[2] Marmion's title character, Veterano, has a habit of staring at a sculpture with a broken nose; this may have been intended as an allusion to Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, a famous antiquarian and art collector of the day.
Like some other rulers in folklore and story (Harun al-Rashid being the most famous example), the Duke of Pisa chooses to go about in disguise among his subjects, to observe them and to amuse himself in the process.
He witnesses a variety of odd characters, including Petrutio, who has been made vain and conceited by his foreign travels, and Moccinigo, an old man shocked by a courtesan's rejection into pursuing the hand of the 16-year-old Lucretia.
Veterano is an elderly and wealthy collector of antiquities; he denies his nephew Lionell any financial support and spends his money on his supposed treasures.
Gullibly, he believes he owns the net in which Vulcan captured Mars and Venus, and "the great silver box that Nero kept his beard in."
(This plot device is used in other plays of the era, from Lording Barry's Ram Alley, c. 1607, to Thomas Killigrew's The Parson's Wedding, 1641.)