Volpone: Irony 6 key examples

Voltore has no reason to suspect he is anything other than Volpone’s favorite, as Mosca says upon his arrival. Likewise, he has no reason to suspect that Volpone’s bid to see him more often is anything other than a sick man’s wish to see his heir. The audience, however, can plainly see the grift playing out before them: it is only after Mosca announces the gift of the antique plate that Volpone seeks Voltore’s return, which will presumably entail even more gifts.

Throughout Volpone, the audience is generally made aware of Volpone and Mosca’s various machinations well before any of the rest of the cast, raising the tensions of the play and empowering the audience to deliver their own judgements of the situation.

There are multiple layers of dramatic irony in this sequence. First and foremost, of course, is the fact that Volpone is not at all ill, as "pitiful" as he might look. The audience is, by now, well aware of this fraudulent sickness, but the suitors are a long way from catching on. Second is Mosca’s own word of advice to Corvino. While Corvino would presumably think that the “laughter under a visor” should be his own—after all, he suspects that Volpone will soon pass and leave him his fortune—the audience knows that Mosca is collaborating with Volpone on this fraud and, in fact, the weeping of the various prospective heirs is leading to quite a bit of laughter on the part of the criminal duo, especially since Corvino and his peers are giving up various treasures.

Mosca’s observation that even weeping should be a mask for other emotions points to his sinister vision of interpersonal relationships, in which all emotions only serve the purpose of being a means to an end—all motivated purely by greed. His ability to speak directly to various characters in the play without having them suspect his true motivations is evidence of his mastery of deception.

Baboons, it's safe to say, are incapable of espionage, and yet Sir Politic Would-Be latches on to Peregrine's observation and responds with a made-up anecdote of his own in order to keep up. Jonson stokes the dramatic irony of the scene by including frequent asides from Peregrine, which the audience is privy to but Sir Politic is not: here, Peregrine conveys his astonishment that Sir Politic refuses to be ignorant of anything. Because of this additional perspective on the situation, the audience is as aware as Peregrine of Sir Politic's buffoonery. 

Unbeknownst to Bonario, however, Mosca is well aware of his own impudence. The audience has just witnessed Mosca’s soliloquy in the previous scene, during which Mosca revealed his pride in his parasitic status and how his natural talent for deception will only help him gain status and power. As Mosca persuades Bonario of his innocence, therefore, Jonson builds the dramatic irony of the scene—the audience and Mosca know the extent to which the latter will go to continue his ruse, and the extent to which, as a parasite, he will "feed" on any character who crosses his path.

Sure enough, just as soon as Bonario rethinks his impression of Mosca, Mosca begins to toy with him about “his business”:

Sir, it concerns you, and though I may seem
At first to make a main offence in manners,
And in my gratitude unto my master,
Yet, for the pure love which I bear all right,
And hatred of the wrong, I must reveal it.
This very hour your father is in purpose
To disinherit you –

Cite this Quote

Pretending to double-cross his own master Volpone, Mosca lets Bonario in on Corbaccio’s disinheritance, which, of course, Mosca and Volpone have orchestrated together. This sequence shows Mosca’s shape-shifting, manipulative brilliance in full swing, and—after his soliloquy—the audience can fully appreciate the dramatic irony of the moment as Bonario himself falls prey to the parasitic plan.

If his statement is taken literally, Voltore would appear to suggest that the best route to test Volpone would be to subject him to torture—but the flippancy of his statement that "the rack" (a medieval torture device meant to dislocate a prisoner's joints by stretching them) "hath cured the gout" reveals his irony; Volpone will still be "sick" no matter what you throw at him. This sarcastic treatment of torture is an attempt to deflect Bonario's request, which would reveal Volpone to be a fraud, and Voltore succeeds in convincing the avocatori that Bonario and Celia are guilty of slandering Volpone.

The success and failure of the various characters in Volpone is almost entirely dependent on their ability to wield language in defense of themselves and their allies. This is made explicit in the court scenes of the play, in which the ultimate arbiters of justice—the avocatori—depend on verbal testimony (and therefore the use of language) to cast their judgement. In this scene, it is Voltore's passionate facility with irony and sarcasm that allows him to paint Bonario as a fanatic making baseless accusations against Volpone.

Volpone has left his "hole," or burrow—that is, he has left his house, which is where Mosca now plots against him. Mosca's plan to fleece Volpone for his fortune, meanwhile, builds upon this metaphor when Mosca opts to give it the name of "the fox-trap." Mosca is now using the language of the hunt and establishing himself as the hunter—an aristocratic occupation befitting his newfound disguise as a member of the nobility, which he displays for Volpone and the audience at the beginning of this scene.

Mosca's great strength in Volpone is his ability to manipulate his identity and his status through the versatility of his language, and moments like this soliloquy show his skill in full form, thus creating some dramatic irony for the audience—only they are privy to the nature of Mosca's ambition, as he sets out to write his own story by moving against Volpone.