Volpone Study Guide

Ben Jonson’s life started out dramatic and difficult. When Jonson was born in 1572, his father, a clergyman from London, had already died. As a youth, Jonson studied at the Westminster School under William Camden, where he grew to love classical learning. After leaving the Westminster School he was forced to become a bricklayer, which he left in favor of joining the army. Back in London after his service, his early career as a dramatist was chaotic: he went to jail for writing a controversial play, and after his release, he killed another actor in a duel. Jonson was a controversial figure, and he heavily satirized English society while slowly climbing the social ranks. Though he continued to have qualms with English authority, he gained prominence in court by writing masques and successful plays, until he was given a yearly pension from King James I, establishing him as England’s unofficial Poet Laureate. Jonson was friends with William Shakespeare, and it’s Jonson who famously wrote that Shakespeare was “for all time.” Towards the end of his life, Jonson served as a mentor to a group of younger poets (such as Thomas Carew and Robert Herrick) called the “Sons of Ben.” Jonson continued writing until his death in 1637.

Volpone was written and performed in 1606, three years after King James I assumed the throne, and only one year after Jonson was imprisoned for suspicion of involvement with the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 (an attempt to assassinate King James). Jonson wrote at a time when a new capitalist-oriented order seemed to be developing, in which the English viewed Italy (and Venice, in particular) as money-obsessed and morally corrupted. At this point in his career, Jonson was in fierce competition with his contemporaries, and he uses the play’s Prologue to make fun of playwrights Thomas Dekker and John Marston.

Ben Jonson used many sources in writing Volpone. The characters’ animal names and some of the themes are taken from medieval beast fables about a fox named Reynard, as well as a story in Aesop’s Fables in which a fox plays dead to trick a crow into dropping cheese. The notion of an old rich man toying with greedy people who are hoping to inherit his money comes from Lucian, an ancient Greek rhetorician and satirist, and many of the characters (like a dishonest lawyer) are based on classic tropes in Roman comedy. Jonson also draws on the Italian commedia dell’arte, which was a form of comedic drama in Italy in which performers wore masks. Like in commedia dell’arte, masks are often used in productions of Volpone to emphasize the animal nature of the play’s characters. Volpone has been performed and adapted numerous times, including with a changed ending in which Mosca receives all of Volpone’s wealth.