CASTIZA: Why are you she? The world’s so changed, one shape into another, It is a wise child now that knows her mother.

VINDICE [Aside]: Most right i’ faith.

GRATIANA: I owe your cheek my hand For that presumption now, but I’ll forget it; Come you shall leave those childish ‘haviours And understand your time; fortunes flow to you

• What, will you be a girl? If all feared drowning that spy waves ashore Gold would grow rich and all the merchants poor.

CASTIZA: It is a pretty saying of a wicked one, But methinks now It does not show so well out of your mouth - Better in him.

VINDICE [Aside]: Faith bad enough in both Were I in earnest - as I’ll seem no less. - I wonder lady your own mother’s words Cannot be taken, nor stand in full force. ‘Tis honesty you urge: what’s honesty? ‘Tis but heaven’s beggar; and what woman is So foolish to keep honesty And be not able to keep herself?

Castiza, in a world void of honesty where revenge and deceit infect, remains immune — she is immune to the deception of language. She sees a world transformed “one shape into another” as though she is the only one to remember that prelapsarian world when lies did not exist and revenge unnecessary. The exchange from act two, scene one between Castiza, her mother, Gratiana, and her revenge-bent brother, Vindice, reveals that Castiza, unlike the many other characters in The Revenger’s Tragedy, cannot be tempted by fortune nor language.

Castiza’s rhetorical question from line 161 demonstrates that she can see through the veil of language. She asks, “Why are you she?” for she cannot reconcile the mother she sees with the mother she hears. Recognizing an amorphous world, she notes how the world has changed where you can neither trust how a person appears nor what they say. Perception becomes warped “one shape into another.” It seems that the only antidote to this infected world is constancy of nature: to remain honest in a world where honesty has lost its meaning.

Vindice’s aside supports Castiza, yet its duality reveals that he manipulates language. When Castiza states the proverb, “It is a wise child now that knows her mother,” Vindice agrees — he notes its truth. Yet, truth has been corrupted. He answers, “Most right i’ faith.” ‘Truth’ or ‘right’ now have degrees of meaning; Castiza is “most right.” The word “most” is ambiguous for Vindice can mean that Castiza is correct about her knowledge of her mother and it can mean that she is almost or mostly right about her mother. Vindice has the benefit of knowing that, by taking Lussurioso’s bag of gold in exchange for her help in corrupting Castiza, Gratiana is not as she was — she is corrupt. So, in fact, the mother Castiza believes she knows, is not correct. He also agrees with Castiza’s proverb for since he knows his mother to be corruptible, he can corrupt her.

Gratiana, therefore, endeavors to tempt her daughter. She considers Castiza’s proverb as an act of childish insolence, a behavior she must abandon if she is to become a woman. As if she wants to give Castiza into a changed world, Gratiana’s language figures on the change which losing one’s virginity carries. Gratiana combines the fortune of becoming a woman with material fortune.

By leaving “those childish ‘haviours”, Gratiana implies that Castiza must become a sexual woman. She derides her daughter by asking if she wants to remain forever a child. Instead, Castiza should recognize the fortune of unlocking her virginity. Yet, it is Gratiana’s fortunes that stand to be improved, not her daughter’s. In Castiza’s defilement, Gratiana will gain wealth and power; Castiza is to be sacrificed for the flow of fortune.

The image of flowing returns in act two, scene two when Vindice describes to his brother, Hippolito, how revenge can reshape the world. Hippolito remarks, “You flow well brother” (II,ii,145). The image is finally capitalized upon when, stabbing the Duke, Vindice completes the Duke’s last sentence: “I cannot brook - /The brook is turned to blood” (III,vi,216). One shape has turned into another — the world flows with the revenge that can transform not only the politics of the dukedom, but the very liquid natures of people.

Gratiana counters Castiza’s proverb with one of her own design. Meant to convince her daughter of the necessities of action and risk with regard to becoming sexual, her phrase instead reveals the self-aggrandizement of revenge.

Building upon her image of flowing fortune, Gratiana attempts to set the metaphor of change in a sea scene. Yet, her logic appears to be as corrupt as she is herself. Gratiana cannot see the possibility of chastity, for, to use her own example, if Castiza remains ashore with her chastity (or gold) and does not risk drowning (her virginity) then she should remain fortunate. Gratiana’s concept of risk plays more to the fortunes revenge may pay, rather than the fortune Castiza already owns — that is, honesty.

But, as Vindice asks, “What’s honesty?” He cannot be honest himself, but only seem honest. Aside, he claims, “Faith bad enough in both/Were I in earnest - as I’ll seem no less.” Abuse of language strips honesty of its meaning — one can only appear to be honest. Of course, appearance of honesty is fraud. Therefore, language cannot be trusted for no one is who they are; they are but what their words create. Yet because Castiza remains honest, she knows language to be deceptive. She, too, can use language to her advantage. She uses deception in act four, scene four to test her mother’s honesty. When she tells Gratiana that she has decided to give herself to Lussurioso, she deceives in order to save rather than further corrupt.

For honesty is fortune enough. “For no tongue has force/To alter me from honest./If maidens would, men’s words could have no power” (IV, iv, 150-152). Unlike the deception in language which plagues the world of The Revenger’s Tragedy, Castiza uses the power of language for honesty is fortune enough.