The unity and married calm of states

shaked,

Which is the ladder of all high designs,

The enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commérce 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 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: Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong (Between whose endless jar justice resides)

Breaks scurril jests;

And with ridiculous and awkward action (Which, slanderer! he imitation calls)

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 'Twixt his stretched 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 unsquared,

Which, from the tongue of roaring Typhon

dropped,

Would seem hyperboles. At this fusty stuff, The large Achilles, on his pressed bed lolling,

Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;

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,
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 disdained
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 't is 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 discovered
The fever whereof all our power is sick.

Agam. The nature of the sickness found, Ulys

ses,

What is the remedy?

Cries, "Excellent! 't is Agamemnon just.

Now play me Nestor; hem, and stroke thy beard,

As he, being 'ddressed 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 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, all grace extract,
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.

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

In such a reign, in full as proud a place
As broad Achilles; keeps his tent like him;
Makes factious feasts; rails on our state of war,

He hath a lady, wiser, fairer, truer,
Than ever Greek did compass in his arms;
And will to-morrow with his trumpet call,
Midway between your tents and walls of Troy,
To rouse a Grecian that is true in love:
If any come, Hector shall honor him;
If none, he'll say in Troy, when he retires,
The Grecian dames are sunburned, and not worth
The splinter of a lance. Even so much.

Agam. This shall be told our lovers, lord
Æneas;

If none of them have soul in such a kind,
We left them all at home; but we are soldiers;
And may that soldier a mere recreant prove,
That means not, hath not, or is not in love!
If then one is, or hath, or means to be,
That one meets Hector: if none else, I am he.
Nes. Tell him of Nestor, one that was a man
When Hector's grandsire sucked: he is old now;
But, if there be not in our Grecian host

One noble man, that hath one spark of fire
To answer for his love, tell him from me,
I'll hide my silver beard in a gold beaver,
And in my vantbrace put this withered brawn;
And, meeting him, will tell him that my lady
Was fairer than his grandame, and as chaste
As may be in the world. His youth in flood,
I'll prove this truth with my three drops
blood.

of

In rank Achilles, must or now be cropp'd, Or, shedding, breed a nursery of like evil, To overbulk us all.

Nest. Well and how?

Ulys. This challenge that the gallant Hector sends,

However it is spread in general name,

Relates in purpose only to Achilles.

Nest. The purpose is perspicuous even as substance,

Whose grossness little characters sum up:
And, in the publication, make no strain
But that Achilles, were his brain as barren
As banks of Lybia,- though Apollo knows,
'T is dry enough,-will, with great speed of judg
ment,

Ay, with celerity, find Hector's purpose
Pointing on him.

Ulys. And wake him to the answer, think you?

Nest. Yes, 't is most meet: whom may you else

oppose,

That can from Hector bring those honors off,
If not Achilles? Though 't be a sportful combat,
Yet in the trial much opinion dwells;

For here the Trojans taste our dear'st repute
With their fin'st palate: and trust to me, Ulysses,

Our imputation shall be oddly poised

In this wild action: for the success,

youth!

Ulys. Amen.

Of good or bad unto the general;

And in such indexes, although small pricks

hand;

To our pavilion shall I lead you, sir.

Achilles shall have word of this intent;

So shall each lord of Greece, from tent to tent:
Yourself shall feast with us before you go,
And find the welcome of a noble foe.

Ulys. Nestor,

Nes. What says Ulysses?

Ulys. I have a young conception in my brain, Be you my time to bring it to some shape. Nes. What is 't?

Ulys. This 't is :

Blunt wedges rive hard knots: the seeded pride, That hath to this maturity blown up

What heart receives from hence a conquering part,
To steel a strong opinion to themselves?
Which entertained, limbs are his instruments,
In no less working than are swords and bows
Directive by the limbs.

Ulys. Give pardon to my speech:Therefore 't is meet, Achilles meet not Hector. Let us, like merchants, show our foulest wares.

Ajax. Thou stool for a witch!

Ther. Ay, do, do; thou sodden-witted lord! thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows; an assinego may tutor thee. Thou scurvy-valiant ass! thou art here put to thrash Trojans; and thou art bought and sold among those of any wit, like a Barbarian slave. If thou use to beat me, I will begin at thy heel, and tell what thou art by inches, thou thing of no bowels, thou!

Ajax. You dog!

Ther. You scurvy lord!

Ajax. You cur!

Ther. Mars his idiot! Do, rudeness! do, camel! do, do.

Enter ACHILLES and PATROCLUS.

Achil. Peace, fool!

Ther. I would have peace and quietness, but the fool will not: he there; that he; look you there. Ajax. O thou damned cur! I shall Achil. Will you set your wit to a fool's? Ther. No, I warrant you; for a fool's will shame it.

Patr. Good words, Thersites.
Achil. What's the quarrel?

Ajax. I bade the vile owl go learn me the tenor of the proclamation, and he rails upon me. Ther. I serve thee not.

Ajax. Well, go to, go to.

Ther. I serve here voluntary.

Achil. Your last service was sufferance, 't was not voluntary; no man is beaten voluntary: Ajax was here the voluntary, and you as under an im

Ther. Even so?

a great deal of your wit too

Ther. You see him there, do you?
Achil Ay; what's the matter?
Ther. Nay, look upon him.

Achil. So I do; what's the matter?
Ther. Nay, but regard him well.
Achil. Well, why I do so.

Ther. But yet you look not well upon him: for, whosoever you take him to be, he is Ajax. Achil. I know that, fool.

Ther. Ay, but that fool knows not himself.
Ajax. Therefore I beat thee.

Ther. Lo, lo, lo, lo, what modicums of wit he utters! His evasions have ears thus long. I have bobbed his brain more than he has beat my bones: I will buy nine sparrows for a penny, and his pia mater is not worth the ninth part of a sparrow. This lord, Achilles, Ajax,-who wears his wit in his belly, and his guts in his head, I'll tell you what I say of him.

Achil. What, with me too, Thersites ?

Ther. There's Ulysses and old Nestor - whose wit was mouldy ere your grandsires had nails on their toes yoke you like draught oxen, and make you plough up the wars.

Achil. What, what?

Ther. Yes, good sooth:-to, Achilles! to, Ajax! to!.

Ajax. I shall cut out your tongue.

Ther. 'Tis no matter; I shall speak as much as thou, afterwards.

Putr. No more words, Thersites; peace.

Ther. I will hold my peace when Achilles' brach bids me, shall I?

Achil. There's for you, Patroclus.

Ther. I will see you hanged, like clotpoles, ere I come any more to your tents; I will keep where there is wit stirring, and leave the faction of fools. [Exit.

Patr. A good riddance.

Achil. Marry, this, sir, is proclaimed through

all our host;

That Hector, by the first hour of the sun,

To-morrow morning call some knight to arms,