him to proffer Celia to Volpone to take to his bed and to be a comfort to him as he lies dying. When Volpone attempts to force himself on Corvino’s young wife, he is interrupted by the appearance of Corbaccio’s son, Bonario. Celia and Bonario, but the three fortune hunters (scared of Volpone losing his wealth which they each think will soon be theirs take out counter-charges against the young couple of adultery and fornication.

Volpone loves the chaos that he has caused and so decides to make more sport for himself by staging his own death and leaving everything to Mosca, just so that he is able to witness the mayhem that will occur. Mosca, however, as he prepares for a large and expensive ‘funeral’ for his ‘late’ employer, has less and less to do with Volpone. Mosca also is suddenly elevated from his lowly position to a man of wealth, an eligible bachelor As Volpone watches the changes in his old servant, he decides to ‘come clean’ and expose his own guilt as well as that of everyone else in the matter servant. When the truth is learned, the judges take away all of Volpone’s wealth and give it to charity; the lawyer Voltore is barred from court, all of Corbaccio’s fortune is given to his son, Corvino is paraded through Venice and derided, Celia is returned to her family taking with her three times the amount of dowry that she took to her husband and Mosca is sentenced to a life in the galleys for masquerading as a man of substance. Through his play ‘Volpone’, Johnson makes good use of satire and black comedy to prove that greed doesn’t pay!