Book v of The Ring and the Book affords us a view of Guido Franceschini very different from that provided by his second monologue. This difference is accountable to the Active rhetorical method that Guido employs in confronting the judges at his murder trial. In Book XI, having failed in his attempt to prolong life through fiction, Guido resorts to what he calls a more “voluble rhetoric” of the soul, thus becoming accessible to us for the first time in the same way that we see the other speakers in the poem. An analysis of Guido's fiction in Book V, especially his rendering of Caponsacchi, Pompilia, and himself, as the hero, heroine, and wronged husband, respectively, of popular medieval and renaissance literature reveals a conception of art as deception, contrary to Browning's informing belief in art as a means of arriving at truth by heightening rather than distorting reality. A comparison of Book XI with the earlier monologue indicates that, in addition to making plain the enormity of his villain's evil nature, Browning uses Guido's second monologue as an implicit repudiation of what he considers to be the specious theory of art that Guido relies upon in Book v.