Gold and Alchemy Symbol Analysis

On one level, gold symbolizes wealth. Gold is physical money, both expensive and luxurious. The opening speech of the play reveals Volpone’s obsession with money through an ode to gold, and the first transaction of the play involves a gift of a gold plate. Throughout the play, characters emphasize that gold is what lends objects and people in the world their best qualities. Blasphemously, Volpone even says that gold is brighter than the sun or God himself. The Renaissance understanding of gold, though, was complicated and fluid. Alchemy, an early form of chemistry, taught that metals were all composed of the same material; the only difference between lead and gold was purity. Thus, with the right methods, one could purify lead into gold. This idea of purifying something and scientifically changing it into gold parallels a lowborn person accumulating wealth and becoming highborn, as Mosca almost accomplishes at the end of the play. We can note that, for years, the play was performed with an alternate ending in which Mosca receives Volpone’s fortune. The alchemical fluidity of gold also allows it to blend with the play’s other symbols, as characters constantly say that gold is the best medicine. This is meant figuratively, as characters within the play believe that wealth and gold instill people with heath and excellent qualities, but also literally, as an elixir of drinkable gold was sometimes used as medicine.