J.LSimmons
the tongue's fiendish urge to wag powerfully, frustrated with the desire to "be express'd," tickles Vindice willy-nilly into making his proud confession of murder to the new Duke
the murderous Vindice gives tongue to what might have remained mute
disillusioned Christian humanist
adapted conventions of satire and the moral interlude
Michael Neill
If marriage uses the woman's body as good money and unequivocal speech, rape transforms her into counterfeit coin, a contradictory word that threatens the whole system. - Patricia Joplin
might be called the Viper and her brood - serpent carelessly nourished in the bosom of Middleton's state is the duchess, and her brood are a hatch of apparently fatherless sons, together with the duke's bastard
revenge is scarcely dramatized as a problem here unlike Hamlet
Spurio is given a symbolically central role in the social economy of his play
Vindice's description of vengeance as "murder's quit rent . . . tenant to tragedy" (I.i.39-40) nicely suggests its purely conventional role in Middleton's scheme
gender-coded issues of inheritance and usurpation are given exceptional prominence in the play's satiric design
the bastard as a kind of living emblem for the usurping appetite
definition of a bastard as "whore's son" implies that the anxieties surrounding bastardy had a great deal to do with its disruption of the proper line of paternity through the creation of a child that could only be defined as its mother's son and it constituted a challenge to the patriarchal order and its fictions of legitimate descent
Spurio's proclaimation that "Adultery is my nature" (I.ii.177) does more than justify incest with his stepmother as a wittily symmetrical revenge against his adulterous father
illegitimate children were "a special class of transgressive male," credited with an unusually passionate and vigorous nature
but bastards would draw "a certeyn corruption and stayne from the sinne of his parentes"- Sir John Fortescue
form of genealogical counterfeiting because it threatened to displace the "true" heir with a "false" and debased substitute
play contains elements of tragedy, satire, and history
extravagant irony of self-loss
Vindice being hired to kill his counterfeit self illustrates the governing principle of revenge drama, whereby the revenger is transformed into the simulacrum of the criminal he seeks to punish but could also be red as destabilization of identity characteristic of a world of bastard coining
Middleton locates his court, where everything goes "in silk and silver" in a degraded Silver Age, mockingly emblematized by the "silver years" of the duke
progressive debasement of the currency of dukedom, climaxing in the farcical substitutions of act V where five dukes rise and fall in quick succession
Vindice ironically proves himself to be the most prolific and successful of all the play's counterfeiters
Vindice calls himself "Piato" ("plated") which identifies him with "blanched" coins (base metal plated over with silver to improve its appearance),'7 thereby associating him with the deceptive glitter of the whole court
If men are coiners, it is women, according to Vindice, who are most "apt... to take false money" but also to become it as Gratiana and Castiza are liable to be "changed / Into white money" by his labours
Castiza's flesh is metamorphosed into a form of material wealth
Robert Ornstein Vindice dies "not because the moral order is restored or because the goddess Astraea re turns to earth," but because of the selfish motivations of a crafty politician
Brian Gibbons Vindice's death is so abrupt that it cannot be regarded seriously
Arthur.L.Kistner and M.K.Kistner
commonplace of Elizabethan and Jacobean serious drama that the protagonist must die
The playwright's ability to convince his audience of the necessity of his hero's death is one determination of the success or failure
If Vindice's fall is to have moral significance, it must be inevitable; that is, it must fulfill the logical expectations of a moral system.
not the simple reward-for-the-good and punishment-for-the-bad morality that has generally been imposed on the play
like Vindice, Lussurioso contrasts the era with other times which were less sinful and
Antonio speaks of the perversion of justice "in this age" (I.iv.55), and Castiza laments that "The world's so chang'd'
the reward of virtue is demonstrated in the first scene: the skull of Gloriana, poisoned for her chastity, and, through neglect, the death of Vindice's father, worthy in mind but not in estate
vice is to advancement as virtue is to poverty
Virtue, in the forms of Castiza, Gratiana, and Antonio's wife, dwells away from the Duke's palace but the court tries to buy/take them - Gratiana is temporarily overcome by temptation and Antonio's virtuous wife is ravaged by the court
Vindice's relationship to the court, the source of corruption, grows stronger throughout the play, and as it does, his virtue declines - his acceptance of a guise of evil is his first step downward
not the reluctant, tortured decision for revenge and justice that characterizes Hamlet but an eager lust for the enemy's blood
Vindice has brought Gloriana to court as a prostitute and murderess
Henry Hitch Adams Vindice's death satisfies the claims of heavenly justice
Larry S.Campion 'an obsessive loathing of the sexual sinfulness of men'
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