The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works

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The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 508

by William Shakespeare


  Like Perseus’ horse. Where’s then the saucy boat

  Whose weak untimbered sides but even now

  Co-rivalled greatness? Either to harbour fled

  Or made a toast for Neptune. Even so

  45

  Doth valour’s show and valour’s worth divide

  In storms of fortune. For in her ray and brightness

  The herd hath more annoyance by the breese

  Than by the tiger; but when the splitting wind

  Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks

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  And flies flee under shade, why then the thing of courage,

  As roused with rage, with rage doth sympathize,

  And with an accent tuned in selfsame key

  Retorts to chiding fortune.

  ULYSSES Agamemnon,

  Thou great commander, nerve and bone of Greece,

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  Heart of our numbers, soul and only spirit,

  In whom the tempers and the minds of all

  Should be shut up: hear what Ulysses speaks.

  Besides th’applause and approbation

  The which, [to Agamemnon] most mighty for thy

  place and sway,

  60

  [to Nestor] And thou most reverend for thy

  stretched-out life,

  I give to both your speeches, which were such

  As, Agamemnon, every hand of Greece

  Should hold up high in brass; and such again

  As venerable Nestor, hatched in silver,

  65

  Should with a bond of air, strong as the axletree

  On which the heavens ride, knit all Greeks’ ears

  To his experienced tongue, yet let it please both,

  Thou great, and wise, to hear Ulysses speak.

  AGAMEMNON

  Speak, Prince of Ithaca; and be’t of less expect

  70

  That matter needless, of importless burden,

  Divide thy lips, than we are confident,

  When rank Thersites opes his mastic jaws,

  We shall hear music, wit and oracle.

  ULYSSES Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down,

  75

  And the great Hector’s sword had lacked a master,

  But for these instances:

  The specialty of rule hath been neglected;

  And look how many Grecian tents do stand

  Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions.

  80

  When that the general is not like the hive

  To whom the foragers shall all repair,

  What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded,

  Th’unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.

  The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre

  85

  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

  90

  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,

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  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

  100

  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 commerce from dividable shores,

  105

  The primogeneity 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 meets

  110

  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;

  115

  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;

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  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,

  125

  Follows the choking.

  And this neglection of degree it is

  That by a pace goes backward in a purpose

  It hath to climb. The general’s disdained

  By him one step below, he by the next,

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  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,

  135

  Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,

  Troy in our weakness lives, not in her strength.

  NESTOR Most wisely hath Ulysses here discovered

  The fever whereof all our power is sick.

  AGAMEMNON

  The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses,

  140

  What is the remedy?

  ULYSSES The great Achilles, whom opinion crowns

  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

  145

  Lies mocking our designs. With him Patroclus,

  Upon a lazy bed, the livelong day

  Breaks scurril jests,

  And with ridiculous and awkward action –

  Which, slanderer, he imitation calls –

  150

  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

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  ’Twixt his stretched footing and the scaffoldage,

  Such to-be-pitied and o’erwrested seeming

  He acts thy greatness in; and when he speaks,

  ’Tis like a chime a-mending, with terms unsquared,

  Which from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropped

  160

  Would seem hyperboles. At this fusty stuff

  The large Achilles, on his pressed 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,

  165

  As he being dressed 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,

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  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
r />   Shake in and out the rivet. And at this sport

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  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,

  180

  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.

  NESTOR And in the imitation of these twain,

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  Who, as Ulysses says, opinion crowns

  With an imperial voice, many are infect.

  Ajax is grown self-willed and bears his head

  In such a rein, in full as proud a place

  As broad Achilles; keeps his tent like him,

  190

  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,

  195

  How rank soever rounded in with danger.

  ULYSSES 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,

  200

  That do contrive how many hands shall strike,

  When fitness calls them on, and know by measure

  Of their observant toil the enemy’s weight –

  Why, this hath not a finger’s dignity.

  They call this bed-work, mapp’ry, closet war;

  205

  So that the ram that batters down the wall,

  For the great swinge 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.

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  NESTOR Let this be granted, and Achilles’ horse

  Makes many Thetis’ sons. [Tucket.]

  AGAMEMNON What trumpet? Look, Menelaus.

  MENELAUS From Troy.

  Enter AENEAS with a trumpeter.

  AGAMEMNON What would you ’fore our tent?

  215

  AENEAS Is this great Agamemnon’s tent, I pray you?

  AGAMEMNON Even this.

  AENEAS May one that is a herald and a prince

  Do a fair message to his kingly ears?

  AGAMEMNON With surety stronger than Achilles’ arm

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  ’Fore all the Greekish lords, which with one voice

  Call Agamemnon head and general.

  AENEAS Fair leave and large security. How may

  A stranger to those most imperial looks

  Know them from eyes of other mortals?

  AGAMEMNON How?

  225

  AENEAS Ay.

  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.

  230

  Which is that god in office, guiding men?

  Which is the high and mighty Agamemnon?

  AGAMEMNON [to the Greeks]

  This Trojan scorns us, or the men of Troy

  Are ceremonious courtiers.

  AENEAS Courtiers as free, as debonair, unarmed,

  235

  As bending angels – that’s their fame in peace.

  But when they would seem soldiers, they have galls,

  Good arms, strong joints, true swords, and – Jove’s

  accord –

  Nothing so full of heart. But peace, Aeneas,

  Peace, Trojan; lay thy finger on thy lips!

  240

  The worthiness of praise distains his worth

  If that the praised himself bring the praise forth.

  But what the repining enemy commends,

  That breath Fame blows; that praise, sole pure,

  transcends.

  AGAMEMNON Sir, you of Troy, call you yourself Aeneas?

  245

  AENEAS Ay, Greek, that is my name.

  AGAMEMNON What’s your affair, I pray you?

  AENEAS Sir, pardon, ’tis for Agamemnon’s ears.

  AGAMEMNON

  He hears naught privately that comes from Troy.

  AENEAS Nor I from Troy come not to whisper him.

  250

  I bring a trumpet to awake his ear,

  To set his sense on the attentive bent,

  And then to speak.

  AGAMEMNON Speak frankly as the wind;

  It is not Agamemnon’s sleeping hour.

 

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