Vice (character)

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Vice is a stock character of the medieval morality plays. It can be an allegoric representation of one of the Seven Vices or a more general portrayal of evil as the tempter of man. Vice often takes the audience into complicity by revealing its evil plans, often through soliloquies or monologues. Its enacting is frequently comic or absurd.

The word is derived from Latin vitium "defect, offense, blemish, imperfection," in both physical and moral senses.

Vice developed into the villain in Renaissance theatre. Richard III in Shakespeares drama of the same name links himself with the Vice when he declares:

“Thus like the formal Vice, Iniquity, / I moralize two meanings in one word” (III.i.82–83)