Volpone is the story of a greedy conman who, with the help of his servant, dupes three legacy-hunters into believing that he is dying and naming one of them his heir. While this plot continues to entertain audiences to this day, many readers may not recognizes that Volpone is also an inverted beast fable. A beast fable is traditionally a story with a moral in which animal characters are portrayed with human emotion and feelings. In Volpone, human characters are portrayed as possessing animal qualities while still maintaining their roles in a normal seventeenth-century society.
Jonson is not so subtle about the role of the beast fable in the play, as he uses the Italian nouns of animals in place of character names. "Volpone" is a fox, meaning he is sly, cunning, and stealthy about his schemes. "Mosca" is the fly, who lives parasitically off of Volpone but also has an agenda of his own. And the three legacy-hunters Voltore, Corbaccio, and Corvino are the "vulture," "raven," and "crow" respectively. Early modern audiences with basic knowledge of the Italian language would have likely recognized these associations, which foreshadow the behavior of each predatory character.
Beast fables were often used in allegorical writing as a way of examining how people relate to one another in society. In the case of Volpone, Jonson offers a rather bleak portrait of human relations, as almost every character in the play operates with a deplorable moral compass. Celia, Corvino's wife, is the only character who demonstrates the virtues of constancy and Christian ethics – and she is readily ignored by the male characters who surround her. Through the beast fable, Jonson offers a scathing critique of early modern society and specifically early modern Italian society, as Italy at the time was seen as the seat of indulgence, luxury, and vice.
