How we cite our quotes: (Act.Scene.Line)
Quote #1
I can be angry
Without this rupture; there is not in nature
A thing that makes man so deformed, so beastly,
As doth intemperate anger. (2.5.55-58)
When they hear that the Duchess has given birth, Ferdinand reacts by totally flipping out. The Cardinal, on the other hand, plays it cool, and tells Ferdinand that if he wants to get revenge he's got to chill out. The Cardinal frames anger as dehumanizing, and this comment foreshadows how Ferdinand, who's all about the "deformed, beastly" anger, ends up transforming into a werewolf.
Quote #2
Excellent, as I would wish, she's plagued in art. (3.1.107)
Why, once he gets ahold of her, does Ferdinand resort to psychological, rather than physical torture? He oh so obviously intends to kill her, and at this point he could be putting the screws to her in a very literal way. But he prefers to "plague her in art" as a way to "bring [her] / by degrees to mortification" (4.2.166-67)—why?
Quote #3
Bosola: What do you intend to do?
Ferdinand: Can you guess?
Bosola: No
Ferdinand: Do not ask, then.
He that can compass me and know my drifts
May say that he hath put a girdle 'bout the world
And sounded all her quicksands. (3.2.83-86)
Ol' Ferdo sure thinks an awful lot of himself and his crafty skillz. Bosola, sassy spy that he is, immediately tells Ferdinand he's not as tricky as he thinks he is. This is a neat line to pair with the Cardinal's claim in Quote #7 that people who know a prince's secrets (the "drifts" Ferdinand refers to) "need have their breasts hooped with adamant / To contain them" (5.2.253-54).