Critic: Dorothy E. Litt

Source:Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 1969, Vol. 73, pp. 218– 226. Reprinted in Drama for Students, Vol. 10.

Ben Jonson's Volpone has for centuries been acclaimed a masterpiece; yet it has been condemned for as long a time for its seemingly irrelevant subplot, fool interludes, and mountebank scene, as well as for the near-tragic tone of its denouement. With these charges against it, the play has nevertheless won such admiration and respect as to suggest that there is much in it to be appreciated which, though overlooked by the critics, must be implicit in its performance.

If the theme of self-deception is actually the key to the play, as I have suggested, it should be supported in the play's denouement, and so it is, but in a perverse way that is peculiarly Jonson's own. Jonson puts a "snaffle" in the mouths of his critics, showing why vice cannot be punished in his "interludes"--it would not truly "instruct to life" as he in the "office of a comic poet" is obliged to do.

In 1953 Jonas A. Barish took the first step toward finding a connection between the main plot and the subplot by identifying their respective protagonists as Volpone and Sir Politique Would-bee, justifying their relationship through the theme of disorder. Although his interpretation opens up possibilities for greater appreciation of the play, the so-called discordant parts remain so for the most part, and the analogy between Volpone and the knight seems forced, since there is little parallel in the play's action to support the relationship.

A more meaningful analogy may be found by contrasting Would-bee with Volpone's would-be heirs. Peregrine exploits the knight's desire to appear sophisticated and knowing in the subplot, just as Volpone exploits his clients' desire for his gold in the main plot; each is the "center attractive" of his own plot. In both cases it is their victims' blindness which makes their exploitation possible. In their victims' blindness we find the unifying theme for the play: self-deception. Through this theme the subplot may be seen to mirror the main plot; the would-be sophisticate operates in a world of folly, while the would-be heirs operate in a world of vice.

Jonson, by this theme, strikes at a universal human characteristic, as perverse as it is persistent, to believe what flatters our hopes at the expense of denying truth. It is a tendency as timeless and ubiquitous as Oedipus' refusal to believe Tiresias in ancient Thebes, or as Willy Loman's denial of his own truth in contemporary Brooklyn.

We are offered numerous variations on this theme, revealing how all men fall victim to self-deception when they are tempted sufficiently to hope for impossible goals. In every case in the play, except for Lady Would-bee, the handmaiden of self-deception is flattery; thus the flattery of others, whether open or subtle, causes each to flatter himself into faith in false hopes. Not only simpletons like the Would-bees succumb, but crafty fortune hunters as well as brilliant manipulators like Volpone and Mosca yield to this deceptive self-flattery.

The knight and his lady are clearly self-deceived in their desire to appear worldly. Volpone's suitors, too, willfully blind themselves to the truth because they want so desperately to win his fortune, although they see clearly enough when they choose. Each has a moment of doubt which is instantly set aside at Mosca's equivocal reassurances. None seriously questions how Volpone could be dying for so long a time, or that Mosca is the exclusive "creature" of each to the exclusion of all the others.

Unlike the Would-be's, Volpone and Mosca are neither simple-minded nor merely crafty and blinded by false hope. Their great success lies in their self-knowledge; Volpone glories in being an old fox and Mosca takes pride in being a parasite. Neither is flattered by the professions of love and concern by Volpone's clients. Mosca is clearly never deceived by them; he, further, makes it his business to expose each suitor to his master (except for Lady Would-bee, who, as a result, Volpone later reveals he believes loves him). Yet eventually Volpone and Mosca also deceive themselves, revealing the all-pervasive power of self-deception more emphatically; mocking the blindness of their victims these clever deceivers succumb to that same malady.

From the earliest moments in the play Volpone reveals a predilection for flattery, foreshadowing his ultimate capitulation to it. It is generally assumed that Volpone's downfall begins when he supposedly "overreaches" himself by feigning death, but it really begins in the first scene of the play, when we find him boasting that he earns his gold in "no common way." Mosca slyly converts his master's claim into a moral statement through flattery:

But your sweet nature doth abhorre these courses;

You lothe, the widdowes, or the orphans teares

Should wash your pauements; or their pittious cryes

Ring in your roofes; and beate the aire, for vengeance.--(I.i.48-51)

The unsuspecting Volpone melts in agreement: "Right MOSCA, I doe lothe it." Shortly each of these claims will be violated: Celia's tears shall wash his floor, and Corvino's betrayal shall make her plight as pitiable as any widow's, while Bonario, financially orphaned by Mosca's plot, shall soon cry out for vengeance.

Mosca goes on to flatter his master's generosity, and Volpone, enchanted with Mosca's vision of him as a generous patron, reciprocates with a gift. In spite of being realistic about his clients Volpone is as malleable as they when he is flattered. It is significant that we see Mosca flatter Volpone before he flatters the fortune hunters. Jonson meant us to see the parallel, which differs only in timing; Volpone's descent into self-deception is gradual, while the clients' is an accomplished fact from their first moments on the stage.

Volpone begins to hope for the impossible once he decides to win Celia through Mosca's efforts. Helena Baum considers his passion "heroic," and few commentators have observed that it is misguided and doomed to failure. Yet Volpone's passion is precisely what Jonson derides in him; a successful old fox with clients who cooperate in deceiving themselves, Volpone is out of his depth as a lover. Celia, unlike the clients, is singularly unimpressed by his flattery and has no desire to join him in the sports of love. His refusal to recognize this, after their first few moments alone, makes his lyrical outpourings ridiculous and self-deceptive. And when Celia promises to "report, and thinke" him virtuous if he will only release her, he reveals a new, unrealistic interest in appearances that had not interfered with his dealings with his clients:

Thinke me cold,

Frosen, and impotent, and so report me?

That I had NESTOR'S hernia, thou wouldst thinke. (III.vii.260-62)

He has altered his motive: he now wants only to prove his manhood. His sudden degeneration from wooing in Catullus' vein to raping in Tarquin's becomes highly comic. Celia's terror, however, contrapuntally played against this changing mood from lover to rapist, makes the scene one of the high points of satire in the play, for it reveals self-deception in a more serious light. Indeed Volpone's short-lived career as a lover is singularly ill-starred; he is beaten by Corvino, shunned by Celia, and ignominiously discovered by Bonario. It is not accidental, surely, that Volpone dons the costume of a mountebank to play the lover.

Not only does Volpone fail to win Celia, but his seeming victory at court, won at the cost of his being publicly declared impotent, is Pyrrhic for a man who has begun to fancy himself a lover. We see him, indeed, in "dislike" with his disguise for the first time, and it is his dislike for the price he has to pay, I believe, that leads him to abort his lucrative venture by giving out that he is dead. He has been undone in appearances just as he has begun to believe in them.

Like his master, Mosca also falls victim to flattery, but he is somewhat more realistic. He flatters himself at his great success with Corvino, which leads him to boast that he is superior to all other parasites (III.i.13-22); yet each quality he scorns in ordinary parasites is evident in himself. Mosca also begins to deny reality, as he joins the ranks of the Would-bes. Taking pride in being able to assume any shape, he is later deceived into believing that he may don the costume of a grandee and thereby be one in reality. He forgets that he is only a parasite, dependent on his patron, forgets, too, that his most potent weapon with his master is flattery. Once he becomes blunt, Volpone, no longer blinded, exposes their venture--to Mosca's surprise, whose cynical view of mankind has not taken into account the fact that men need not act like animals, although the would-be's of the play do. Mosca thus deceives himself when he overestimates his own ability and underestimates his master's.

The play reveals exceptions, those who do not deceive themselves--because they are never tempted into unrealistic hopes. In the main plot these are Volpone's fools, who tell of their metamorphoses from Apollo in a steady downward process of degeneration but, ironically, never into self-deception. All the would-be's desire to be other than themselves, but the fools willingly remain fools. Their deformities are visible, hence undeniable; appearance and reality are united in their physical deformity, affording ironic contrast to the moral and spiritual deformity of the main characters.

The deformed trio of the main plot are fools by profession and entertain Volpone; in the subplot Peregrine pretends to be a fool with Sir Pol--to entertain himself. At first glance it would seem that Barish's thesis was supported by a certain correspondence here between Volpone and the knight, but in it lies another of the play's ironies. Those who act as fools are only such in appearance; those they serve are the true fools in their self-deception. Volpone in his would-beism is like Sir Pol, but in his disabused exploitation of his clients he remains the counterpart of Peregrine.

Long ago the exchange between Volpone and Mosca in V.ii.18-27 was pointed out, by William Gifford, as the best "defence of the plot of the Drama." In it Volpone tries to understand his suitors' blindness, and Mosca, the shrewd psychologist, points out:

True, they will not see't.

Too much light blinds 'hem, I thinke. Each of 'hem

Is so possest, and stuft with his owne hopes,

That any thing, vnto the contrary,

Neuer so true, or neuer so apparent,

Neuer so palpable, they will resist it--

Hope blinds each would-be to the truth. And something has prevented the critics who pause to comment on this passage from seeing its wider application, not simply to the fortune hunters, but to all the major characters of both plots, except Peregrine and the fools.

To recognize self-deception as the unifying theme can be to comprehend the importance of the mountebank scene in II.ii, which has often been criticized for its length, or indulgently tolerated for its color. It is a key scene in the play structurally as well as thematically. In it Volpone steps out of his role as fox to take on the role of lover, i.e. to become seriously involved in self-deception. The preceding scenes have been devoted mainly to exposition--introducing the world of gold-worship in I.i, the ironically ideal world of the fools in I.ii, Volpone's suitors in I.iii to I.v, the subplot, the world of folly, in II.i. The mountebank scene opens the action proper. Volpone is smitten by Celia's beauty; Mosca sets out to win her for him; from this scene forward Volpone resigns his role as chief manipulator to Mosca, reclaiming it partially when he decides to revenge himself on his clients by pretending to be dead, but not fully regaining it until his final confession.

Self-deception speaks in the imagery of the scene: Scoto's oil, a metaphor for flattery, makes it possible. The oil is dispensed by Mosca to gull the clients and his patron; by Peregrine to Sir Pol, in the oblique form of feigned innocence, which flatters the knight into a conviction of omnipotence; by Voltore to smooth his way with the Avocatori. In II.vi Mosca cynically tells Corvino that Scoto's oil has restored his dying master, which we may take as a way of saying that Volpone has flattered himself into believing that flattery (and gold) may win the love of Celia. As for the powder Scoto offers her, the magic powder of cosmetics is the means whereby women deceive themselves. Later in the play the flattery of the Aesopian raven by the fox is applied to the would-be heirs as Volpone taunts his suitors in his guise as commandadore.

The correspondence between the two plots develops in the play's ensuing action, which is propelled by accusations and counter-accusations which are similar in nature and outcome, although different in regard to veracity. Volpone is accused of attempted rape while Peregrine is accused of attempted seduction of Sir Pol. Both charges are dropped at the Lady's intervention under Mosca's direction, and apologies are thereupon made to those accused: the court apologizes to Volpone and the Lady apologizes to Peregrine. New charges are then made: Celia and Bonario are accused of being a team of prostitute and pander, and Peregrine makes the same charge against the English couple. The difference in seriousness of the charges is in keeping with the worlds of vice and folly which the plots reflect.

The two actions are linked, further, in Sir Pol's imagined plots, which find their counterpart in the real plots of the main action. Whereas he imagines plots exist everywhere, the would-be heirs ignore the real plots which flourish all about them; each is blind to the schemes of the others against him as well as to the Fox's plot against them all. The protagonists of both actions revenge themselves by mortifying their victims through their faith in false plots: Volpone uses the fortune-hunters' faith in his own plot, which is based on the belief that he is a dying man, to pretend that he is dead; Peregrine exploits the knight's faith in intrigues to pretend that he has been accused of intriguing against Venice. Volpone, in disguise as a court officer, humiliates his victims, while Peregrine, in disguise as a merchant, parallels Volpone by making the knight crawl literally. Finally, both protagonists show by example that deception need not lead to self-deception, for each strips himself of his own disguise.

Linking both actions is the role of Lady Would-bee, who acts as a catalyst, but does not fully belong to either action. She is a would-be heir, like the other clients, and a would-be sophisticate like her husband, yet she is different from the others in that she affords no pleasure to Volpone or Peregrine, both of whom enjoy "milking" their other victims. Further, while everyone else is named for what he really is, her title indicates only what she should be, an English gentlewoman--the role in which everyone in the main action sees her. Her uninhibited freedom in a society which restricts its women shocks Volpone, Mosca, and even Nano, who sits in judgment on no one else in the play. (It is of course ironic that Volpone and Mosca should sanctimoniously deplore her behavior just as they are about to arrange for Celia's seduction.) Peregrine, however, is totally unimpressed by the Lady's title. She is different from all the others, moreover, in being the only character who is chastised in both actions, and the only one of the would-be heirs who is not punished in court. Jonson's purpose in setting her apart from the others would seem to be to make the point that even a fool may become vicious in a vicious environment.

Another of Jonson's purposes in using the Lady to span both actions may be found in examining Mosca's role, which also encompasses both actions, for his hand guides her; he is thus responsible for a tonal change in both through the Lady's intervention. In the main action he is responsible for the most bitingly satiric scenes: Corvino's offering Celia, Volpone's subsequent attempt at seducing her, and the first court scene. In the subplot, too, he is responsible for the farcical tone established by the Lady's accusation of Peregrine. Hence Mosca's intervention on Volpone's behalf from the mountebank scene when he takes the reins, with the Lady as his assistant, may be seen as a third line of action which sits astride and commands the worlds of vice and folly. He is thereby responsible for the sombre tone which has struck the notice of so many commentators.

Through the third line of action Mosca becomes the third protagonist and we find another variation on the theme of self-deception. A clever young Englishman manipulates a would-be sophisticate to entertain himself and the consequences are comic and benign; a Venetian voluptuary manipulates would-be fortune-hunters for gold and the consequences are still comic but less benign, yet not altogether to be condemned; a Machiavel manipulates whomever he can out of contempt for mankind and the consequences may be deadly and tragic; such consequences are averted only because the Machiavel is himself trapped in self-deception and thereby overreaches himself.

Another link between the worlds of vice and folly may be found in Sir Pol's schemes, which function on two levels; on the surface they are comic, and for this reason have been virtually ignored by commentators. Barish, however, notes that the onion scheme has ironic value as a reminder of the "moral plague prevailing in Venice," and all three schemes indeed serve to mock self-deceivers who are plagued by lies they cannot distinguish from truth. The knight plans to sell red herrings to Venice if his two "mayne" projects fail. From its use in the text the term "red herring" would seem to have meant for Jonson what it is commonly understood to mean today, that is, a false scent, an attempt to divert attention from the issue at hand. Sir Pol offers his schemes at a crucial point in the play, in the first scene of Act IV. Immediately thereafter we are deluged by red herrings in false accusations which carry equal weight with the truth. Thus, if Sir Pol's schemes fail, Venice will stand in need of red herrings, which he will furnish at a profit. The schemes aim at making deception visibly and olfactorily foul to warn those incapable of reason. The tinder box scheme attempts to make arsenals safe from sparks; arsenals are a metaphor for man's potential for vice and folly which may be easily ignited by tinder boxes--Volpone's feigned illness and Peregrine's feigned naivete. Onions, in the second scheme, are to make victims of the plague (perpetrators of deception) visibly recognizable. It is of course quintessentially ironic that the greatest fool of the play should be the only one to attempt to cure the moral plague of Venice. It is his myopic attempt, moreover, which informs the play's denouement.

If the theme of self-deception is actually the key to the play, as I have suggested, it should be supported in the play's denouement, and so it is, but in a perverse way that is peculiarly Jonson's own. Jonson puts a "snaffle" in the mouths of his critics, showing why vice cannot be punished in his "interludes"--it would not truly "instruct to life" as he in the "office of a comic poet" is obliged to do. Self-deception is wilful blindness; it can only be cured by the victim himself. In V.iii Mosca exposes each of the clients in unequivocal terms. Volpone subsequently rubs salt in their wounds, mocking them for having been so easily deceived. Voltore, indeed, confesses to the court once he thinks all is lost. Yet the moment when they learn Volpone still lives they are ready to deceive themselves all over again. In Sir Pol's method, then, lies the only solution: rotten eggs and stinking fish must be thrown at deceivers (V.xii.139-42) and preventative methods must be used to protect men's arsenals. Each of the clients (who served as tinder to the court) is stripped of the role in which he deceived the court. Mosca is to be prevented from deceiving in "the habit of a gentleman of Venice" (V.xii.110-112), and Volpone shall never again feign illness, for he will be made ill and infirm in prison. None is punished for his crime: if men's arsenals of evil and folly are in danger of ignition then tinder boxes must be carefully watched.

Through the theme of self-deception we can see that Ben Jonson blotted his lines in Volpone most carefully. The play is admirably complex and it seems miraculous that he wrote it in but five weeks. Much injustice has been done him by those who were too quick to condemn what they did not fully understand. However, whether in a reading or in performance few have failed to recognize that the play is a masterpiece. If the theme of self-deception as applied here is new in critical terms, it has always been implicitly understood by audiences. They laugh at the clients' attempts to outwit the fox, the knight's attempts at savoir-faire, the mountebank's attempt to be a lover, recognizing that self-deception is the height of human folly.

Source: Dorothy E. Litt, "Unity of Theme in Volpone," in Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 1969, Vol. 73, pp. 218-226. Reprinted in Drama for Students, Vol. 10.