nvertites or female reformatory.
Brachiano, on the accession of Monticelso to the Papal throne,
resolves to leave Rome with Vittoria. They escape, together with her
mother Cornelia, and her brothers Flamineo and Marcello, to Padua; and
it is here that the last scenes of the tragedy are laid.

The use Webster made of Lodovico Orsini deserves particular attention.
He introduces this personage in the very first scene as a spendthrift,
who, having run through his fortune, has been outlawed. Count
Lodovico, as he is always called, has no relationship with the Orsini,
but is attached to the service of Francesco de' Medici, and is an old
lover of the Duchess Isabella. When, therefore, the Grand Duke
meditates vengeance on Brachiano, he finds a fitting instrument in the
desperate Lodovico. Together, in disguise, they repair to Padua.
Lodovico poisons the Duke of Brachiano's helmet, and has the
satisfaction of ending his last struggles by the halter. Afterwards,
with companions, habited as a masquer, he enters Vittoria's palace and
puts her to death together with her brother Flamineo. Just when the
deed of vengeance has been completed, young Giovanni Orsini, heir of
Brachiano, enters and orders the summary execution of Lodovico for
this deed of violence. Webster's invention in this plot is confined to
the fantastic incidents attending on the deaths of Isabella, Camillo,
and Brachiano, and to the murder of Marcello by his brother Flamineo,
with the further consequence of Cornelia's madness and death. He has
heightened our interest in Isabella, at the expense of Brachiano's
character, by making her an innocent and loving wife instead of an
adulteress. He has ascribed different motives from the real ones to
Lodovico in order to bring this personage into rank with the chief
actors, though this has been achieved with only moderate success.
Vittoria is abandoned to the darkest interpretation. She is a woman
who rises to eminence by crime, as an unfaithful wife, the murderess
of her husband, and an impudent defier of justice. Her brother,
Flamineo, becomes under Webster's treatment one of those worst human
infamies--a court dependent; ruffian, buffoon, pimp, murderer by
turns. Furthermore, and without any adequate object beyond that of
completing this study of a type he loved, Webster makes him murder his
own brother Marcello by treason. The part assigned to Marcello, it
should be said, is a genial and happy one; and Cornelia, the moth