We cease to grieve, cease to be Fortune's slaves, Nay, cease to die, by dying.
And again, with the very yielding of his spirit:
My life was a black charnel.
It will be seen that in no sense does Flamineo resemble Iago. He is not a traitor working by craft and calculating ability to well-considered ends. He is the desperado frantically clutching at an uncertain and impossible satisfaction. Webster conceives him as a self-abandoned atheist, who, maddened by poverty and tainted by vicious living, takes a fury to his heart, and, because the goodness of the world has been for ever lost to him, recklessly seeks the bad.
Bosola, in the 'Duchess of Malfi,' is of the same stamp. He too has been a scholar. He is sent to the galleys 'for a notorious murder,' and on his release he enters the service of two brothers, the Duke of Calabria and the Cardinal of Aragon, who place him as their intelligencer at the court of their sister.
Bos. It seems you would create me
One of your familiars.
Ferd. Familiar! what's that?
Bos. Why, a very quaint invisible devil in flesh,
An intelligencer.
Ferd. Such a kind of thriving thing
I would wish thee; and ere long thou may'st arrive
At a higher place by it.
Lured by hope of preferment, Bosola undertakes the office of spy, tormentor, and at last of executioner. For: