“Could great men thunder…” (Measure for Measure). I was reminded of this monologue by Isabella a few days ago when the prospect of Boris Johnson returning top No.10 loomed large. Having now seen the cabinet that Rishi Sunak has assembled around him, these words came back to me just as strongly. Isabella believes that men who try to play God are similar to apes who try to be men.
Angelo has been given power by the Duke of Vienna to rule his land, while the Duke wanders the land, disguised as a friar, to investigate the moral decay of his dukedom. Drunk with power, Angelo enforces an old law against fornication to enforce his morality on the land. He then condemns fornicators to death. One of these fornicators is Claudio, a young man who has had pre- marital sex with his fiancée. Isabella, Claudio’s sister pleads for her brother’s life. Angelo, realizing his lust for Isabella, uses his power to blackmail her into his bed. The Duke discovers the plot and Angelo ends up in the bed of Mariana, a woman from his past. Claudio is then allowed to live happily with his fiancée, and Isabella, who has maintained her virtue, ends up the Duke of Vienna’s bride.
In the first section, she seems to speak of Angelo as his superhuman figure (“giant”), but it becomes clear that she is contrasting that inhuman power to mere men. Men will “thunder” but it’s nothing but sound, whereas “merciful heaven” is the true power, able to split the tree that is “unwedgeable.” Man is “petty,” “proud,” “ignorant,” and “like an angry ape”; he is “dressed in little brief authority,” an earthly power that not only is little and short-lived, but can be stripped at any moment. It’s enough, she says, to make the angels die laughing (“laugh themselves mortal”). She is relentless in the speech, coming back to divine law time and time again, referencing “heaven” three times, “Jove” twice, and “angels” once. And as we know from our discussion of Angelo’s righteousness, these appeals to the angel in Angelo, to righteous heaven, are what has an effect on the devil in the duke’s deputy (and that effect is as shocking to him as it is to us).
