As Agamemnon and the hand of Greece Should with a bond of air (strong as the axletree 9 Thou great, and wise,—to hear Ulysses speak. Aga. Speak, prince of Ithaca; and be't of less expect 10 That matter needless, of importless burden, 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 speciality of rule hath been neglected; • Ulysses evidently means that Agamemnon's speech should be writ in brass; and that venerable Nestor, with his silver hairs, by his speech should rivet the attention of all Greece. The phrase hatch'd in silver is a simile borrowed from the art of design; to hatch being to fill a design with a number of consecutive fine lines; and to hatch in silver was a design inlaid with lines of silver, a process often used for the hilts of swords, handles of daggers, and stocks of pistols. The lines of the graver on a plate of metal are still called hatchings. Hence hatch'd in silver, for silver hair'd or gray hair'd. Thus in Love in a Maze, 1632: "Thy hair is fine as gold, thy chin is hatch'd with silver." 10 Expect is used for expectation. The passage is rather obscure. The meaning may be given something thus: "And be there less expectation of needless or importless matter when you speak, than there is of music, wit, or wisdom, when Thersites barks." The original has "masticke jaws :" the judicious change was made by Malone. The speech is not in the quarto. H. 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 cen11 tre Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, And posts, like the commandment of a king, What plagues, and what portents! what mutiny! 11 That is, this globe. According to the system of Ptolemy, the earth is the centre round which the planets move. 12 We are much tempted to adopt here a slight but very significant change proposed by Mr. Singer, namely, ether instead of other; as the sense of other seems hardly to cohere with "in noble eminence enthron'd." Ethereal is a well-known classic epithet of the sun, ætherius Sol. Thus in the lines of Lucretius on Epicurus Qui genus humanum superavit et omneis Restinxit, stellas exortus uti ÆTHERIUS SOL. Drayton, also, distinguishes the sun as "the ethereal fire" thus in Poly-Olbion, Song 7, where "manly Malvern, king of hills," addresses proud Olympus : "I envy not thy state, nor less myself do make; Nor, to possess thy name, mine own would I forsake; To thrust my forked top into the ethereal fire." H. 13 The apparent irregular motions of the planets were supposed to portend some disasters to mankind; indeed the planets themselves were not thought formerly to be confined in any fixed orbits of their own, but to wander about ad libitum, as the etymology of their name demonstrates. Commotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors, Divert and crack, rend and deracinate The unity and married calm of states Quite from their fixure?1 O! when degree is shak'd, Which is the ladder of all high designs, 15 The enterprise is sick! How could communities, 14 Fixure is the Poet's word for fixture. This piece of "large discourse" naturally reminds one of a very magnificent strain of eloquence in the first book of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, which was published in 1594: " Since the time that God did first proclaim the edicts of His law, heaven and earth have hearkened unto His voice, and their labour hath been to do His will. Now, if nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether, though it were but for a while, the observation of her own laws; if those principal and mother elements, whereof all things in this lower world are made, should lose the qualities which now they have; if the frame of that heavenly arch erected over our heads should loosen and dissolve itself; if celestial spheres should forget their wonted motions, and by irregular volubility turn themselves any way as it might happen ; if the prince of the lights of heaven, which now as a giant doth run his unwearied course, should as it were through a languishing faintness begin to stand and rest himself; if the moon should wander from her beaten way, the times and seasons of the year blend themselves by disordered and confused mixtures, the winds breathe out their last gasp, the clouds yield no rain, the earth be defeated of heavenly influence, the fruits of the earth pine away as children at the withered breasts of their mother no longer able to yield them relief; what would become of man himself, whom these things do all now serve? See we not plainly that obedience of creatures unto the law of nature is the stay of the whole world?" There are other passages in Hooker, which the Poet shows signs of having fed upon, in this play; though the resemblance is purely in the thought, and nowhere reaches to the diction, so as to make the one traceable in the other. H. 15 Dividable for divided, as corrigible for corrected, in Antony and Cleopatra. We have repeatedly seen Shakespeare using, in such cases, the active and passive forms interchangeably. H. But by degree stand in authentic place? Take but degree away, untune that string, And hark, what discord follows! each thing meets And the rude son should strike his father dead: So doubly seconded with will and power, 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.16 By him one step below; he, by the next; 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. 16 Of course, where each man strives to overtop or kick back his superiors, others will be moved to do the same by him, so that his way of climbing will result in a progress downwards; as men, by despising the law of their fathers, teach their children to despise them. H. Nest. Most wisely hath Ulysses here discover'd The fever 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 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 Breaks scurril jests; And with ridiculous and awkward action (Which, slanderer, he imitation calls) He pageants us. 17 Sometime, great Agamemnon, Thy topless deputation he puts on; 17 And, like a strutting player, whose conceit Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich To hear the wooden dialogue and sound 19 "Twixt his stretch'd footing and the scaffoldage, Such to-be-pitied and o'er-wrested seeming 19 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 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. 17 Topless deputation is the sovereign or supreme power deputed to Agamemnon, as chief of the army, by the choice of his fellow-kings. Topless was often used in that sense by others as well as Shakespeare. H. 18 The scaffoldage here is the floor of the stage, the wooden dialogue is between the player's foot and the boards.. A scaffold more frequently meant the stage than the gallery. Thus Baret, "A scaffold or stage where to behold plays." And Chaucer, in The Miller's Tale: "He playeth Herode on a skaffold hie." 19 That is, overstrained, wrested beyond true semblance. |