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British Drama

Notes Everything seems to be going well for Volpone, until Mosca enters. For Mosca refuses to corroborate
Voltore’s claim that Volpone is alive. According to Mosca, the funeral preparations are underway
as he speaks. Volpone is shocked. Mosca offers to help Volpone for half his fortune; Volpone says
that he would rather “be hanged” than cut this deal. Volpone, still in disguise, asserts to the court
that Volpone is alive, while under his breath acquiescing to Mosca’s demand for half; but now
Mosca will not accept even this offer. When Volpone insists that he is not dead, in direct contradiction
of Mosca, he is taken away to be whipped for his insolence. Realizing that with a legal will in place,
there is nothing else for him to do, Volpone reveals himself to the Senate. The judges realize that
they have been deceived, and order Bonario and Celia to be let go. They condemn Mosca to life as a
galley-slave for impersonating a nobleman of Venice, and send Volpone to prison. Voltore is
disbarred, Corbaccio stripped of all his property (which is handed over to Bonario), and Corvino
sentenced to public humiliation: he will be rowed through the canals of Venice, wearing donkey’s
ears. The scene ends with a polite request to the audience to show their appreciation for the play
through their applause.

Analysis to Scene X-Scene XII
The way Jonson metes out punishment to his characters bears a resemblance to one of Lady Politic’s
less favorite Italian poets: Dante Alighieri. The greedy Corbaccio has his estate taken away from
him, Corvino, who behaves like an ass during the entire play, is metaphorically transformed into
one, and Volpone, who pretended to be bedridden in order to satisfy his insatiable lusts, will now
be bedridden permanently, still unable to satisfy his desires for Celia (or anything else for that
matter). This fitting of the punishment to the crime in a poetic, imaginative way is similar to Dante’s
device of contrapasso which he employs in Inferno (Hell), book one of his Divine Comedy. The
punishments there, and here, are meant to capture the inner essence of the crime itself; in other
words, Volpone’s greed for pleasure and self-gratification made him a prisoner of his desires, bound
to be frustrated in his attempts to achieve them, long before he was ever put into chains. The judge,
after administering these punishments, emphasizes their didactic purpose: “Take heart, and love to
study ‘em,” he says of the punishments, and his comparison of vices to “beasts” brings to mind the
“fable” aspect of Volpone, congruent with the idea that the judge is giving us a tidy, neat moral to
the story. But there are some problems with the ending of Volpone, which may serve to contradict
the moral message that Jonson has fairly straightforwardly pursued up until now. There is the
problem of the protagonist. This is a comedy, and protagonists in comedies should generally end
up happily. The only characters who in fact end up happy are Celia and Bonario; but these characters
are comparatively thin; we invest much less emotion in them than we do in Volpone, who seems a
much more reasonable choice for protagonist. But then the ending is very severe for a comedy,
because we are not really given full-blooded characters to sympathize with, and cheer on to a happy
resolution. Such harshness is mandated by Jonson’s purpose in writing the play, which was not
only to entertain but also to educate. Though Jonson allows Volpone and Mosca the spotlight for
most of the play, the final scene is meant to tell us that however interesting they may be, and however
sympathetic they may appear, they are still worthy of the punishment they will eventually find.
Volpone appears especially sympathetic towards the end of the play, when the only person he
trusts betrays him. And he does manage the redeeming act of revealing himself, and thus saving
Bonario and Celia, though this may be motivated more by a desire to get back at Mosca or to reassert
his own identity as from any moral motivations. We can say that it in fact strengthens the moral
message of the play that a sympathetic character gets punished for his vice, because our sympathy
makes us identify with Volpone, and search for that vice within ourselves. But the unmitigated
catastrophe of the situation for Volpone—he is going to jail for the rest of his life—has been said to
give the play tragic undertones. Another problem arises with the judges themselves. They are given
the job of handing out the punishments at the end of the play, distrbution Jonson’s poetic justice.
But Jonson satirizes them thoroughly in their treatment of Mosca. While they think Mosca has money,
they treat him with the utmost respect and courtesy, and one judge hopes to marry his daughter to

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