Animal Imagery in Volpone

Animal Imagery in Volpone

Johnson’s animal associations of main characters as their namesake animals, made Volpone a fable like. Fables are tales with simple moral messages, told for a didactic purpose. Volpone is much more complex, but at its heart shares the same purpose. Names of characters are fitting, memorable and descriptive. It tells the tale of cunning “Fox” (Volpone in Italian), by a mischevious “Fly” (Mosca in Italian) who helps the Volpone trick several carrion birds a vulture (Voltore), a crow (Corvino) and a raven (Corbaccio) into losing their feathers (their wealth). Johnson emphasizes the theme of parasitism (one life form feeds off of another) in the play using the animal imagery in the play. The animalization theme reveals the motivations of every character. Two types of parasites or fools are found in the courts of Renaissance gentlemen: the natural idiots or deformed fools (like the dwarf Nano, eunuch Castrone, hermaphrodite Androgyno) and the obsequious but clever fools (like Mosca). While the others are fools by nature, Mosca plays the fool by choice. Volpone, a gentleman of Venice is lustful, lecherous and greedy for pleasure. Also, he is energetic and rhetorical genious, mixing the sacred and the profane to gratificate himself. He plans a con with his servant Mosca. The con is Volpone pretending to be near death ill and tricking three citizens into showering him with gifts, in hopes that one of them will be his sole heir. Mosca is his only true confidante. Mosca says "Everyone's a parasite" and during the course of the play he is proved right, because everyone tries to live off of the wealth or livelihood of others, without doing any "honest toil" of their own. Corvino, Corbaccio and Voltore- parasites that all try to inherit a fortune from a dying man; and Volpone himself has built his fortune on cons such as the one he is playing now. Parasitism is not a form of laziness or desperation, but a form of superiority. The parasite lives by his wits, and feeds off of others, skillfully manipulating their credulity and goodwill. This beast/animal imagery in the language is used in Volpone to represent the deformity and degeneration of the characters and moral abnormality found in Venice, portarying the city as a hotbed of crime, knavery and lust. Volpone is strongly moralistisc play, the presentation of man as a beast – specifically beast and birds of prey – is used as a satiric device.