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The character of Isabella, considered as a poetical delineation, is less mixed than that of Portia; and the dissimilarity between the two appears, at first view, so complete that we can scarce believe that the same elements enter into the composition of each. Yet so it is; they are portrayed as equally wise, gracious, virtuous, fair, and young; we perceive in both the same exalted principle and firmness of character; the same depth of reflection and persuasive eloquence; the same self-denying generosity and capability of strong affections; and we must wonder at that marvellous power by which qualities and endowments, essentially and closely allied, are so combined and modified as to produce a result altogether different. "O Nature! O Shakespeare! which of ye drew from the other?"

Isabella is distinguished from Portia, and strongly individualized by a certain moral grandeur, a saintly grace, something of vestal dignity and purity, which render her less attractive and more imposing; she is "severe in youthful beauty," and inspires a reverence which would have placed her beyond the daring of one unholy wish or thought, except in such a man as Angelo—

O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,

With saints dost bait thy hook!

This impression of her character is conveyed from the very first, when Lucio, the libertine jester, whose coarse audacious wit checks at every feather, thus expresses his respect for her—

I would not—though 'tis my familiar sin

With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest

Tongue far from heart—play with all virgins so.

I hold you as a thing enskyed, and sainted;

By your renouncement an immortal spirit,

And to be talked with in sincerity,

As with a saint.

A strong distinction between Isabella and Portia is produced by the circumstances in which they are respectively placed. Portia is a high-born heiress, "Lord of a fair mansion, master of her servants, queen o'er herself;" easy and decided, as one born to command, and used to it. Isabella has also the innate dignity which renders her "queen o'er herself," but she has lived far from the world and its pomps and pleasures; she is one of a consecrated sisterhood—a novice of St. Clare; the power to command obedience and to confer happiness are to her unknown. Portia is a splendid creature, radiant with confidence, hope, and joy. She is like the orange-tree, hung at once with golden fruit and luxuriant flowers, which has expanded into bloom and fragrance beneath favoring skies, and has been nursed into beauty by the sunshine and the dews of heaven. Isabella is like a stately and graceful cedar, towering on some alpine cliff, unbowed and unscathed amid the storm. She gives us the impression of one who has passed under the ennobling discipline of suffering and self-denial: a melancholy charm tempers the natural vigor of her mind: her spirit seems to stand upon an eminence, and look down upon the world as if already enskyed and sainted; and yet when brought in contact with that world which she inwardly despises, she shrinks back with all the timidity natural to her cloistral education.

This union of natural grace and grandeur with the habits and sentiments of a recluse—of austerity of life with gentleness of manner—of inflexible moral principle with humility and even bashfulness of deportment, is delineated with the most beautiful and wonderful consistency. Thus when her brother sends to her, to entreat her mediation, her first feeling is fear, and a distrust in her own powers:

… Alas! what poor ability's in me

To do him good?

LUCIO.

Essay the power you have.

ISABELLA.

My power, alas! I doubt.

In the first scene with Angelo she seems divided between her love for her brother and her sense of his fault; between her self-respect and her maidenly bashfulness. She begins with a kind of hesitation "at war 'twixt will and will not:" and when Angelo quotes the law, and insists on the justice of his sentence, and the responsibility of his station, her native sense of moral rectitude and severe principles takes the lead, and she shrinks back:—

O just, but severe law!

I had a brother then—Heaven keep your honor! [Retiring.

Excited and encouraged by Lucio, and supported by her own natural spirit, she returns to the charge—she gains energy and self-possession as she proceeds, grows more earnest and passionate from the difficulty she encounters, and displays that eloquence and power of reasoning for which we had been already prepared by Claudio's first allusion to her:—

… In her youth

There is a prone and speechless dialect,

Such as moves men; besides, she hath prosperous art,

When she will play with reason and discourse,

And well she can persuade.

It is a curious coincidence that Isabella, exhorting Angelo to mercy, avails herself of precisely the same arguments, and insists on the self-same topics which Portia addresses to Shylock in her celebrated speech; but how beautifully and how truly is the distinction marked! how like, and yet how unlike! Portia's eulogy on mercy is a piece of heavenly rhetoric; it falls on the ear with a solemn measured harmony; it is the voice of a descended angel addressing an inferior nature: if not premeditated, it is at least part of a preconcerted scheme; while Isabella's pleadings are poured from the abundance of her heart in broken sentences, and with the artless vehemence of one who feels that life and death hang upon her appeal. This will be best understood by placing the corresponding passages in immediate comparison with each other.

PORTIA.

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,

Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd;

It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown;

His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.

But mercy is above this sceptred sway—

It is enthron'd in the hearts of kings.

ISABELLA.

Well, believe this,

No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,

Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,

The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe.

Become them with one half so good a grace

As mercy does.

PORTIA.

Consider this—

That in the course of justice, none of us

Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy;

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy.

ISABELLA.

… Alas! alas!

Why all the souls that were, were forfeit once;

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.

Nay, women are frail too.

ISABELLA.

Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves;

Which are as easy broke as they make forms.

Women! help heaven! men their creation mar

In profiting by them. Nay, call us ten times frail,

For we are soft as our complexions are,

And credulous to false prints.

Nor should we fail to remark the deeper interest which is thrown round Isabella, by one part of her character, which is betrayed rather than exhibited in the progress of the action; and for which we are not at first prepared, though it is so perfectly natural. It is the strong under-current of passion and enthusiasm flowing beneath this calm and saintly self-possession; it is the capacity for high feeling and generous and strong indignation, veiled beneath the sweet austere composure of the religious recluse, which, by the very force of contrast, powerfully impress the imagination. As we see in real life that where, from some external or habitual cause, a strong control is exercised over naturally quick feelings and an impetuous temper, they display themselves with a proportionate vehemence when that restraint is removed; so the very violence with which her passions burst forth, when opposed or under the influence of strong excitement, is admirably characteristic.

Thus in her exclamation, when she first allows herself to perceive Angelo's vile design—

ISABELLA.

Ha! little honor to be much believed,

And most pernicious purpose;—seeming!—seeming

I will proclaim thee, Angelo: look for it!

Sign me a present pardon for my brother,

Or with an outstretched throat I'll tell the world

Aloud, what man thou art!

And again, where she finds that the "outward tainted deputy," has deceived her—

O I will to him, and pluck out his eyes!

Unhappy Claudio! wretched Isabel!

Injurious world! most damned Angelo!

She places at first a strong and high-souled confidence in her brother's fortitude and magnanimity, judging him by her own lofty spirit:

I'll to my brother;

Though he hath fallen by prompture of the blood,

Yet hath he in him such a mind of honor,

That had he twenty heads to tender down,

On twenty bloody blocks, he'd yield them up

Before his sister should her body stoop

To such abhorr'd pollution.

But when her trust in his honor is deceived by his momentary weakness, her scorn has a bitterness, and her indignation a force of expression almost fearful; and both are carried to an extreme, which is perfectly in character:

O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!

Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?

Is't not a kind of incest to take life

From thine own sister's shame? What should I think?

Heaven shield, my mother play'd my father fair!

For such a warped slip of wilderness

Ne'er issued from his blood. Take my defiance;

Die! perish! might but my bending down,

Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed.

I'll pray a thousand prayers for thy death.

No word to save thee.

The whole of this scene with Claudio is inexpressibly grand in the poetry and the sentiment; and the entire play abounds in those passages and phrases which must have become trite from familiar and constant use and abuse, if their wisdom and unequalled beauty did not invest them with an immortal freshness and vigor, and a perpetual charm.

The story of Measure for Measure is a tradition of great antiquity, of which there are several versions, narrative and dramatic. A contemptible tragedy, the Promos and Cassandra of George Whetstone, is supposed, from various coincidences, to have furnished Shakspeare with the groundwork of the play; but the character of Isabella is, in conception and execution, all his own. The commentators have collected with infinite industry all the sources of the plot; but to the grand creation of Isabella, they award either silence or worse than silence. Johnson and the rest of the black-letter crew, pass over her without a word. One critic, a lady-critic too, whose name I will be so merciful as to suppress, treats Isabella as a coarse vixen. Hazlitt, with that strange perversion of sentiment and want of taste which sometimes mingle with his piercing and powerful intellect, dismisses Isabella with a slight remark, that "we are not greatly enamoured of her rigid chastity, nor can feel much confidence in the virtue that is sublimely good at another's expense." What shall we answer to such criticism? Upon what ground can we read the play from beginning to end, and doubt the angel-purity of Isabella, or contemplate her possible lapse from virtue? Such gratuitous mistrust is here a sin against the light of heaven.

Having waste ground enough,

Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary,

And pitch our evils there?

Professor Richardson is more just, and truly sums up her character as "amiable, pious, sensible, resolute, determined, and eloquent:" but his remarks are rather superficial.

Schlegel's observations are also brief and general, and in no way distinguish Isabella from many other characters; neither did his plan allow him to be more minute. Of the play altogether, he observes very beautifully, "that the title Measure for Measure is in reality a misnomer, the sense of the whole being properly the triumph of mercy over strict justice:" but it is also true that there is "an original sin in the nature of the subject, which prevents us from taking a cordial interest in it."[12] Of all the characters, Isabella alone has our sympathy. But though she triumphs in the conclusion, her triumph is not produced in a pleasing manner. There are too many disguises and tricks, too many "by-paths and indirect crooked ways," to conduct us to the natural and foreseen catastrophe, which the Duke's presence throughout renders inevitable. This Duke seems to have a predilection for bringing about justice by a most unjustifiable succession of falsehoods and counterplots. He really deserves Lucio's satirical designation, who somewhere styles him "The Fantastical Duke of Dark Corners." But Isabella is ever consistent in her pure and upright simplicity, and in the midst of this simulation, expresses a characteristic disapprobation of the part she is made to play,

To speak so indirectly I am loth:

I would say the truth.[13]

She yields to the supposed Friar with a kind of forced docility, because her situation as a religious novice, and his station, habit, and authority, as her spiritual director, demand this sacrifice. In the end we are made to feel that her transition from the convent to the throne has but placed this noble creature in her natural sphere: for though Isabella, as Duchess of Vienna, could not more command our highest reverence than Isabella, the novice of Saint Clare, yet a wider range of usefulness and benevolence, of trial and action, was better suited to the large capacity, the ardent affections, the energetic intellect, and firm principle of such a woman as Isabella, than the walls of a cloister. The philosophical Duke observes in the very first scene—

Spirits are not finely touched,

But to fine issues: nor nature never lends

The smallest scruple of her excellence,

But like a thrifty goddess she determines,

Herself the glory of a creditor,

Both thanks and use.[14]

This profound and beautiful sentiment is illustrated in the character and destiny of Isabella. She says, of herself, that "she has spirit to act whatever her heart approves;" and what her heart approves we know.

In the convent, (which may stand here poetically for any narrow and obscure situation in which such a woman might be placed,) Isabella would not have been unhappy, but happiness would have been the result of an effort, or of the concentration of her great mental powers to some particular purpose; as St. Theresa's intellect, enthusiasm, tenderness, restless activity, and burning eloquence, governed by one overpowering sentiment of devotion, rendered her the most extraordinary of saints. Isabella, like St. Theresa, complains that the rules of her order are not sufficiently severe, and from the same cause—that from the consciousness of strong intellectual and imaginative power, and of overflowing sensibility, she desires a more "strict restraint," or, from the continual, involuntary struggle against the trammels imposed, feels its necessity.

ISABELLA.

And have you nuns no further privileges?

FRANCISCA.

Are not these large enough?

ISABELLA.

Yes, truly; I speak, not as desiring more,

But rather wishing a more strict restraint

Upon the sisterhood!

Such women as Desdemona and Ophelia would have passed their lives in the seclusion of a nunnery, without wishing, like Isabella, for stricter bonds, or planning, like St. Theresa, the reformation of their order, simply, because any restraint would have been efficient, as far as they were concerned. Isabella, "dedicate to nothing temporal," might have found resignation through self government, or have become a religious enthusiast: while "place and greatness" would have appeared to her strong and upright mind, only a more extended field of action, a trust and a trial. The mere trappings of power and state, the gemmed coronal, the ermined robe, she would have regarded as the outward emblems of her earthly profession; and would have worn them with as much simplicity as her novice's hood and scapular; still, under whatever guise she might tread this thorny world—the same "angel of light."