Fake Out
- Vittoria enters holding a book, along with Zanche. Flamineo follows them.
- Flamineo tells Vittoria to stop praying if that's what she's doing, and listen to him—he has worldly business to discuss. He demands money from her, since she is the executor of the Brachiano's will (Flamineo's boss).
- She writes out a tiny sum, saying she'll only give him what Cain received after he killed Abel. (So, she knows about Marcello).
- Flamineo says he has cases of jewels left by Brachiano that are worth more than she gave him—he'll bring them in a moment. He exits.
- Zanche tells Vittoria to try to calm Flamineo down, since he's clearly desperate.
- Flamineo re-enters with two cases of pistols.
- Flamineo tells Vittoria he's going to kill—this, he claims, is what Brachiano told him to do, being jealous that Vittoria would get with someone else. Flamineo is then going to commit suicide, voluntarily.
- Vittoria asks Flamineo if he's become an atheist and doesn't mind going to hell. How can he avoid thinking about the millions who will arise to damnation at the resurrection?
- She also tells Zanche to cry for help—when she does, Flamineo threatens to kill her too.
- Flamineo says these arguments don't move him—they're feminine and emotional.
- Zanche tells Vittoria to pretend to agree to die, but to convince Flamineo to kill himself first.
- She makes her case and it seems to work. Flamineo gives them the guns.
- He speculates on where he'll go in the afterlife, somewhat comically.
- They shoot, and run towards him, treading on his body.
- As Flamineo "dies" he asks them to kill themselves. They reveal that they faked him out.
- As Vittoria triumphantly believes she's sending him to hell, she makes scornful comments condemning him as he acts like he's smelling the soot and feeling the flames of hell as he dies.
- But Flamineo gets up and reveals that the pistols weren't really loaded with bullets. He was just testing Vittoria's loyalty. He now says he'll live to punish her for betraying him and warns men against wives who will betray them in the same kind of way, taking lovers as soon as they've died.
The Real Thing
- Suddenly, Lodovico and Gasparo bust in, announcing that they're there to avenge Isabella. Flamineo finally recognizes who they really are.
- They admit that Mulinassar was really Francisco, visiting for vengeance.
- Flamineo laments that his fate has caught up with him. He claims it's better to just have good fortune than to gain wisdom.
- Vittoria pleads for mercy—but Gasparo says it's not going to happen. And Lodovico points out that he's getting back at Flamineo for the time he hit him.
- Flamineo refuses to beg to heaven out loud and when Lodovico asks him what's he's thinking about at the end, he says he's thinking of nothing.
- Vittoria tells them to kill her before Zanche. She speaks very defiantly, claiming she's unafraid to die. Zanche is defiant, too.
- Gasparo and Lodovico strike at once and kill all three.
- Vittoria cheekily says that, now, all Lodovico and Gasparo have to do to get famous is murder some innocent baby.
- As she dies Vittoria laments her family's sins, claiming that's why she was led astray. Flamineo says he loves his sister's bravery—she's not so bad, he says, since many women that seemed virtuous were really secretly vicious.
- Vittoria expresses confusion as to where her soul is headed, in death.
- Flamineo gives a speech, saying that death just frees us from dying and from being fortune's slaves. He refuses to look to heaven as he dies, looking only to himself. Yet he feels like he's "in a mist."
- Vittoria dies after saying she regrets having ever met "great men."
- Flamineo's speech continues: he warns people not to be too hopeful about life, especially if they serve great men. He admits that his life was a "black charnel" and says that it all seems utterly pointless and painful. He dies.
- Giovanni enters with the ambassadors. He asks Lodovico if he's responsible for these deaths. Lodovico admits it and says that he was acting under orders of Giovanni's own uncle, Francisco, who was the same Moor who had infiltrated the court (but now escaped).
- Giovanni orders Lodovico off to torture and execution. Lodovico says that he's extremely happy he was able to commit this act of revenge, and will find torture and the gallows as calm and soothing as sound sleep.
- Giovanni speaks the last line in the play, warning guilty men against committing evil, since evil deeds can quickly collapse and ruin the people who committed them.