uncomplicated soldier; in his first appearance(2.1), he has already
been slighted by the Dons, and presents an unkempt appearance and
rails against the 'pied-winged butterflies' of the effete court who
put appearance before patriotic duty. Nevertheless, subterfuge seems
to come too readily to him as we see in 2.2 when he makes a false
offer to assassinate the King to test Onaelia, again in 3.3 when he
pretends to agree to murder Sebastian and Onaelia in order to placate
the Queen and finally in 5.1 when he tells the King that the murder
has been carried out. Scene 3.3 shows a further unedifying side of
Balthazar when he bursts in on the King and stabs a servant and
refuses to express remorse as the servant is a mere groom. On a
different note, the character is also used to comic effect,
especially in 4.2 when he acts out bawdy dialogue with Cornego. His
last significant act is to dissuade the faction from attempting to
assassinate the King, before being reduced to a minor role in the
closing scene where he only has five short speeches and plays no
significant part in the denouement. The character then, is something
of a patchwork affair, playing different roles as the play progresses
before being effectively jettisoned at the conclusion.

The King by contrast maintains a degree of consistency,
notwithstanding his formulaic deathbed renunciation of evil. As we
have seen, his Queen is Italian, but he may be associated with Italy
by more reasons than his marriage. In Act 5 Scene 2, Daenia says that
'There's in his breast / Both fox and lion, and both those beasts can
bite' This is an direct reference to the works of the Italian
courtier Niccol˜ Machiavelli who wrote in his work on statecraft 'The
Prince': 'A Prince must know how to make good use of the beasts; he
should choose from among the beasts the fox and the lion; for the
lion cannot defend itself from traps and the fox cannot protect