I.ii: Flamineo, Vittoria's brother, helps Brachiano gain Vittoria's bed. He gets his brother-in-law Camillo to believe that he has talked Vittoria into sleeping with her husband tonight (something she is loath to do). He then instructs Camillo to shun her to make her desire him the more. Camillo agrees and gives Flamineo his chamber key to prove that he will not try to sneak in and visit his wife in the night. Flamineo locks Camillo into his chamber for the night and clears the path for Brachiano to visit Vittoria.

Cornelia, Vittoria and Flamineo's mother, enters in time to overhear Vittoria telling Brachiano her "dream" (which is really a fabrication intended to hint to Brachiano that he should kill her husband Camillo and also kill his own wife Isabella). Brachiano understands the hint, but Cornelia interrupts them, shames them, and drives Brachiano from her house. She also brings news that Isabella, Brachiano's wife and Duchess, has come to court from Padua. Cornelia expresses regret that she ever bore such creatures as Vittoria and Flamineo.

II.i: Isabella, urged by her brother Francisco Duke of Florence, goes to her husband Brachiano and begs him to give up the whore Vittoria and love her again. Giovanni, their young son, is brought in to try to make Brachiano feel the tug of parental responsibility. This ruse does not work, and Giovanni is sent away. Instead, Brachiano swears never to come to Isabella's bed again. In order to avoid a civil war between her brother's realm and her husband's, Isabella pretends to Francisco that it is her idea not to sleep with Brachiano again. Brachiano goes along with her charade, and Francisco scolds her for her willfulness.

Brachiano hires Flamineo and Doctor Julio, an impoisoner, to murder Camillo and Isabella so that he may marry Vittoria.

Cardinal Monticelso, in league with Francisco, sends Camillo off to capture the pirate Lodovico. Camillo is the Cardinal's nephew, and therein lies Monticelso's motive for revenge: Brachiano is cuckolding his nephew. Along with Camillo they send Marcello and Flamineo (Vittoria's brothers). Francisco and Cardinal Monticelso plan to entice Camillo out of town while they use the unwitting Vittoria as a trap to catch and discredit their enemy Brachiano.

II.ii: Brachiano hires a conjuror to call up the scenes of Isabella and Camillo's deaths. The deaths occur onstage in dumb shows, and Brachiano's comments suggest that the two are dying in fact as they watch:

• In the first dumb show, Julio and Christophero burn poisoned incense before Isabella's picture of her husband. Isabella then enters and kisses the portrait of Brachiano and dies.
• In the next dumb show, while practicing on a vaulting horse, Camillo is thrust off (by Flamineo) and breaks his neck. The Cardinal and Duke enter and arrest Marcello (Flamineo's brother) and Flamineo on suspicion of the death. The guard goes to arrest Vittoria as well for suspicion of hiring the murder.

III.i: Francisco and Cardinal Monticelso hope to discredit Vittoria as a whore at her trial, even though they know they do not have enough evidence to convict her of planning to murder Camillo. The brothers Marcello and Flamineo talk. Marcello is heartsick at his siblings' culpability and cannot believe what Flamineo and Vittoria have done.

III.ii: At the trial Vittoria is saucy and impudent to the lawyer and her accusers. Monticelso himself argues that she is a whore. Brachiano is made to confess that he visited Vittoria the night of Camillo's death, but he insists it was only to comfort her and help settle her estate. Brachiano leaves the court saying Nemo me impune lacessit. Monticelso produces a paper written from Brachiano to Vittoria suggesting an assignation. Vittoria says that she is not guilty if he loved her and insists his love was not requited. Monticelso says his brother, Camillo's father, bought Vittoria from her father in Venice where she was a reputed whore of common knowledge along the Rialto. She is condemned to live in a house of penitent whores.

Flamineo, to help hide himself from the discovery of his part in the crimes, puts on an antic disposition.

Giovanni enters in black and tells his Uncle Francisco that Isabella is dead. Francisco takes the news hard.

III.iii: Flamineo is in a distracted state. He repents being his sister's panderer to Brachiano. Lodovico, the banished count, has returned to Rome with Giovanni and determines to watch him. Antonelli tells Lodovico that the Pope is dying. Also, Francisco has gained Lodovico's full pardon from the Pope. Lodovico sees Flamineo, heated words are exchanged, Flamineo slaps Lodovico and leaves. Lodovico swears to avenge his honor.

IV.i: Francisco suspects that Brachiano had a hand in his sister Isabella's death, but refuses to fight Brachiano for fear of bringing their people to civil war. Monticelso advises to await his time and be revenged upon him secretly, in the Machiavellian manner. To begin his revenge, he writes a love letter to Vittoria and tells his boy to deliver it to the penitential house only when one of Brachiano's men is there to intercept it. He has also decided to employ Lodovico as the instrument of his revenge.

IV.ii: The boy delivers the letter to the matron of the penitential house while Flamineo is there. Flamineo takes the letter, promising to deliver it to his sister inside. Flamineo shows the letter to Brachiano. The letter suggests a liaison between Vittoria and Francisco and urges her to run away with him to Florence and be his duchess.

Brachiano is outraged. He rails at Flamineo until Vittoria arrives then accuses her of infidelity to him. They are finally reconciled when they realize it is some trick by Francisco. They renew their love and plan to escape to Padua with Brachiano's son Giovanni. Now that the Pope has died and the Cardinals are electing a new Pope, they believe that attention will be drawn from their escape and they might effect it with ease. Brachiano promises to make Vittoria his duchess in Padua.

IV.iii: The Cardinals are electing the new Pope. Monticelso is finally elected Pope. His first act is to excommunicate Brachiano and Vittoria. Monticelso asks Lodovico how Francisco has employed him, for what task. Lodovico answers that he will be revenged on the man who killed Isabella because he was in love with her. Monticelso instructs him not to be vengeful but rather to leave vengeance to heaven. Lodovico is conscience-stricken and gives up all thoughts of revenge.

Francisco sends Lodovico one thousand ducats and says they are from the Pope. Lodovico believes that the money is to encourage him to commit the murder of Brachiano and that the speech was mere policy, the Pope putting on the face of religion. He determines to carry out his revenge, believing the Pope now secretly sanctions it.

V.i: Brachiano and Vittoria are in Padua and have just married. A Moor and his two companions, monks, are at the festival. Francisco is disguised as the Moor while Lodovico, Gasparo (and Antonelli?) are the monks. Brachiano bids them welcome and invites them to stay for the tilting matches in honor of the wedding. Pedro and Carlo, Brachiano's attendants, join the conspirators.

Flamineo lusts after Vittoria's Moorish maid Zanche. Marcello does not approve of the mixed marriage anticipated between his brother and the Moor. Flamineo grows angry with him. Meantime, Zanche is smitten by the disguised Francisco, whom she believes is one of her countrymen. Francisco decides to use her love to discover the secret of Brachiano and Vittoria that Zanche has hinted she knows.

V.ii: While Marcello is talking to his mother Cornelia, Flamineo enters and stabs him. When Brachiano comes upon the scene, Cornelia swears that Marcello drew first and would have killed his elder brother had not Flamineo killed him first. This she says in order to keep both of her sons from being killed. While Brachiano passes sentence upon Flamineo, that he must sue for his life every twenty-four hours and renew his lease on it or lose it, Lodovico sprinkles poison into Brachiano's helmet.

V.iii: During the joust Brachiano succumbs to the poison and grows mad. He is placed in bed and the monks enter to perform extreme unction. Instead they whisper their actual identities to the distracted Duke and torment him with their gloating. When he recovers his senses momentarily, they fear he will reveal them, so Lodovico strangles him.

Francisco has Zanche reveal her secret. She tells him that Brachiano and Vittoria are responsible for the murders of Isabella and Camillo, and that she herself played some small role in their deaths. She plans to steal all of her mistress's jewels and run away with the Moor Francisco.

V.iv: Giovanni, now Duke after Brachiano's death, orders Flamineo from his court, never to come near him again. Cornelia has gone mad at the death of Marcello. The ghost of Brachiano appears and throws grave dirt upon Flamineo.

V.v: Lodovico insists that Francisco leave Padua before he is linked to the murders. Francisco leaves the rest of the plans in Lodovico's hands. Hortensio overhears them and, suspecting some "black deed afoot," goes to raise a militia.

V.vi: Flamineo comes to his sister Vittoria for money to travel from the court, believing he deserves recompense for his services to her. She bequeaths him Cain's portion. He produces two pistols and says he promised Brachiano that neither he not she would outlive him four hours. She and Zanche feign that they would willingly commit suicide to be with Brachiano. They take the pistols and shoot Flamineo.

It was all a trick, though, of Flamineo's to test their fidelity to him. Now that he knows their treachery, he will kill them. Before he can do so, however, Lodovico, Gasparo, Carlo, and Pedro enter. They reveal themselves and kill Flamineo, Zanche, and Vittoria. Hortensio's militia, the ambassadors and Giovanni, enter and see the carnage. Lodovico is shot escaping the scene. Giovanni learns that Francisco masterminded this revenge. He sentences the revengers to execution and swears war against his Uncle Francisco, hoping heaven will smile upon his justice.

Francisco has the right intentions at first, trying to reconcile his sister to her husband. But when that fails and she is killed, he becomes the marauding avenger who becomes entangled in his own revenge. That he appears in the last act painted entirely black is probably a good indication that he has fallen into the evil of his own revenge and become as bad as those he seeks to act his vengeance upon. Giovanni's promise to do justice against him indicates that he will not escape his punishment for his crimes.

Brachiano is perhaps the White Devil, he never sullies his own hands with his mischief. He allows Isabella to look bad when it is he who has refused to go to her bed; he allows Julio and Flamineo to be his assassins; and when he is called on in court he insists that his whore is nothing of the kind. He is, to the eyes of the world he lives in, guiltless (or at least guilt cannot be proved against him) of any of his loathsome crimes.

Vittoria, like Brachiano, is a White Devil. Although she is culpable of much wrong, she appears to be spotless. She is less spotless, though, because she is a convicted whore.

Giovanni, like Edward III in Marlowe's play, is the young man who takes over in the end and gives some promise of restoring order to the chaos of the play's world.

Lodovico is the simple revenger. He has his motives (he loved Isabella; he is Francisco's hired man; he is angry for being banished) and he carries out his vengeance.

Camillo is a simple cuckold who must be eliminated. Brachiano wants him killed so that he may have Vittoria; Uncle Monticelso wants him sent away so he may trap Brachiano with Vittoria.

Marcello is Cornelia's good son. The other two children, Vittoria and Flamineo, are bawds, killers, and liars.

Flamineo is a black devil perhaps. His bawdry is as open and apparent as is his murder of Marcello (fratricide).

Isabella is the ingenue. She has some backbone, though, and is willing to take her brother's abuse rather than cause a civil war when she pretends that she will not accept Brachiano back into her bed.

The Pope, Monticelso, delivers the theme of this play well. Most blood revenge tragedies fall into two groups:

• those wherein the revenger becomes entangled in the sin he tries to eliminate (who thus dies sinning as he takes the revenge upon himself (as found in Hamlet, The Revenger's Tragedy, and The Spanish Tragedy most notably)) and
• the revenger who stays clear of the sin while allowing the evil to be punished (who thus lives to see his revenge completed without having to pay a price (as in The Atheist's Tragedy)).

Dost thou imagine thou canst slide on blood
And not be tainted with a shameful fall?
(WD IV.iii.118-19)

As in many Renaissance revenge plays, this one takes place in Italy where passions run high. Also, this play interweaves family blood disputes. The relationships of the characters is intricate:

The "white" devil is the disguised enemy, the one that cannot be recognized. There are several examples of white devils in this play:

• Vittoria is Camillo's white devil, so is Flamineo, each pretends to have his best interests at heart while they secretly plot to kill him.
• Vittoria further feigns innocence in her trial scene, though she is finally convicted of being a whore upon Monticelso's testimony.
• Lodovico believes that the new Pope Monticelso is a white devil when the 1,000 ducats arrive. This is an easy assumption for him as white devils abound in the world he inhabits.
• The ducats are actually the white deviltry of Francisco.
• Also, Francisco, Lodovico and company play the white devils in their disguises as Moor and monks when they play false to Brachiano, Vittoria, and Zanche.
• Many other complex "white devil" relationships exist within the play.

Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, and Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois (for the calling up of spirits in order to witness deeds done-as here at II.ii);

Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy (for the gloating of the revengers over the dying Duke);

Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, (for the kissing of poison to kill (a skull in RT and a bible in DM) as Isabella kisses the poisoned picture of Brachiano at II.ii);

Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra (for the self-conscious comment of players acting out a person's life-cf. Cleopatra's fear of boys portraying her on stage with Monticelso's comment that Vittoria's bawdry "would be play'd a'th' stage" at III.ii. 248);

Shakespeare's Othello (for the possible glance at that play in V.i when Francisco, as a Moor, claims to have served the Venetian army's cause);

Shakespeare's King Lear (for the resemblance of his distracted dying words and those of Brachiano);

Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice (for the similarity of Jessica's escape with Shylock's money and Zanche's proposed escape with Vittoria's money);

Marston's The Malcontent (for the "decimo-sexto" joke in Marston's Induction and the same joke here in V.iv.30-31);

Shakespeare's Macbeth (for the imagined bloody hand by a madwoman-Lady Macbeth's "damned spot" and the "speckling" Cornelia perceives on Flamineo's hands at V.iv.87);

Marlowe's Edward II (for the similarity of endings-a young heir to the throne promising to put all in order, Edward III and Giovanni).