How we cite our quotes: Act.Scene
Quote #4
Flam. …We endure the strokes like anvils or hard steel,
Till pain itself make us no pain to feel. (3.3)
This is a villain's version of "pain is medicine for the soul." We learn how to resist pain, or get over pain, by experiencing it. This saying has a Stoic tinge to it, although Flamineo is way too evil for a genuine Stoic.
Quote #5
Flam…Religion, oh, how it is commeddled with policy! The first blood shed in the world happened about religion. Would I were a Jew!
Marc. Oh, there are too many!
Flam. You are deceived; there are not Jews enough, priests enough, nor gentlemen enough.
Marc. How?
Flam. I 'll prove it; for if there were Jews enough, so many Christians would not turn usurers; if priests enough, one should not have six benefices; and if gentlemen enough, so many early mushrooms, whose best growth sprang from a live by begging… (3.3)
Flamineo counters his brother's reprehensible Anti-Semitism with some clever, pseudo-Machiavellian reasoning: if there were more Jews, there wouldn't be so many Christian usurers (money-lenders).
Quote #6
Lodo. Precious rogue!
We'll never part.Flam. Never, till the beggary of courtiers,
The discontent of churchmen, want of soldiers,
And all the creatures that hang manacled,
Worse than strappadoed, on the lowest felly
Of fortune's wheel, be taught, in our two lives,
To scorn that world which life of means deprives. (3.3)
Flamineo and Lodovico are both guys who believe in getting while the getting's good. They have a Machiavellian outlook: a life that has no "means" (no opportunity to get on in the world and get what's good) isn't worth living at all. And they're both willing to do anything to get that life—even if it's immoral.