Money and Commerce Theme Analysis

The driving force of the play’s plot is desire for money, which propels the three men trying to steal Volpone’s fortune and drives Volpone in his attempt to manipulate and swindle them. In the play’s opening scene, Volpone shows how much the Italians value money when he delivers a blasphemous speech in which he calls money “the world’s soul” and praises it like a god. Money, he says, is everything, and whoever has money is naturally imbued with nobility, valiance, honesty, and wisdom. Numerous other analogies are also used during the play that stress money’s importance. Talking to Volpone’s fortune, for example, Mosca tells money to “multiply,” which personifies wealth by invoking reproduction. Throughout the play, money is also described, through medicinal and alchemical imagery, as the best, purest cure for all ailments, expanding on Volpone’s claim that money makes everything better. In a final, extreme example, Mosca leads Corvino to believe that he will act as Corvino’s servant, and he says that for this employment he owes his very being to Corvino. Mosca thereby substitutes money and employment for a divine creator, who would typically be credited for a person’s existence. It’s a telling substitution, because, in the play, material pursuits become a sort of religion for those obsessed with money.

Such excessive emphasis on money is a satire on Venice’s stereotypical obsession with commerce. In one sense, Ben Jonson’s satire of commerce is purely comedic and ridiculous. Sir Politic Would-Be plans numerous farfetched entrepreneurial schemes with the hope of becoming rich, all the while being ridiculed by Peregrine. This absurd subplot goes as far as Sir Politic pretending to be an imported turtle. But the play also gives a more serious satire in the main plot, in which money is depicted as dangerous and corrupting (as we’ll see in more detail in the following theme). The play shows that people are willing to do anything for money, which leads to moral lapses. Voltore, Corbaccio, Corvio, and even Lady Would-Be become convinced that they will inherit Volpone’s fortune, and all of them compromise their values and are easily manipulated by Mosca. Corvino is even convinced to offer his wife up as a sexual partner for Volpone to secure his chances at the fortune.

Much of the emphasis on commerce and money comes from the English stereotype of Italians (and in particular Venetians). English playwrights like Jonson saw in Italy a dangerous society in which wealth, competition, and materialism were valued over morality. Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, for example, concerns money and desire for wealth taken to the extreme, and it is also set in Venice (as its title suggests). Part of Jonson’s mission as a playwright is to leave the audience with a lesson, and so his satire of the Italian obsession with commerce also expresses the fear that London would fall prey to the same obsession and become morally bankrupt in the pursuit of wealth. In other words, Jonson feared that London would turn into an English version of Venice, in which citizens are fatally, blasphemously obsessed with wealth. The play thus hopes to dissuade viewers and readers from allowing financial matters to outweigh moral ones. This message is heavily reinforced by the play’s ending, in which none of the principal characters wind up with any fortune, and Volpone himself winds up with a near death sentence. Money can be taken away easily, since it is impermanent, but the implications of moral lapses are eternal.