Agam.
Princes;
What grief hath set the jaundise 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, tryal 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 tryals 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 ^{b note} broad and powerful fan
Puffing at all, winnows the light away;
And what hath mass, or matter by it self,
Lies rich in virtue, and unmingled.

Nest.
With due observance of thy goodly seat,
Great Agamemnon, Nestor shall apply
Thy latest words. In the reproof of chance
Lies the true proof of men: the sea being smooth,
How many shallow bauble boats dare sail
Upon her patient breast, making their way
With those of noble bulk?
But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage
The gentle Thetis, and anon behold
The strong-ribb'd bark thro' liquid mountains cuts,
Bounding between the two moist elements,
Like Perseus' horse: Where's then the sawcy 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; the thing of courage,
As rowz'd with rage, with rage doth sympathize,
And with an accent tun'd in self-same key,
^{c note}Returns to chiding fortune.

Ulys.
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 Aga.
And thou, most rev'rend for thy stretcht-out life, [To Nest.
I give to both your speeches, which were such
As Agamemnon and the hand of Greece
Should hold up high in brass; and such again
As venerable Nestor (hatch'd in silver)
Should with a bond of air, strong as the axle-tree
On which heav'n rides, knit all the Grecian ears
To his experienc'd tongue: yet let it please both
(Thou great, and wise) to hear Ulysses speak.

Aga.
Speak, prince of Ithaca: we less expect
That matter needless, of importless burthen
Divide thy lips: than we are confident,
When rank Thersites opes his mastiff jaws,
We shall hear musick, wit, and oracle.

Ulys.
Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down,
And the great Hector's sword had lack'd 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.
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 shews as fairly in the mask.
The heav'ns themselves, the planets, and this center,
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 enthron'd and sphear'd
Amidst the rest, whose med'cinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts like the command'ment 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 fixture? when degree is shaken,
(Which is the ladder to all high designs)
The enterprize is sick. How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogeniture, and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, scepters, lawrels,
(But by degree) stand in authentick place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And hark what discord follows; each thing meets
In meer oppugnancy. The bounded waters
Would lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength would be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son would strike his father dead:
&plquo;Force would be right; or rather, right and wrong
&plquo;(Between whose endless jar justice resides)
&plquo;Would lose their names, and so would justice too.
&plquo;Then every thing includes it self in power,
&plquo;Power into will, will into appetite,
&plquo;And appetite (an universal wolf,
&plquo;So doubly seconded with will and power)

&plquo;Must make perforce an universal prey,
&plquo;And last eat up itself. Great Agamemnon!
This chaos, when degree is suffocate,
Follows the choaking:
And this neglection of degree is it,
That by a pace goes backward, in 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 feaver
Of pale and bloodless emulation.
And 'tis this feaver 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 feaver, whereof all our power is sick.

Aga.
The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses,
What is the remedy?

Ulys.
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,
Thy topless deputation he puts on;
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—as near as the extremest ends
Of parallels; as like as Vulcan and his wife:
Yet good 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 palsie fumbling on his gorget,
Shake in and out the rivet—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,
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 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 ^{d note}pace,
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 hard soever rounded in with danger.

Ulys.
They tax our policy, and call it cowardise,
Count wisdom as no member of the war,
Fore-stall our prescience, and esteem no act
But that of hand: &plquo;the still and mental parts,
&plquo;That do contrive how many hands shall strike
&plquo;When fitness calls them on, and know by measure
&plquo;Of their observant toil, the enemies weight,
&plquo;Why this hath not a finger's dignity;
&plquo;They call this bed-work, mapp'ry, closet-war:
&plquo;So that the ram that batters down the wall,
&plquo;For the great swing and rudeness of his poize,
&plquo;They place before his hand that made the engine;
&plquo;Or those that with the fineness of their souls
&plquo;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.

Previous section

Next section