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Unit 16: Volpone: Satire and all its Detailed Analysis and Comedy

16.3.6 Scene VI Notes

Mosca arrives at Corvino’s house, and Corvino assumes he brings good news: news of Volpone’s
death. But Corvino says that, on the contrary, Volpone has recovered—thanks to the medicinal oil
of Scoto Mantua. Corvino is frustrated. Not only that, adds Mosca, but he has now been charged by
the doctors with the task of finding a woman to sleep with Volpone in order to further aid his
recovery. Corvino suggests a courtesan (prostitute), but Mosca rejects the idea; prostitutes are too
sly, too experienced, and they might trick both of them out of any inheritance. Rather, he suggests
that a woman of virtue is required, someone whom Corvino can command. Volpone’s parasite
further mentions that one of the doctors offered his own daughter. Boldened by this, Corvino decides
that Celia will sleep with Volpone and declares this to Mosca. Mosca congratulates Corvino on
ensuring that he will be named heir.

16.3.7 Scene VII

After Mosca leaves, Corvino finds his wife crying. He consoles her, telling her that he is not jealous
and was never jealous. Jealousy is unprofitable, he says, and he promises that she will find just how
un-jealous he is at Volpone’s house, cryptically alluding to his decision to prostitute her.

Analysis of Scenes IV to VII
Celia provokes what can be termed “grotesque” reactions from both Volpone and Corvino, and we
can compare and contrast these reactions better understand each character. Volpone used religious
imagery in the description of gold, but now he has found a new “better angel” in Celia. And the
“gold, plate, and jewels,” which Volpone addressed in tones of worship at the beginning of the
play, Volpone gives to Mosca so that he can use them to woo Celia; the all-important gold has been
subordinated to her conquest. His desire for her is instinctual, not refined or rational, and we are
now merely seeing the lustful, hedonist side of Volpone that was only hinted at in previous passages.
For the language in which Volpone describes his love for Celia is grotesque; it is the language of
sickness, not love. He feels a fever, a “flame”, trapped inside his body. “My liver melts,” he exclaims,
and Mosca describes his situation as a “torment.” That the “sick” Volpone now suffers from a
lovesickness is another example of situational irony, and, through this irony, Jonson demonstrates
that Volpone’s light-hearted, lustful ways are not as innocent as they may appear, since they can
easily develop into an unhealthy, and unnatural, sexual obsession (remember from Act I that the
grotesque can serve as an indication of something unnatural, hidden underneath the surface of a
character or situation).
Corvino also has a pathological, grotesque response to Celia’s body. Corvino’s description of the
handkerchief-tossing incident is rife with intense, sensual imagery suggesting that Corvino may be
in the grip of some sort of sexual psychosis; he feverishly describes “itching ears,” “noted lechers,”
“satyrs,” “hot spectators,” “the fricace” (a type of massage), before he verbally imagines Celia and
Scoto Mantua engaged in the act of intercourse. By contrast with Corvino, Volpone’s earlier outburst
seems tame. Corvino ends his first diatribe with a threat of murder, indicating that sex and violence
are thus firmly linked in his psyche. Like Volpone, Celia’s body causes a sickness in him, except
that his sickness is characterized by violence and rage whereas Volpone’s is characterized by physical
agony. Corvino’s grotesque sexual obsession is firmly linked to his sense of property, for he considers
Celia to be his property. When he says, “I will make thee an anatomy,/Dissect thee mine own self
and read a lecture/Upon thee to the city and in public,” the vocabulary of science—”anatomy,”
“science,” and “lecture”—serves to convey the grotesque image; this language strongly associated
with the rising bourgeois merchant class of Jonson’s day. And when he threatens to kill her entire
family as relatiation for her supposed infidelity, he uses the language of law: those murders would
be “the subject of my justice.” Corvino’s rage is that of a merchant who feels that he is being ripped
off, whose property has been stolen and who wants the thief put to death. To put it in psychological

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