Later on, when it is necessary to remove another victim, he runs his own brother through the body and drives his mother to madness.  Yet, in the midst of these crimes, we are unable to regard him as a simple cut-throat.  His irony and reckless courting of damnation open-eyed to get his gust of life in this world, make him no common villain.  He can be brave as well as fierce.  When the Duke insults him he bandies taunt for taunt: 

     Brach.  No, you pander?

     Flam.  What, me, my lord? 
      Am I your dog?

     B.  A bloodhound; do you brave, do you stand me?

     F.  Stand you! let those that have diseases run;
     I need no plasters.

     B.  Would you be kicked?

     F.  Would you have your neck broke? 
     I tell you, duke, I am not in Russia;
     My shins must be kept whole.

     B.  Do you know me?

F.  Oh, my lord, methodically:  As in this world there are degrees of evils, So in this world there are degrees of devils.  You’re a great duke, I your poor secretary.

When the Duke dies and his prey escapes him, the rage of disappointment breaks into this fierce apostrophe: 

I cannot conjure; but if prayers or oaths.  Will get the speech of him, though forty devils Wait on him in his livery of flames, I’ll speak to him and shake him by the hand, Though I be blasted.

As crimes thicken round him, and he still despairs of the reward for which he sold himself, conscience awakes: 

                              I have lived
     Riotously ill, like some that live in court,
     And sometimes when my face was full of smiles Have felt the
     maze of conscience in my breast.

The scholar’s scepticism, which lies at the root of his perversity, finds utterance in this meditation upon death: 

     Whither shall I go now?  O Lucian, thy ridiculous purgatory!
     to find Alexander the Great cobbling shoes, Pompey tagging
     points, and Julius Caesar making hair-buttons!

     Whether I resolve to fire, earth, water, air, or all the
     elements by scruples, I know not, nor greatly care.

At the last moment he yet can say: 

     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.