volpone

Volpone: plot and character overview

Set in Venice, the play is both a city comedy and a type of beast fable, in which the wily and gold-obsessed trickster Volpone, or ‘fox’, dupes a range of foolish Venetians and foreigners with the help of his clever servant Mosca (‘fly’ or ‘parasite’).

What is the moral of the Volpone?

Volpone is a powerful moral study of human greed, foxy cunning, and goatish lust. It is not the traditional form of comedy. It is a play that takes on the form of a comical satire as well as a morality play. It also adapts the features of a fable, and in that it strives to teach a moral.

What is Volpone biggest character flaw?

Volpone’s character flaw, the desire to trick people, has brought him to the final curtain. He starts out playing the fool and ends up by being one. He fulfills Mosca’s prescription of people: “Almost all the wise world is little else, in nature, but parasites or sub-parasites.”

What type of a person is Volpone?

Volpone’s name means “The Fox” in Italian. He is lustful, lecherous, and greedy for pleasure. He is also energetic and has an unusual gift for rhetoric, mixing the sacred and the profane to enunciate a passionate commitment to self-gratification.

What does Volpone disguise himself as?

Whereas Volpone disguises himself as a commandadore, Politic disguises himself as a tortoise; as we know Jonson likes to identify characters with animals, the choice of tortoise here seems particularly apt, being a slow, dim-witted animal, not nearly as attractive as a Fox.

What gifts do they bring for Volpone?

Voltore asks after Volpone’s health, and Volpone thanks him for both his kindness and his gift of a large piece of gold plate.

Is Volpone a tragedy?

No, Ben Jonson’s play Volpone is not a revenge tragedy. Volpone is an incisive, satirical comedy.

How Volpone is a comedy of Humour?

The characters in Volpone are stereotypes. All of the characters are imbalanced as well, so their ‘humors’ are out of balance and they thus act in comical ways. Thus, Volpone is a comedy of humours.

Does this play Volpone have a positive ethical message?

The moral of the play is undoubtedly that greed corrodes the human soul. In Volpone, Jonson gives us an extraordinary insight into the power of money to destroy those obsessed with having it. It’s instructive in this regard that the characters of the play are all named after animals.

What happens to Volpone at the end of the play?

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.

How is Volpone last punished?

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.

What led to the downfall of Volpone?

Volpone is greedy for money, but his downfall is ultimately caused by excessive greed for pleasure, showing that greed comes in many forms and that, in excess, it is all consuming.

Who are called ladies collegiates?

At the same time there is an alliance of women with intellectual pretensions called the Ladies Collegiates. They are married women who live away from their husbands and speak their minds. They talk about how women can use sex to control their husbands.

Is Volpone a tragicomedy?

It is also known as black comedy, black humor, morbid humor, or dark humor. It is a play having elements of comedy and tragedy, often involving gloom or morbid satire. Volpone deals with the unpleasant side of human life.

How did Mosca describe Celia?

Mosca describes Corvino’s wife, Celia as one of the most beautiful women in Italy; “A beauty ripe as harvest!

Why did Volpone disguise as scoto?

Log in here. Volpone uses physical disguises to turn the tables and trick those who would trick him. First, Volpone disguises himself as Scoto the Mountebank in order to see Celia, the beautiful wife of Corvino. At the end of the play, Volpone again disguises himself and has the word put out that he is dead.

Why does Volpone throw of his disguise in the last scene?

This is a serious criminal offense, and one might have thought that Volpone would be reluctant to reveal his disguise in court. But he realizes that showing his true identity is the only way to gain his revenge on his slippery servant. So Volpone throws off his disguise and in the process, exposes Mosca.

What did Volpone sell for only 6 pens?

Having studied so much, he has arrived at a point of success and prominent reputation. He goes on to say that while he never previously valued the elixir at less than eight crowns, he’s willing to sell it for six.