The Independent Parasite: Mosca’s Theatrical Service in Volpone

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between Volpone and Mosca as a master-servant bond grounded on roleplaying and theatricality. I argue that Mosca’s growing importance as an actor within Volpone’s theatrical schemes for wealth acquisition lead Mosca to envision detachment from his master and to gain an independent self. Mosca’s independence is legally recognized by the Venetian authorities only for a moment in the final act before he is discovered and punished. Notwithstanding its conservative ending, the play reveals paths of advancement for the parasite through deceit and theatricality. In addition, Mosca’s soliloquies reveal an introspective mind that delights in his role of parasite. I relate this introspection to a form of subjectivity arising from the precarious employment of household servants in early modern London, which prompted their adaptation to a variety of roles. My argument examines early modern texts that put forth an ideology of service and that discuss duplicity and the parasite. I specifically delve into the figure of the parasite in Gervase Markham’s A health to the gentlemanly profession of seruingmen and in Jonson’s Discoveries as well as into the the concept of “eye-service” and parasitical service in William Gouge’s Of Domesticall Duties to draw connections between the anxiety of social mobility found in these texts and the rise of Mosca in Jonson’s play. Through Mosca’s rise and fall in the play, Jonson, I argue, shows the possibilities but also the limits of social mobility for servants in the transitional period of early-seventeenth-century London.