I think that Flamineo's aside at the end of 4.2 describes how advantage can be won by the knave and the lower-ranks in the play's world of courtly dominance:

[Aside] It may appear to some rediculous
Thus to talk knave and madman, and sometimes
Come in with a dried sentence, stuffed with sage.
But this allows my varying of shapes:
Knaves do grow great by being great men's apes. (4.2 lines 244-8)

To scale the ranks Flamineo has to manipulate the fragile humors of Bracciano, which like his jealousy, are swayed by the slightest instigation.

Vittoria works a similar angle when she relates her dream of the yew tree to Bracciano. She seems to be playing with his notions of a masculine protector of the damsel in distress in order to achieve her own ends.

Do these examples point to the only avenues shown in the play available for the lower ranks and sexes of courtly society to gain anything for themselves: the manipulation of the most base tendencies of the most powerful men? Also, though the deeds that follow these manipulations are horrendous, is this horror a quality of the actual motives driving these lower ranks, or merely of the deeds, which through the manipulation of the baseness of the most powerful, become horrendous because of this intervention? In other words, is there a more honest motivation behind Flamineo's and Vittoria's, which gets expressed in horrible ways or assumes a horrible form, only because of the conditions that surround them?