The Revenger's Tragedy: Quotes Flashcards
Vindice’s long obsession with Gloriana’s skull finally pays off when he uses it as the instrument for the Duke’s murder. In one of the more disturbing scenes in a play hardly lacking in the macabre and the grotesque, the skull represents the intersection between death and eroticism. Despite the fact that Gloriana is long gone, her skull is a lingering symbol of her innate sensuality that was so powerful it led the Duke to kill her when he could not possess her. In this scene, the Duke reaps what he has sown. He poisoned Gloriana for rejecting his advances, and now he dies from the same poison while he is trying to seduce her once more. The fact that the Duke does not even realize that the “girl” is actually a skull speaks to the gender roles of the time.
“This very skull, / Whose mistress the Duke poisoned with this drug, / The mortal cure of the earth, shall be revenged / In the like strain, and kiss his lips to death.”
- Vindice
Vindice spends much of the play in disguise. First, he dresses up as Piato the pander. He then shirks the disguise and presents himself to Lussurioso as Vindice, but he is still pretending, playing the role of a loyal subject. Finally, he dons the revenger’s mask to carry out the final step in his plan. Hippolito’s comment above hints at his relief upon seeing his brother without any disguises, for once. While other characters also don literal masks or cloak themselves in deceit and duplicity, none of them compare to Vindice, whose masks utterly subsume him. He violates laws and social norms in the name of vengeance, and loses his own identity in the process. Vindice’s disguises ultimately go deeper than his cloaks and wigs; they enable his metamorphosis into entirely different people. From behind a mask, Vindice engages in seduction, murder, and revenge with impunity, but he eventually is uncloaked (by his own hand!) and dies as his true self.
“So so, all’s as it should be, y’are your self.”
- Hippolito
