protection of Brachiano, Vittoria hardly takes the trouble to plead
innocence or to rebut charges. She stands defiant, arrogant, vigilant,
on guard; flinging the lie in the teeth of her arraigners; quick to
seize the slightest sign of feebleness in their attack; protesting her
guiltlessness so loudly that she shouts truth down by brazen strength
of lung; retiring at the close with taunts; blazing throughout with
the intolerable lustre of some baleful planet. When she enters for the
third time, it is to quarrel with her paramour. He has been stung to
jealousy by a feigned love-letter. She knows that she has given him no
cause; it is her game to lure him by fidelity to marriage. Therefore
she resolves to make his mistake the instrument of her exaltation.
Beginning with torrents of abuse, hurling reproaches at him for her
own dishonour and the murder of his wife, working herself by studied
degrees into a tempest of ungovernable rage, she flings herself upon
the bed, refuses his caresses, spurns and tramples on him, till she
has brought Brachiano, terrified, humbled, fascinated, to her feet.
Then she gradually relents beneath his passionate protestations and
repeated promises of marriage. At this point she speaks but little.
We only feel her melting humour in the air, and long to see the scene
played by such an actress as Madame Bernhardt. When Vittoria next
appears, it is as Duchess by the deathbed of the Duke, her husband.
Her attendance here is necessary, but it contributes little to the
development of her character. We have learned to know her, and expect
neither womanish tears nor signs of affection at a crisis which
touches her heart less than her self-love. Webster, among his other
excellent qualities, knew how to support character by reticence.
Vittoria's silence in this act is significant; and when she retires
exclaiming, 'O me! this place is hell!' we know that it is the outcry,
not of a woman who has lost what made life dear, but of one who sees
the fruits of crime imperilled by a fatal accident. The last scene of
the play is devoted to Vittoria. It begins with a notable altercation
between her and Flamineo. She calls him 'ruffian' and 'villain,'
refusing him the reward of his vile service. This quarrel emerges in
one of Webster's grotesque contrivances to prolong a poignant
situation. Flamineo quits the stage and reappears with pistols. He
affects a kind of madness; and after threatening Vittoria, who never
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