Volpone

In Act 1, Scene 1, Volpone utters his very first words in the play: a command to his servant, Mosca, to pull back the curtains hiding his trove of treasure in his bedchamber. What follows is a ridiculous, hyperbolic prayer to his own wealth that sets the tone of the play and establishes Volpone’s greed as his central vice:

Open the shrine, that I might see my saint.
[…]
Hail the world’s soul, and mine! More glad than is
The teeming earth to see the longed-for sun
Peep through the horns of the celestial Ram,
Am I, to view thy splendour darkening his;
That lying here, amongst my other hoards,
Show’st like a flame by night, or like the day
Struck out of chaos, when all darkness fled
Unto the centre.

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In Act 2, Scene 5, Corvino unleashes his wrath at Celia as he accuses her of being unfaithful to him for consorting with the "mountebank," who is really Volpone in disguise. In the heat of his anger, he threatens to confine Celia to a small space in their house. He also hyperbolically notes the dangers that await her if she leaves this area, using a simile comparing his rage to an occult summoning ritual gone wrong:

First, I will have this bawdy light dammed up;
And till’t be done, some two, or three yards off
I’ll chalk a line, o’er which if thou but chance

To set thy desp’rate foot, more hell, more horror,
More wild, remorseless rage shall seize on thee
Than on a conjurerer that had heedless left
His circle’s safety ere his devil was laid.

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