ormentor, and at last of executioner. For:

Discontent and want
Is the best clay to mould a villain of.

But his true self, though subdued to be what he quaintly styles 'the
devil's quilted anvil,' on which 'all sins are fashioned and the blows
never heard,' continually rebels against this destiny. Compared with
Flamineo, he is less unnaturally criminal. His melancholy is more
fantastic, his despair more noble. Throughout the course of craft and
cruelty on which he is goaded by a relentless taskmaster, his nature,
hardened as it is, revolts.

At the end, when Bosola presents the body of the murdered Duchess to
her brother, Webster has wrought a scene of tragic savagery that
surpasses almost any other that the English stage can show. The
sight, of his dead sister maddens Ferdinand, who, feeling the eclipse
of reason gradually absorb his faculties, turns round with frenzied
hatred on the accomplice of his fratricide. Bosola demands the price
of guilt. Ferdinand spurns him with the concentrated eloquence of
despair and the extravagance of approaching insanity. The murderer
taunts his master coldly and laconically, like a man whose life is
wrecked, who has waded through blood to his reward, and who at the
last moment discovers the sacrifice of his conscience and masculine
freedom to be fruitless. Remorse, frustrated hopes, and thirst for
vengeance convert Bosola from this hour forward into an instrument of
retribution. The Duke and his brother the Cardinal are both brought to
bloody deaths by the hand which they had used to assassinate their
sister.

It is fitting that something should be said about Webster's conception
of the Italian despot. Brachiano and Ferdinand, the employers of
Flamineo and Bosola, are tyrants such as Savonarola described, and as
we read of in the chronicles of petty Southern cities. Nothing is
suffered to stand between their lust and its accomplishment. They
override the law by violence, or pervert its action to their own
advantage:

The law to him
Is like a foul black cobweb to a spider;
He makes it his dwelling and a prison
To entangle those shall feed him.

They are eaten up with parasites, accomplices, and all the creatures
of their crimes:

He and his brother are like plum-trees that grow crooked
over standing pools; they are rich and over-laden with
fruit, but none but crows, pies, and caterpillars feed on
them.

In their lives they are without