Is Volpone Hero Or Villain?

It would be almost impossible for the audience of this satiric comedy, Valpone not to be moved, if not shocked by the larger than life, absolutely corrupt character of Valpone. He evokes both disgust and a perverted sense of admiration as we are presented to someone who is so completely vacant in compassion. We are almost in awe of this character who has no fear of punishment for his sins in this world or the next, yet the realisation that his evil is so strong and overbearing that he longs to rape the personification of innocence is chilling and deeply disturbing. Remorseless, loveless and careless, Johnson gives us a character not like any other and sets him in Renaissance Venice, the ideal place and time for such a tyrant and his parasite to thrive.

Valpones gold is his god, and he in turn worships it as such

“Good morning to the day; and, next, my gold!

Open the shrine, that I may see my saint.”

This opening speech is drenched with religious imagery, this blasphemous language shows no fear of retribution and this is backed up when he reveals that for him hell would be made heaven if he had gold there. Ironically it is the control that money and possessions have over Valpone that bring about his downfall, for while he is deeply cunning, witty and intelligent he continuously overreaches, blinded and seduced by money. We are immediately appealed and appalled by this foreboding fascination for riches for although it is sacrilegious it shows an amazing strength of character to turn his back completely on religion and its threat of eternal punishment. However his misery and stinginess are unbecoming qualities that fail to lure the audience. Here he shows the familiar characteristics of a fox, in that it is the chase not the kill that brings the thrill, i.e. he takes sheer pleasure in fooling his peers, and has no need for the money that he gains in doing so, except perhaps for looking at.

Another unattractive quality found in Valpone is his void of affection and love, he exploits his freakish bastard children, using them as a source them for entertainment

“Call forth my dwarf, my eunuch and my fool

And let ’em make me sport”

Johnson has added these abnormals not only as a comic restbite but to give let us see the result of Volpones inner corruption externalised. Even his seemingly pleasant relationship with Mosca is built solely on flattery and humouring each other, they do not love each other, but instead need each other, their parasite and host relationship is inter-reliant and interdependent.

With the aid of Mosca, Valpone sets out to bring down each of the other ravenous characters in turn. Although it is Johnson’s desire to inform and instruct he allows us to become amused by their amoral scheme and their amazing double act of trickery, due to the other characters gullibility, as each of them have too been infected by the degenerate disease of avarice. Their greed has given Valpone three years to enjoy “playing with their hopes” and their ignorance allows Valpone to continually take pleasure in

” Letting the cherry knock against their lips…”

These legacy hunters, aware of the effective threat of each other, bring presents, each trying to outdo the other, naively trusting Mosca as their vector to Valpones treasure. This old Italian tradition encourages such behaviour, and although this play is fictional, it is based on the diseased Italy which was rotten to the core with corruption.

In his pretended dying state Valpone lacks the opportunity to show off linguistically, his plan requires Mosca to do his lying and deceiving for him. Ironically however the materialisation of Mosca’s plan sees Valpone disguised as a mountebank. In this masque Valpone successfully woes the crowd, his exhibitionist side is exposed, he is persuasive and entertaining, his dazzling sales pitch deceives the crowd, making them think that they are buying a great product at a bargain price

“I am content to be deprived of it for six;”

Valpone as Scotto of Mantua even manages to accomplish verbally seducing the virtuous Celia into dropping her hanky with his sensual and soft language.

Only that Valpone disgustingly tries to pervert and rape the innocent and beautiful Celia he would almost seem heroic. Till this point there is almost a sense of fairness in that he gulls those equally selfish and greedy, in a simplistic term one bad guy taking from another. He is superior to those waiting to gorge on his corpse in that he has a sense of dignity, demands a sense of respect and is so warped in arrogance it is humorous. However, in his attempted rape his evilness takes a step too far, while we may have forgiven him for duping the melodramatic Bonario out of his inheritance there is no repentance in his attempt to take Celia without her will.

“yield or I’ll force thee”

The sympathy we felt for Valpone in Act three Scene four when confronted with the garrulous grotesque Lady Would-be has been dissolved, her sin was that of being irritating, vain and boring, while all ugly qualities her seduction lacks the malice the violence and pure evil of rape. This is when the laughter stops and the audience is forced to look introspectively at their own moral values.

The play narrowly escapes with a “happy” ending, Johnson ensures that no matter how persuading or entertaining the corrupt were, they are punished, full of vitality and life, or not, while the good are absolved. It is not the stereotypical “good overcoming evil” resolve, as neither Celia or Bonario, the only evidence of innocence throughout the play, carried much characteristic weight being two dimensional and shallow. The result is that evil overreaches and destroys itself.

Valpone although a mastermind is left to wither away at an asylum, and without his gold to keep him company he his left to rot in his own hell. The audience was tempted and seduced by his explosive personality and the life that oozed out of him, even when feigning sick. Although hyperbolised and exaggerated he was the emphasis of human folly, we are all to a degree driven by greed, we too are tempted by wrong and dishonesty, and that is the very reason that the character of Valpone appeals to us.