Along with the mood and the stock types of the commedia dell'arte, another literary form that Ben Jonson collages into his text is the long- established beast fable. A fable is a story (usually short) conveying a moral lesson. It uses the device of speaking animals with human characteristics. They may represent allegorically particular personal qualities – like vanity, cunning, greed, gullibility, courage, resourcefulness. Volpone himself sees the symbolism of the bird names when he tells Corvino he has ‘such moral emblems on your name’ (5.8.12). He recognizes too his own name's meaning (‘The Fox shall, here, uncase’, 5.12.84). This implies some degree of recognition of the fox's traditional reputation and how it fits his conduct, though he may only see it as a badge of pride that he has been the clever bringer of justice to cheats rather than seeing it as badge of shame that he has stooped to greed, lust and deceit. The fable, often ending with an epigrammatic statement of the moral, has its origins in ancient folklore and proverbs and is traceable, in written form, to the sixth- century Greek writer Aesop. The classically educated in the audience would know Aesop's Fables. Many others would know improving or warning tales told them as children in which animals behave as well, as stupidly or as badly as human beings. Among the substantial collection of stories, each involving talking animals and each ending with an improving moral lesson, Aesop recounts ten tales depicting the cunning of the fox, including the one where the fox – like Volpone pretending to be so ill he will soon die – plays dead in order to lure in and trap a gullible victim – a carrion crow. Another tells how a fox flatters a crow which has a piece of cheese in its beak. The fox compliments the bird on the reports of its beautiful song and asks it to sing for him. The crow caws, the cheese drops to the ground and the fox gobbles it up.

The moral is, do not trust flatterers and is referenced by Volpone when talking to Corvino, the crow (5.8.13– 14). Another fable tells of a fox which, having broken into an actor's house, is frightened by a face staring at him. After a while he realizes it is a mask like the sort actors wear.