Isabella
So you must be the first that gives this sentence,
And he, that suffers. Oh, it is excellent
To have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.
Refers to a myth in which giants turned against the god Jove, but because they had strength and not intelligence, they were cruel and not god-like.
Lucio
(Aside) That's well said.
Isabella
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
Splits the unwedgeable and gnarlèd oak
Than the soft myrtle; but man, proud man,
Dressed 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 makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.
The king of the gods in Roman mythology and the god of sky and thunder.
A soft shrub, often used in imagery as a symbol of mercy.
A small taste of power, a short revealing uniform.
Unaware of his own mortality.
Man's soul made in god's image.
Imitating behaviour, mimicry.
An important organ in the body.
A living being that can die.
Lucio
(Aside) Oh, to him, to him, wench, he will relent.
He’s coming: I perceive’t.
Provost
(Aside) Pray heaven she win him!
Isabella
Great men may jest with saints: ’tis wit in them,
But in the less foul profanation.
Lucio
(Aside) Thou’rt i’th’right, girl, more o’that!
Isabella
That in the captain’s but a choleric word
Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.
Angelo
Why do you put these sayings upon me?
Isabella
Because authority, though it err like others,
Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself
That skins the vice o’th’top. Go to your 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 is his,
Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue
Against my brother’s life.