Agam.
Princes,
What grief hath set the jaundice on your cheeks?
The ample proposition, that hope makes
In all designs begun on earth below,
Fails in the promis'd largeness. Checks and disasters
Grow in the veins of actions highest rear'd;
As knots by the conflux of meeting sap
Infect the sound pine, and divert his grain
Tortive and errant from his course of growth.
Nor, Princes, is it matter new to us,
That we come short of our Suppose so far,
That after sev'n years' siege, yet Troy-walls stand;
Sith every action that hath gone before,
Whereof we have record, trial did draw
Bias and thwart; not answering the aim,
And that unbodied figure of the thought
That gave't surmised shape. Why then, you Princes,
Do you with cheeks abash'd behold our Works?
And think them shame, which are, indeed, nought else
But the protractive trials of great Jove,
To find persistive constancy in men?
The fineness of which metal is not found
In fortune's love; for then, the bold and coward,
The wise and fool, the artist and unread,
The hard and soft, seem all affin'd, and kin;
But in the wind and tempest of her frown,
Distinction with a ^{2 note}broad and powerful fan,
Puffing at all, winnows the light away;

And what hath mass, or matter by itself,
Lies rich in virtue, and unmingled.

Nest.
^{3 note}

How many shallow bauble boats dare sail
Upon her ^{5 note}
patient breast, making their way
With those of nobler bulk?
But let the russian Boreas once enrage
The gentle Thetis, and anon, behold,
The strong-ribb'd Bark thro' liquid mountains cut,
Bounding between the two moist elements,
Like Perseus' horse. Where's then the saucy boat,
Whose weak untimber'd sides but even now
Co-rival'd Greatness? or to harbour fled,
Or made a toast for Neptune. Even so
Doth valour's shew and valour's worth divide
In storms of fortune; for in her ray and brightness,
The herd hath more annoyance by the brize
Than by the tyger; but when splitting winds
Make flexible the knees of knotted oaks,
And flies get under shade; why then ^{6 note}the thing of courage,
As rowz'd with rage, with rage doth sympathize;
And, with an accent tun'd in self-same key,
^{7 note}Returns to chiding fortune.

Ulyss.
Agamemnon,
Thou great commander, nerve and bone of Greece,
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, most mighty for thy place and sway, [To Agamemnon.

And thou, most rev'rend for thy stretcht-out life, [To Nestor.
I give to both your ^{8 note}

^{9 note}Agam.
Speak, Prince of Ithaca, and be't of less expect
That matter needless, of importless burden,
Divide thy lips; than we are confident,
When rank Thersites opes his mastiff jaws,
We shall hear musick, wit and oracle.

Ulyss.
Troy, yet upon her basis, had been down,
And the great Hector's sword had lack'd a master,
But for these instances.
^{1 note}The speciality of Rule hath been neglected;

And, look, how many Grecian Tents do stand
Hollow upon this Plain, so many hollow factions.
^{2 note}

Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts like the commandment of a King,
Sans check, to good and bad. ^{4 note}

Force should be Right; or rather, ^{8 note}

And last eat up itself. Great Agamemnon!
This Chaos, when degree is suffocate,
Follows the choaking:
And this neglection of degree is it,
^{9 note}That by a pace goes backward, ^{1 note}
with a purpose
It hath to climb. 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 ^{2 note}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,
What is the remedy?

Ulyss.
The great Achilles, whom opinion crowns
The sinew and the fore-hand 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 live-long day
Breaks scurril jests;
And with ridiculous and aukward action,
Which, slanderer, he imitation calls,
He pageants us. Sometimes, great Agamemnon,
* ^note

And, like a strutting Player, whose conceit
Lies in his ham-string, 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 unsquar'd:
Which, from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropt,
Would seem hyperboles. At this fusty stuff
The large Achilles, on his prest-bed lolling,
From his deep chest laughs out a loud applause:
Cries—excellent!—'tis Agamemnon just—
Now play me Nestor—hum, and stroke thy beard,
As he, being 'drest to some oration.
That's done—^{3 note}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,
^{4 note}

Atchievements, 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 ^{5 note}
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 ^{6 note}
bears his head
In such a rein, in full as proud a place,
As broad Achilles; and 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,
^{7 note}
How rank soever rounded in with danger.

Ulyss.
They tax our policy, and call it cowardise,
Count wisdom as no member of the war;
Forestall our prescience, and esteem no Act

But that of hand: The still and mental parts,
That do contrive how many hands shall strike,
When fitness call them on, ^{8 note}


and know by measure
Of their observant toil the enemies' weight;
Why, this hath not a finger's dignity;
They call this bed-work, Mapp'ry, closet war:
So that the ram, that batters down the wall,
For the great swing and rudeness of his poize,
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. [Tucket sounds.

Aga.
What trumpet? look, Menelaus.

Men.
From Troy.

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