Consider the Treatment of Defeat in Ben Jonson’s Volpone

Posted on August 28, 2026 Updated on August 28, 2026

(1559 words)

The treatment of defeat in Ben Jonson’s Volpone can be observed most clearly in the play’s final act, where Volpone’s elaborate scheme of deception ultimately comes full circle. Having spent the play manipulating others through his feigned illness and supposed death, Volpone finally recognises that the charade has become uncontrollable. At the close of Act V, Scene ix, Voltore, the lawyer who has successfully defended Volpone during the rape trial, appears as frustrated and defeated as Volpone could wish when he exclaims, “A strange, officious, / Troublesome knave! Thou dost torment me.” Voltore’s description reflects the extraordinary audacity with which Volpone has manipulated those around him. Yet, as the play progresses towards its conclusion, this apparent mastery of deception is transformed into self-defeat.

The moral structure of Volpone resembles that of a morality play in its combination of immorality and moral commentary. Jonson uses Volpone and the other characters to dramatise the destructive nature of greed, presenting a world in which excessive desire ultimately produces its own punishment. Volpone occupies the role of the trickster whose confidence and ingenuity initially appear to place him beyond the reach of consequence. Significantly, however, when defeat finally arrives, he does not lament his fate or seek sympathy from others. Instead, he is largely deflated by the consequences of his own actions. His downfall is therefore not simply imposed upon him by external forces; it is generated by the very impulses that have defined his character throughout the play.

At the end of Scene ix, Volpone’s sadistic game reaches its climax. Jonson must consequently move from catastasis, the height or culmination of dramatic action, towards catastrophe, the final collapse of the protagonist’s scheme. Volpone’s plot to torment Voltore and the other characters for the sake of his own “violent laughter” has exhausted itself. In the brief tenth scene, back in the Scrutineo, Voltore begins to confess to his perjury during the earlier trial. Volpone, still disguised as the commendatore, overhears the confession and immediately recognises the danger to himself:

“I’m caught / I’ my own noose.”

With these words, Jonson begins the transition towards catastrophe. The image of the “noose” is particularly significant because Volpone has become trapped by a scheme that he himself created. His deception, initially a source of power and pleasure, has become the instrument of his downfall.

Volpone subsequently attempts to understand what motivated him to take the deception so far in the first place. His self-examination at this crucial point in the play is particularly revealing because it forces him, however briefly and incoherently, to confront the relationship between character and action:

“To make a snare of mine own neck! And run
My head into it wilfully, with laughter!
When I had newly ’scaped, was free and clear!
Out of mere wantonness! O, the dull devil
Was in this brain of mine when I devised it.”

Volpone’s language suggests that he recognises the irrationality of his own behaviour. The “dull devil” can be understood as a metaphor for the impulses that have governed him throughout the play. His admission that he acted “out of mere wantonness” is especially important. Volpone was not compelled to continue his deception after escaping the immediate dangers of his scheme; instead, he deliberately extended it because he derived pleasure from manipulating and humiliating others. His defeat therefore emerges from an internal flaw rather than from simple bad fortune.

The reference to the “devil” also connects Volpone’s downfall to the play’s recurring imagery of possession and obsession. His desire to witness Mosca’s manipulation of the “birds of prey” develops into a broader desire to control the actions and emotions of everyone around him. Volpone’s “savage, satiric streak” reaches its climax in Act V, where his desire to direct events increasingly resembles that of a playwright or director controlling his own performance. The imagery of acting, directing and theatrical performance that runs throughout the play consequently becomes inseparable from Volpone’s moral corruption. He attempts to control reality as though it were a theatrical production, but ultimately discovers that he cannot control the consequences of his own performance.

It is therefore appropriate that Volpone becomes trapped in a “noose of [his] own devising.” The noose represents both his physical punishment and the psychological impulses that have produced it. His “wantonness” is simultaneously destructive and self-destructive: the pleasure he derives from deceiving others eventually turns against him. Jonson consequently presents defeat not as an arbitrary reversal of fortune but as the logical consequence of excessive desire.

Volpone’s opening soliloquy of Act V further develops this idea through its language of obsession and possession. The dramatic irony of the scene becomes particularly significant because Volpone’s words reveal more about his own psychological state than he intends. His desire to be “possessed” by “violent laughter” reflects the extent to which his pleasure in deception has become compulsive. This connects directly with the earlier exchange between Mosca and Volpone in Act V, Scene ii, when Mosca explains why the suitors have failed to recognise the deception:

“Each of ’em
Is so possessed and stuffed with his own hopes
That anything unto the contrary,
Never so true, or never so apparent,
Never so palpable, they will resist it—”

Volpone responds:

“Like a temptation of the devil.”

Ironically, this observation applies directly to Volpone himself. The characters are so dominated by their desires that they are incapable of recognising reality. Volpone is possessed by his desire for amusement and control just as the other characters are possessed by their greed. Each character becomes trapped within his own expectations, refusing to acknowledge evidence that contradicts his desires. The recurring motifs of possession, obsession, torture and “violent laughter” therefore become increasingly intertwined as the play approaches its conclusion.

Volpone’s defeat becomes particularly evident when he begins to recognise that his worst fears are becoming reality. He understands that Mosca now possesses both the opportunity and the motivation to take control of his wealth and potentially leave him buried alive. Volpone responds to this threat with the desperate cry, “Ay, quick, and cozen me of all.” When Mosca offers to accept half of the inheritance, Volpone initially responds, “First, I’ll be hanged!” This reaction is characteristically visceral and self-destructive. Although he eventually concedes, “Thou shalt have half,” he immediately attempts to reassert his superiority by declaring, “I cannot now / Afford it you so cheap.”

The power relationship between Volpone and Mosca has therefore been completely reversed. Earlier, Volpone enjoyed watching Mosca manipulate the other characters; now Mosca uses the same methods of psychological domination against Volpone. The pupil has effectively become the master. Mosca’s enjoyment of his newfound power mirrors Volpone’s earlier enjoyment of tormenting Voltore and the other suitors. In this sense, Jonson creates a cycle of exploitation in which characters repeatedly turn the vices of others against them. Volpone’s response is ultimately to destroy Mosca along with himself, refusing to allow his servant to retain the wealth even though exposing Mosca will also reveal Volpone’s own disguise.

This final act of resistance is important to the treatment of defeat. Volpone does not become morally reformed when he is defeated. Instead, he continues to behave according to the same selfish and destructive principles that have governed him throughout the play. His refusal to allow Mosca to inherit the money demonstrates that even at the point of his downfall he remains motivated by pride, possessiveness and spite. His defeat is therefore not a moment of moral redemption but the culmination of his character.

Jonson’s moral perspective is reinforced at the end of the play when the first Avocatore declares:

“Mischiefs feed
Like beasts, till they be fat, and then they bleed.”

The image of animals being fed until they are ready to be slaughtered encapsulates the central moral logic of Volpone. Greed, deception and corruption are allowed to grow until they ultimately consume those who practise them. The characters feed their own destructive desires, only to become victims of those same desires. Volpone’s punishment consequently fulfils the moral structure of the play: the trickster is defeated by the very mechanisms of deception that initially gave him power.

The epilogue is also significant because it distinguishes Jonson’s comic entertainment from Volpone’s sadistic pleasure. The actor playing Volpone comes forward to encourage the audience’s applause and laughter, but the audience is not invited to participate in Volpone’s “violent laughter.” Instead, the punishment has been administered “by the laws.” Jonson therefore separates theatrical pleasure from the destructive pleasure represented by Volpone. The audience may enjoy the “feast” of the drama without sharing the moral corruption of the characters.

Ultimately, Volpone can be understood as a figure of defeat who nevertheless remains combative until the very end. His defeat does not transform him into a repentant or sympathetic figure. Instead, he continues to resist Mosca and refuses to surrender the wealth that has motivated so much of his behaviour. His downfall is therefore both comic and moral: he loses his freedom and wealth, but more importantly, he is defeated by his own character. Jonson presents a world in which greed and deception inevitably become self-destructive. Volpone is not simply defeated by the law; he is defeated by the excesses of his own imagination, his desire for control, and his pleasure in manipulating others. His “noose” is, in the most literal and figurative sense, one of his own making.