And He, that might the 'vantage best have took,
Found out the remedy. How would you be,
If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are? O, think on that,
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made!
The beautiful things which Isabella is made to utter, have, like the sayings of Portia, become proverbial; but in spirit and character they are as distinct as are the two women. In all that Portia says, we confess the power of a rich poetical imagination, blended with a quick practical spirit of observation, familiar with the surfaces of things; while there is a profound yet simple morality, a depth of religious feeling, a touch of melancholy, in Isabella's sentiments, and something earnest and authoritative in the manner and expression, as though they had grown up in her mind from long and deep meditation in the silence and solitude of her convent cell:—
O it is excellent
To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.
Could great men thunder,
As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet:
For every pelting, petty officer
Would use his heaven for thunder; nothing but thunder
Merciful Heaven!
Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt
Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak
Than the soft myrtle. O but man, proud man!
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
As make the angels weep.
Great men may jest with saints, 'tis wit in them;
But in the less, foul profanation.
That in the captain's but a choleric word,
Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.
Authority, although it err like others,
Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself
That skins the vice o' the top. Go to you, bosom;
Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know
That's like my brother's fault: if it confess
A natural guiltiness such as his is,
Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue
Against my brother's life.
Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good,
But graciously to know I am no better.
The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.
'Tis not impossible
But one, the wicked'st caitiff on the ground,
May seem as shy, as grave, as just, as absolute
As Angelo; even so may Angelo,
In all his dressings, characts, titles, forms,
Be an arch villain.
Her fine powers of reasoning, and that natural uprightness and purity which no sophistry can warp, and no allurement betray, are farther displayed in the second scene with Angelo.
ANGELO.
What would you do?
ISABELLA.
As much for my poor brother as myself;
That is, were I under the terms of death,
The impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies,
And strip myself to death as to a bed
That, longing, I have been sick for, ere I'd yield
My body up to shame.
ANGELO.
Then must your brother die.
ISABELLA.
And 'twere the cheaper way;
Better it were a brother died at once,
Than that a sister, by redeeming him,
Should die forever.
ANGELO.
Were you not then cruel as the sentence,
That you have slander'd so!
ISABELLA.
Ignominy in ransom, and free pardon,
Are of two houses: lawful mercy is
Nothing akin to foul redemption.
ANGELO.
You seem'd of late to make the law a tyrant;
And rather proved the sliding of your brother
A merriment than a vice.
ISABELLA.
O pardon me, my lord; it oft falls out,
To have what we'd have, we speak not what we mean:
I something do excuse the thing I hate,
For his advantage that I dearly love.
Towards the conclusion of the play we have another instance of that rigid sense of justice, which is a prominent part of Isabella's character, and almost silences her earnest intercession for her brother, when his fault is placed between her plea and her conscience. The Duke condemns the villain Angelo to death, and his wife Mariana entreats Isabella to plead for him.
Sweet Isabel, take my part,
Lend me your knees, and all my life to come
I'll lend you all my life to do you service.
Isabella remains silent, and Mariana reiterates her prayer.
MARIANA.
Sweet Isabel, do yet but kneel by me,
Hold up your hands, say nothing, I'll speak all!
O Isabel! will you not lend a knee?
Isabella, thus urged, breaks silence and appeals to the Duke, not with supplication, or persuasion, but with grave argument, and a kind of dignified humility and conscious power, which are finely characteristic of the individual woman.
Most bounteous Sir,
Look, if it please you, on this man condemn'd,
As if my brother liv'd; I partly think
A due sincerity govern'd his deeds
Till he did look on me; since it is so
Let him not die. My brother had but justice,
In that he did the thing for which he died.
For Angelo,
His art did not o'ertake his bad intent,
That perish'd by the way: thoughts are no subjects.
Intents, but merely thoughts.
In this instance, as in the one before mentioned, Isabella's conscientiousness is overcome by the only sentiment which ought to temper justice into mercy, the power of affection and sympathy.
Isabella's confession of the general frailty of her sex, has a peculiar softness, beauty, and propriety. She admits the imputation with all the sympathy of woman for woman; yet with all the dignity of one who felt her own superiority to the weakness she acknowledges.
ANGELO.