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.
