The Revenger's Tragedy Quotes

Vindice seems to think women are pretty gullible. He respects the virtue of his mother and sister, but thinks they're not so good at seeing through deceit. Does the play bear his theories out, or does it have a different view of women?

Vindice puts on a disguise here and asks if he's different enough from his usual self. Hippolito answers he's like a different man, and while on one hand this means Vindice's costume is working, we're thinking it's also a shout-out to the shifts taking place internally for Vindice.

Lussurioso sends Vindice (in disguise as Piato) to try to corrupt his sister into sleeping with Lussurioso for money, and Vindice decides this is a good opportunity to test the virtue of his mother and sister. Is there anything good about his plan, or is he basically justifying his participation in a situation he should walk away from?

Ambitioso and Supervacuo want the Duke to kill Lussurioso (after Lussurioso accidentally attacks the Duke, thinking he's Spurio), but they decide to achieve this the sneaky way, by pleading for his life in a way that subtly argues for his death. This is typical of the play, where practically everyone is pretending to want one thing when they actually want another.

The Duke wants a secret place for his seduction because he wants to deceive the court so they won't know what he's done. But the secrecy of the place is what lets Vindice and Hippolito kill him. Guess deception doesn't pay.

Even the skulls can't be trusted in this play. Vindice has made a dead skull deceptive by costuming it as a living woman. ("Tires" are costumes—like, attires.)

It's like if a Mission Impossible assassin turned up for his assignment, and the baddie gave him a contract on one of his code names. Vindice seems to be savoring the irony here, but by the end of the play he will have accidentally killed himself, in the sense that he's sentenced to execution in response to his vengeful actions. Oops.

Is this a compliment? We doubt it. Being able to plead against the devil is awesome, but being able to plead for the devil isn't… and being able to do both? Well, that just makes someone a hypocrite.

Even Castiza, an innocent and honest person, tests her mother, deceiving her briefly in the process by pretending to be planning to sleep with Lussurioso. What kind of world causes this amount of deception? Or should we see it as an individual choice of Castiza's, one of the few moments when she's not straightforward?

When you're right, you're right. Supervacuo may be a bad guy, but he's sure hit the nail on the head here. Throughout the play, villainy is aided by deception: masks, costumes, lies. This is a fitting thing for him to say at the beginning of the last act.