Agam. Speak, prince of Ithaca; and be't of
That matter needless, of importless burden,
Divide thy lips, than we are confident,
When rank Thersites opes his mastick jaws,
We shall hear music, wit, and oracle.
Ulyss. Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down, And the great Hector's sword had lack'd a master,
The specialty of rule hath been neglected:
And, look, how many Grecian tents do stand
Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions.
When that the general is not like the hive,
To whom the foragers shall all repair,
What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded,
The unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this
centre,
Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, in all line of order:
And therefore is the glorious planet, Sol,
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Amidst the other; whose med'cinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts, like the commandment of a king,
Sans check, to good and bad: but when the
planets,
In evil mixture, to disorder wander,
What plagues, and what portents! what mutiny!
What raging of the sea! shaking of earth !
Commotion in the winds! frights, changes,
horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixure ! O, when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,
The enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commérce from dividable shores,
The primogenitive and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! each thing
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe :
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead:
Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong
(Between whose endless jar justice resides)
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make, perforce, an universal prey,
And, last, eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,
This chaos, when degree is suffocate,
Follows the choking.
And this neglection of degree it is
That by a pace goes backward, in a purpose
The general's disdain'd
By him one step below; he, by the next;
That next by him beneath : so every step,
Exampled by the first pace that is sick
Of his superior, grows to an envious fever
Of pale and bloodless emulation :
And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,
Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,
Troy in our weakness lives, not in her strength.
Nest. Most wisely hath Ulysses here discover'd
The fever whereof all our power is sick.
Agam. The nature of the sickness found,
Ulysses,
Ulyss. The great Achilles,-whom opinion
The sinew and the forehand of our host,-
Having his ear full of his airy fame,
Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent
Lies mocking our designs: with him, Patroclus,
Upon a lazy bed, the livelong day
And with ridiculous and awkward action (Which, slanderer, he imitation calls)
He pageants us. Sometime, great Agamemnon, Thy topless deputation he puts on;
And like a strutting player, (whose conceit Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich To hear the wooden dialogue and sound 'Twixt his stretch'd footing and the scaffoldage,) Such to-be-pitied and o'er-wrested seeming He acts thy greatness in: and when he speaks, 'Tis like a chime a-mending; with terms un
Which from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropp'd
Would seem hyperboles. At this fusty stuff,
The large Achilles, on his press'd bed lolling,
From his deep chest laughs out a loud applause;
Cries-Excellent!-'Tis Agamemnon just,-
Now play me Nestor;-hem, and stroke thy beard,
As he, being 'dress'd to some oration.
That's done ;-as near as the extremest ends
Of parallels,-
-as like as Vulcan and his wife:
Yet god Achilles still cries, Excellent;
'Tis Nestor right! Now play him me, Patroclus,
Arming to answer in a night alarm.
And then, forsooth, the faint defects of age
Must be the scene of mirth; to cough, and spit,
And with a palsy, fumbling on his gorget,
Shake in and out the rivet ;-and at this sport,
Sir Valour dies; cries, O!-enough, Patroclus;
Or give me ribs of steel! I shall split all
In pleasure of my spleen. And in this fashion,
All our abilities, gifts, natures, shapes,
Severals and generals of grace exact,
Achievements, plots, orders, preventions,
Excitements to the field, or speech for truce,
Success, or loss, what is, or is not, serves
As stuff for these two to make paradoxes.
Nest. And in the imitation of these twain
(Whom, as Ulysses says, opinion crowns
With an imperial voice) many are infect.
Ajax is grown self-will'd; and bears his head
In such a rein, in full as proud a place,
As broad Achilles; keeps his tent like him;
Makes factious feasts; rails on our state of war,
Bold as an oracle; and sets Thersites
(A slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint)
To match us in comparisons with dirt;
To weaken and discredit our exposure,
How rank soever rounded in with danger.
Ulyss. They tax our policy, and call it
cowardice;
Count wisdom as no member of the war;
Forestall prescience, and esteem no act
But that of hand: the still and mental parts,—
That do contrive how many hands shall strike,
When fitness calls them on; and know, by
Of their observant toil, the enemies' weight,-
Why, this hath not a finger's dignity:
They call this bed-work, mappery, closet-war :
So that the ram that batters down the wall,
For the great swing and rudeness of his poise,
They place before his hand that made the engine;
Or those that with the fineness of their souls
By reason guide his execution.
Nest. Let this be granted, and Achilles' horse Makes many Thetis' sons.
Agam. What trumpet? look, Menelaus.
What would you 'fore our tent?
Great Agamemnon's tent, I pray you' ?
Agam.
Even this. Ene. May one that is a herald, and a prince, Do a fair message to his kingly ears?
Agam. With surety stronger than Achilles' arm 'Fore all the Greekish heads, which with one voice
Call Agamemnon head and general.
Ene. Fair leave, and large security. How may
A stranger to those most imperial looks
Know them from eyes of other mortals?
Agam.
I ask, that I might waken reverence,
And bid the cheek be ready with a blush
Modest as morning when she coldly eyes
The youthful Phoebus:
|