Deception in VolponeIn Volpone, Ben Jonson emphasizes the pleasure and humor of deception, but he does not neglect its wickedness, and in the end he punishes the deceivers . The play centers on the wealthy Volpone, who, having neither wife nor children, pretends to be dying and, with the help of his cunning servant Mosca, spawns several greedy characters, each of whom hopes to become the sole heir of Volpone. Jonson's ardent love of language is revealed throughout the play, but especially in the words of Mosca and Volpone, who relish the deceptive powers of language. Volpone himself pursues his schemes partly out of greed, but partly out of a passionate love of getting the best out of people. He cannot resist the temptation to outwit those around him, especially when fate delivers him such perfect seagulls as the lawyer Voltore, the merchant Corvino, the doddering old Corbaccio and the foolish English travelers Sir Politic and Lady Want -Be. Mosca also delights in his ability to seduce others, remarking "I fear I'm beginning to fall in love / With my dear self", so delighted is he at his own manipulations. His self-esteem, however, proves his downfall, as it does for Volpone. Both characters are so fascinated by their own elaborate fictions that they cannot bring themselves to stop their scheming before they betray each other. Jonson's audience would have recognized both the wily Volpone and the parasitic Mosca as distinctively Italian. English playwrights frequently borrowed characters from Italian drama and the Italian comic drama tradition, commedia dell'arte. Venice, Volpone's setting, evoked the glory of Italian art and culture, but also the decadence and corruption of Italy, which the English considered... middle of paper ...... the trations were well known for being more than just “a little obscene,” as she puts it. We are encouraged to laugh with Volpone and Mosca at the pretensions and hypocrisies of Lady Want-Be and the other ever-hopeful “heirs”; but ultimately Jonson chooses to punish the deceivers and asks us to side, however reluctantly, with the Venetian Senate in condemning them. Voltore, Corvino, and the others may deserve to be deceived, but Volpone and Mosca are not agents of justice, and they should not be confused with truly virtuous characters like Celia and Bonario. Nevertheless, Jonson gives the last word to Volpone in the epilogue of the play, where Volpone asks us for forgiveness, and we find ourselves complicit with him again. We are ultimately invited to revel in the delights of deception and language, and to suspend, if only briefly, our moral judgments..