Volpone as a Comedy of Humours

A comedy of humors refers to a type of drama that focused on characters, each character representing a type of personality. The characters in Volpone are stereotypes. They represent a character type rather than a flesh-and-blood. There are some characters in this play that have physical abnormalities such as Nano, Castrone and Androgyny and yet they are not as out of balance as the ones who are mentally imbalanced such as Volpone, Mosca, Voltore, Corvino, Corbaccio, etc.

Volpone is an imbalanced character. At the very beginning of the play, he worships gold as his god.Volpone’s worshiping of gold suggests that Volpone is utterly consumed by greed. Besides greed, he moves on to blasphemy calling his gold a saint. He also earns his wealth by duping the legacy hunters and wants to have sex with beautiful Celia. He also derives pleasures by tormenting the legacy hunters. All these show that he is mentally imbalanced.

Mosca, the parasite of Volpone, is also greedy like his master. He appears in the play to be a greater rogue than Volpone. He flatters his master and torments the legacy hunters to please him. At the end of the play he appears in his true colors when he tries his best to cheat his master. Thus, he is also mentally imbalanced.

The predominant humor in Volpone is avarice, which afflicts all the legacy hunters- Voltore, Corbaccio and Corvino. Voltore brings a costly antique plate as a gift to please Volpone. He is so obsessed with money that he can plead against his Maker if he were paid a fee of six sols more. Corbaccio, the oldest of the legacy hunters, agrees to disinherit his own son, Bonario, in order to inherit Volpone’s wealth. Even he disclaims Bonario as his son. Corvine forces his innocent wife to sleep with Volpone. He also denounces his wife as a whore and says that he has seen his wife with his own eyes in the act of sexual intercourse with Bonario.

The humors of Sir Politic Would-be and his wife are not inborn but acquired. The humor of Sir Politic is to affect great political skill and statesmanship. In addition to his political humor, he also suffers from the humor of a stereotypical traveler, who took note of every trivial activity during his visit abroad. Lady Politic Would-be is a medley of various academic disciplines. Her theory of obsession and possession is a crude travesty of Platonic thinking. She is also very greedy. To acquire Volpone’s wealth, she is ready to offer her body.

The characters in Volpone are stereotypes. All of the characters are imbalanced as well, so their ‘humors’ are out of balance and they thus act in comical ways. Thus, Volpone is a comedy of humours.