Gloriana’s Skull Symbol Analysis

Vindice carries the skull of his murdered beloved, Gloriana, who was killed by the Duke for refusing his sexual advances almost ten years before the action of the play. Vindice addresses the skull in the opening scene, an early appearance that suggests the strong presence of death throughout the play; it also gives the audience a sense of Vindice’s obsession with revenge, given that he’s held on to the skull for the best part of a decade. Later, Vindice employs the skull as the murder weapon when he tricks the Duke into kissing its poison-laden mouth. The use of the skull as the murder weapon accomplishes two significant things: first, it gruesomely allows Gloriana herself to have her revenge on the Duke (as much is possible); second, the skull’s role as a “memento mori”—an object reminder of death—means that the Duke is killed by a symbol of death itself. With these two points in mind, then, the skull allows Vindice not just to kill the Duke, but to make sure he achieves the perfect revenge—the Duke is killed by the exact physical object that best represents his own earlier crime.