Ben Jonson\'s Play Volpone --

¶ … Ben Jonson's play "Volpone" -- What contemporary film(s), novel or TV program does Volpone seem to resemble in style, content and/or purpose?

If one can get beyond its many classical allusions and dense prose, Ben Jonson's "Volpone" seems like a satiric play tailor-made for modern times. The initial set-up of "Volpone" seems to come from a particularly twisted episode of "ER" -- the foxy character of the title is a man pretends to be ill, to sponge off of the largess of his friends and relations, all of whom hate Volpone but hope to profit off of his demise in his will. But really, what "Volpone" is about is not medicine, modern or ancient, but the act of being a social parasite or flunky as a way of 'making it' in the world. For instance, Volpone makes use of his servant Mosca's intelligence in a parasitic way. In turn, Mosca eventually makes use of his master's wealth and feigned death in the same way that Volpone makes use of his follower's desire to be mentioned in Volpone's will.

What modern program features a bloated red-haired foxy executive, holding up tantalizing promises of material gain over a captive and corrupt body of flunkeys and potential parasites, provided they bend to his will? What television character could be pictured saying, "Good morning to the Day; and, next, my Gold:/Open the shrine, that I may see my Saint," cries the title character at the beginning of the play?" (1.1) What reality TV show might show a servant, who like Mosca, to flatter Volpone, states that wealth "It transforms/the most deformed, and restores them lovely, / as it were the strange poetical Girdle. IOVE / Could not inuent, to himselfe, a shroud more subtle, / to passe Acrisius guardes. It is the thing / Makes all the world her grace, her youth, her beauty." (5.2)