'Volpone' is the sharpest, funniest play about money and morals in the seventeenth century - a play still wickedly relevant four centuries later. Jonson's comedy depicts selfishness thinly veiled by sanctimonious speeches, lust and possessiveness poorly disguised as love and marriage, and cynical legalism passing itself off as pure justice - as well as examining snobbery, class warfare, and greed. It was first performed by the King's Men at the Globe in 1606, and was printed in quarto in 1607
