Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture,1 course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, in all line of order;
And therefore is the glorious planet, Scl,
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Amidst the other; whose medicinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts, like the commandment of a king, Sans 2 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 3
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixture! O, when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder of all high designs,
The enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce 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 meets
In mere 5 oppugnancy. The bounded waters
1 Constancy.
3 Force up by the roots.
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 tco.
Then every thing includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, a universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce a 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, 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 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 stands, not in her strength.
Nes. Most wisely hath Ulysses here discover'd The fever whereof all our power 1 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 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 1 us. Sometime, great Agamemnon
Thy topless 2 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'erwrested seeming
He acts thy greatness in; and when he speaks,
'Tis like a chime a mending; with terms unsquared,5
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.'
The galleries of the theatre. • Unadapted to their subject.
4 i. e. beyond the truth.
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 palsy-fumbling on his gorget,
Shake in and out the rivet;—and at this sport
Sir Valor 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.
Nes. 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.
Ulys. 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 measure
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.
Nes. Let this be granted, and Achilles' horse
Makes many Thetis' sons.
[trumpet sounds. What trumpet? look, Menelaus.
En. May one, that is a herald and a prince,
Do a fair message to his kingly ears?
Aga. With surety stronger than Achilles' arm
'Fore all the Greekish heads, which with one voice
Call Agamemnon head and general.
En. Fair leave, and large security. How may A stranger to those most imperial looks Know them from eyes of other mortals?
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