In the final act of The Duchess of Malfi, the corrupt Cardinal, soon to be struck down by the revenging sword of Bosola, enters and in a moment of quiet reflection, discloses:

In my chapter on Webster's play, I elucidated the ways in which the dramatist anchors a critique of class structure into the deeper ontological ground found in Epictetian notions of volition; the Cardinal's private confession here is indeed telling in the way it conflates a guilty conscience with fear of retribution delivered from the hand of one wielding an implement of the underclass. But the Cardinal's initial rumination, juxtaposed with this fear of an impending act of vengeance, also reveals something of the peculiar concerns of revenge drama. For as the Cardinal muses about the state of his soul, he envisions an afterlife where judgement cuts across the material and immaterial divide. With the immaterial soul parted from the material body, the Cardinal imagines a spiritual reckoning that at once takes shape in the form of a ‘material fire’ yet also affects individual souls in different ways. How will the material fire of hell affect his immaterial soul, the Cardinal muses, and how will it do so while affecting the souls of others in varying gradations? The justice of God has prompted in the Cardinal reflection, however fleeting it may be, on the traversal between material and immaterial realms.

Whatever the murderous Cardinal's moral failings, he has the virtue of having considered religious matters more extensively, even in this brief moment, than I have in this book. As outlined in my introduction this has been by design: criticism on revenge tragedy has almost invariably centred on matters of law, politics, or religion, often with the coincident emphasis on trying to ascertain the disposition of the dramatist, audience, or (more broadly) culture towards revenge.