Not only is Volpone (1606) Ben Jonson's most well-known work, it also, according to some critics, marks the turning point of his career. The play is about how Volpone, the Venetian Magnifico, tricks the old fortune-hunters Voltore (the vulture), Corbaccio (the raven) and Corvino (the crow) into believing that they will get his inheritance when he dies. With the help of Mosca (the fly, the parasite), Volpone pretends to be sick and lies in a huge bed onstage, weaving one plot with another, making ‘so rare a music out of discords’ (V.ii.18). This makes the old Corbaccio think that he can outlive Volpone, so that he disinherits his son Bonario; while Corvino, who gets jealous because his wife Celia throws down a handkerchief to the mountebank (who is actually Volpone), makes himself a virtual cuckold. However, since the fox ‘glories more in the cunning purchase of wealth than in the glad possession’ (I.i.30–2), he does not know when to stop and is sold out by the fly and has to expose everything in the end, preferring to ruin their scheme rather than allow the latter to outwit him. The play has been widely discussed and studied, and often performed, and remains Jonson's most popular piece, but it still poses many problems. I want to concentrate on one, which has not been successfully solved, and has usually been ignored.

I refer to the interlude in Act I scene ii acted by what Mosca calls Volpone's bastard children, namely, Nano the dwarf, Androgyno the hermaphrodite and Castrone the eunuch. Why these characters? The incident is usually brushed aside by critics who claim it to be comparatively insignificant. These arguments and this treatment of the interlude, for me, seem to be too easy, as if Jonson, who is famous for being knowledgeable and an ‘author’, would devote a scene to a minor extravaganza.