There is no greater glory than love, nor any great punishment than jealously.

The line contrasts two emotional extremes that Lope de Vega repeatedly dramatizes: love as the highest form of human “glory” (honor, fulfillment, even spiritual elevation) and jealousy as a uniquely severe “punishment” that corrodes the self and destroys relationships. Read this way, the quote is less a romantic platitude than a moral-psychological observation: love enlarges one’s world and reputation, while jealousy—often tied in early modern Spain to honor culture and suspicion—functions like an internal sentence, producing suffering regardless of whether betrayal is real. The aphoristic balance suggests a theatrical ethic: the greatest rewards and torments arise not from external fate but from passions we cultivate or indulge.