The Suicide of Volpone

THE SUICIDE OF VOLPONE ALEXANDER LEGGATT Why do two such expert plotters as Volpene and Mosca destroy their Own success in the end? The ultimate explanation, of course, is that Jonson wants to end his comedy with a judgement on the villainy he has depicted; but having said that, one must consider whether the downfall of the rogues is simply imposed by the playwright, or whether he has developed it logically out of material already in the play. The danger is indicated by such a playas Middleton's Michaelmas Term, in which the chief intriguer, Quomodo, after four acts of success as a clever knave, suddenly changes roles with his victim, becomes a maladroit fool, and, like Volpene, loses all his winnings. The didactic purpose of the comedy is served, but at some cost to the integrity of the central character. We might expect Jonson to do better than this, and I think he does. Volpone destroys himself, not because he gets careless or his luck runs out at the beginning of Act v, but because of an impulse deeply rooted in his nature, an impulse that - ironically, in view of its final results - governs his success in the earlier part of the play. It is not simple overreaching, as one might say in the case of Mosca, who, in refusing Volpene's offer of half the estate, is led by greed into taking one risk too many. The final act of destruction is Volpone's own, it is deliberate, and the mental attitude behind it is rather different from that which governs Mosca at this point: Soft, soft: whipt? And loose all that I haue? if I confesse, It cannot be much more. (v. xii. 81-3)1 Volpone has gone beyond material considerations at this point; he reveals everything, even though he knows there is nO advantage in it for him, and even some extra punishment. This is peculiar behaviour for a figure who is commonly regarded as the embodiment of greed, and I think it needs to be investigated more closely than it has been. In all the debate over the harshness of the court's punishment, the more surprising fact that Volpene knowingly and deliberately destroys himself has not Volume XXXIX, Number 1, Octoher 1969 received the attention it merits. The implications of this moment reRect not merely on the final scene, but On the playas a whole, and the judgement on human behaviour that it presents. Several critics have suggested that a significant change comes over Volpone towards the end of the action. The most interesting suggestion is that of P. H. Davison, who, approaching the play through the terminology of Aristophanic Old Comedy, maintains that Volpone is both Impostor and Ironical Buffoon, and that he is destroyed in the fifth act when, for the first time, the Impostor gains dominance? A simpler suggestion comes from E. B. Partridge, who, using Mosca's line "Bane to thy wooluish nature" as his starting pOint, sees a change in Volpone's totem animal. "This shift from the fox to the wolf marks the shift in Volpone's own nature from the craft and cunning of the fox to the rapacity and destructiveness of the wolf. Had he remained a fox, he would not have brought himself and his servant to this trap.'" Partridge might have added that the wolf in beast fables is traditionally a dupe, and if Volpone does change animal personalities in this way, it might indicate a new stupidity as much as a new cruelty. It is my contention, however, that Volpone's fall is not to be accounted for by any change in his character, but by his nature as it has been revealed all through the play. The strength of Jonson's judgement on him depends not on what he may have become in the fifth act but on what he has been all along. In order to demonstrate this, we need to go back to the beginning of the action. One of the obvious facts of the play - so obvious that one tends to miss it - is that Volpone does not actually need the money he wrings from his victims. The...