Volpone

“He that is said to be able to inform young men to all good disciplines, inflame grown men to all great virtues, keep old men in their best and supreme state, or as they decline into childhood, recover them to their first strength; that comes forth the interpreter and arbiter of nature, a teacher of things divine no less than human, a master of manners.”

Author Ben Jonson precedes his play with an introduction called the Epistle, where he argues about the original purpose of poetry, which he believes has been lost among his contemporaries. In this excerpt, Jonson describes the true poet (“He”) as someone with the power of a divine teacher who uses his craft to instruct his audience on virtues. For Jonson, good poetry and drama should at once reveal the contemporary world—its vices and virtues—and instruct on how to live better within in.

“VOLPONE. Thou art virtue, fame,

Honor, and all things else! Who can get thee

He shall be noble, valiant, honest, wise—

MOSCA. And what he will, sir. Riches are in fortune

A greater good than wisdom is in nature.”

Volpone personifies his gold (“Thou”) and addresses it directly in his first soliloquy, and Mosca chimes in with observations that align with his master’s beliefs. Volpone and Mosca’s twisted idolization of gold makes them believe that riches imbue their owner with virtues that would normally be obtained through performing good deeds or expanding one’s knowledge. Gold is a major symbol in the play, representing The Corrupting Power of Greed.

“VOLPONE. Now, my feigned cough, my phthisic and my gout,

My apoplexy, palsy and catarrhs,

Help with your forced functions this my posture,

Wherein, this three year, I have milked their hopes.

He comes, I hear him—uh! uh! uh! uh! Oh—”

After putting on his sickly disguise, Volpone performs illness with the intention of gulling his suitors into believing he is close to death. Volpone exaggerates and verbalizes his “feigned cough” at the end of this passage when he hears his first suitor,