Текст книги "Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1"

Автор книги: Isaac Asimov

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… thy Daphne's love
 

Troilus is at once anxious to placate Pandarus, who, after all, remains the only bridge by which he can reach Cressida. Pandarus, however, pushing his advantage, rushes off, leaving Troilus behind to sing Cressida's praises, calling on Apollo (the god of poetry) to help him:

 
Tell me, Apollo, for thy Daphne's love,
What Cressid is…
 

—Act I, scene i, 102-3

It is interesting that Apollo, the personification of male beauty, is so often tragically unsuccessful in his loves. Cassandra refused him, for instance, and Daphne (see page I-36) is an even more famous love.

 
What news, Aeneas.. .
 

Troilus' soliloquy ends when another Trojan warrior enters. He is in full armor, on his way to the battle, and is rather puzzled that Troilus is lingering in Troy. Troilus asks:

 
What news, Aeneas, from the field today?
 

—Act I, scene i, line 11:

Aeneas, in the legends, is a son of none other than Venus, though hi father, Anchises, was a mortal man. Aeneas was not a Trojan exactly but a Dardanian; that is, the inhabitant of a district neighboring Troy proper He attempted to maintain neutrality in the war at first but the attacks c Achilles forced him to join forces with Priam and his sons.

None of this is in the Iliad. In the Iliad he is an ardent Trojan fighter second only to Hector. He is a darling of the gods and is saved by Venus and Apollo when about to be killed by Diomedes, and on another occasion by Neptune, when it is Achilles who is about to kill him.

Homer makes it quite plain that Aeneas is not fated to die in the general sack that destroys Troy (see page I-209). This was the basis of Vergil plot in the Aeneid, which deals with the wanderings of Aeneas after the destruction of Troy.

Because Aeneas was viewed as the ancestor of the Romans, he had to be treated with particular care by Western poets. The English had to 1 even more careful, for they aped the Romans in their search for a glorious beginning.

Several medieval chroniclers in England composed versions of a legendary past that traced the early Britons back to Troy. It seems, according them, that Aeneas had had a great-grandson, Brute, who, having inadvertently killed his father, fled Italy and finally landed in the northern island, which got its name of "Britain" from him.

There is absolutely nothing to it, of course, other than the accidental similarity between the common Roman name Brute or Brutus and the name of Britain. Nevertheless it gave the English a profound interest in the tale of Troy and a strong pro-Trojan sympathy. In particular, Aeneas must be, and is, idealized. In Troilus and Cressida he is gay, debonair, and the perfect medieval knight.

 
… Menelaus' horn
 

Aeneas tells Troilus that Paris has been wounded in a duel with Menelaus. (Such a duel is described in Book Three of the Iliad and it is after that duel, which Menelaus wins, that a truce is negotiated, a truce which is broken by Pandarus' arrow-see page I-79).

Troilus shrugs it off:

 
Let Paris bleed; 'tis but a scar to scorn:
Paris is gored with Menelaus' horn.
 

—Act I, scene i, lines 115-16

There was an accepted convention in Shakespearean England that a betrayed husband had horns; invisible ones, of course. This may be from a consideration of the sexual life of the polygamous stags, who fight each other for the possession of a harem of does. The deceived husband is, perhaps, likened to a defeated stag; hence his horns.

The husband whose wife had fooled him was universally viewed with amused contempt in Shakespeare's time. This attitude arose, perhaps, from the conventions of courtly love, (see page I-54) where the knight was, ideally, supposed to love the wife of another. In all such tales, the husband was the villain (witness the well-known romance of Tristan and Iseult) and the audience cheered when the horns were, so to speak, placed on his forehead.

The betrayed husband was therefore an inexhaustible theme for comedy and any mention of horns or horned animals, even any reference to foreheads, was the signal for laughter-and Shakespeare made the most of that.

Thus it is that Troilus scorns poor wronged Menelaus. To modern ears, which do not find adultery either as serious or as comic as the Elizabethans did, such jests fall flat.

 
Queen Hecuba …
 

The scene shifts to Cressida now. She enters with her servant, Alexander, looking after two women who have hastened by. She inquires who those were who passed and Alexander answers:

 
Queen Hecuba and Helen.
 

—Act I, scene ii, line 1b

Queen Hecuba (or Hecabe, in the Greek form) was the second wife of Priam. She bore him nineteen of his sixty-two children, including Hector, Paris, Troilus, and Cassandra of those mentioned so far. Because of her sufferings, she was a favorite character in tragic dramas devoted to the Trojan War and, indeed, in Hamlet Shakespeare makes use of this fact indirectly (see page II-115). Here, in Troilus and Cressida, however, she never appears onstage.

 
He chid Andromache …
 

Apparently the two women are hastening to the walls to see the battle, for they fear it may be going poorly. After all, even Hector is perturbed, or as the servant says:

 
Hector, whose patience Is as a virtue fixed, today was moved.
He chid Andromache, and struck his armorer,
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 4-6

Andromache is Hector's wife. The last part of Book Six of the Iliad is devoted to a scene in which she hurries with her infant son, Scamandrius, to meet Hector before he leaves the city on his way to the battle. It is the most touching scene of married love in Homer. Andromache pleads with Hector to stay in the city, for all her own relatives are dead. "So, dear Hector," she says, "you are now not merely my husband-you are father, mother, and brother, too!"

But Hector must go and he reaches out his arms to give his son a farewell and to pray over him, hoping that someday the child's feats will be such that all will agree that "His father was the lesser man!" Alas, it was not to be, for Hector's son was killed when Troy was destroyed.

 
A lord of Troyan blood.,.
 

To make Hector scold Andromache, something most unusual must have happened. Cressida asks what that might be and is told:

 
… there is among the Greeks
A lord of Troyan blood, nephew to Hector;
They call him Ajax.
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 12-14

Ajax plays a great role in the Iliad. He is one of two men in the epic that bears the name. Since the one here referred to is particularly large, he is called "Ajax the Greater." Of the two, only "the Greater" appears in Troilus and Cressida, so it suffices to call him Ajax.

In the Iliad Ajax is the strongest of the Greeks, save only for Achilles, but is considerably more renowned for his strength than for his subtlety. He is never wounded in the Iliad, and he is the only important hero who never at any time personally receives the help of a god or a goddess. He is the epitome of success through hard work, without inspiration.

He is not, in the Iliad, of Trojan blood; nor is he a nephew to Hector. The attribution of Trojan blood to Ajax is probably the result of confusion with Ajax's half brother (see page I-103).

 
… a gouty Briareus …
 

Alexander goes on to describe Ajax and makes him out to be a parody of the picture presented in Homer; as nothing more than a stolid, dim-witted man-mountain. He says of Ajax:

 
… he is a gouty Briareus, many hands and no use,
or purblind Argus, all eyes and no sight.
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 29-30

Briareus was an earthborn monster with fifty heads and a hundred arms. The most important myth in which he figured was one in which the tale of a revolt against Jupiter is central. The other gods, led by Neptune and Apollo, succeed in binding Jupiter, and he might have been overthrown, but for the action of a sea nymph, who hastily brought Briareus to the rescue. The monster untied Jupiter and by his presence cowed the other gods.

As for Argus, he was a monster with a hundred eyes who was sent by Juno (Hera) in order that he might watch the nymph Io. Io had been one of Jupiter's many loves, and that god had turned her into a heifer to hide her from Juno, but unsuccessfully. Argus' vigilance (his eyes never closed in unison; fifty at least were always open and alert) would prevent Jupiter from ever turning Io back into human form.

Jupiter sent Mercury (Hermes) to the rescue. Mercury lulled Argus to a simultaneous hundred-eyed sleep with a soothing lullaby and then cut off his head. Juno placed Argus' many eyes in the tail of her favorite bird, the peacock.

Alexander's description of Ajax, in other words, is that of a man who has all the physical attributes required for a warrior but who lacks the intelligence to make those attributes work for him.

And, apparently, what bothers Hector is that this mule of a man has struck him down. Hector cannot help but feel the shame of it.

 
That's Anterior …
 

Pandarus arrives on the scene and at once begins busily to praise Troilus, hoping to arouse Cressida's ardor. Cressida, who knows exactly what he is doing, teases him unmercifully by never allowing his praises to stand but turning everything on its head.

Soon the men are returning from the field at the close of the day, and Pandarus decides to let Troilus' own appearance do the talking. He leads Cressida to a place where she can see them, continuing to promise her Troilus, but naming the others as they pass.

Aeneas passes first and is praised, of course. (Aeneas is always praised-he must be.) Then comes another, and Pandarus says:

 
That's Anterior. He has a shrewd wit, I can tell you;
and he's man good enough-he's one
o' the soundest judgments in Troy whosoever. ..
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 197-99

In the Iliad Antenor was one of the elders of Troy. He was a councilor of Priam and a man of good judgment, as Shakespeare says, but far too old to fight. There is undoubtedly confusion here with Agenor, his son, who in the Iliad plays an important role as a Trojan warrior.

 
That's Helenus …
 

Pandarus' fussing becomes funnier and funnier. Hector and Paris pass and he praises them with forced enthusiasm, but keeps watching for Troilus and growing constantly more upset because Troilus doesn't appear.

When Cressida asks the name of one of the passing warriors, Pandarus answers absently:

 
That's Helenus. 1 marvel where Troilus is.
That's Helenus. I think he went not forth today.
That's Helenus.
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 227-29

Helenus was another son of Priam and Hecuba,, and, according to some accounts, a twin brother of Cassandra. He was likewise blessed with the powers of a soothsayer and was a priest. He was the only one of Priam's sons to survive the fall of Troy (perhaps because of his priestly character) and in the end, according to some of the later tales, married Andromache, Hector's widow. Together they ended their lives ruling over Epirus, a district in northwestern Greece.

 
… That's Deiphobus
 

But Cressida is still teasing Pandarus unmercifully. She clearly knows all the men whom Pandarus is identifying. In fact, she sees Troilus before Pandarus does and asks in mock disdain:

 
What sneaking fellow comes yonder?
 

—Act I, scene ii, line 234

And, at the crisis, Pandarus fails to recognize him after all, saying:

 
Where? Yonder? That's Deiphobus.
 

—Act I, scene ii, line 235

Only belatedly does he realize it is Troilus.

Deiphobus is still another son of Priam and Hecuba. After Paris dies in battle, it is he who next marries Helen. As a result, when Troy is taken, he is killed by Menelaus and his corpse is hideously mangled.

Pandarus makes up for his tardiness in recognizing Troilus by setting up such a caterwauling after him that Cressida is embarrassed; not so embarrassed, however, that she fails to continue her teasing.

It is only after Pandarus leaves that she reveals in a soliloquy that she is actually in love with Troilus, but holds off because she thinks women are valued only as long as they are not attained.

 
… after seven years' siege.. .
 

With the third scene we find ourselves in the Greek camp for the first time.

There is a general air of depression over the camp and Agamemnon, the commander in chief, is trying to instill heart in the warriors. Their troubles are, after all, long-standing ones, so why be disheartened now?

 
… is it matter new to us
That we come short of our suppose so far
That after seven years' siege yet Troy walls stand;
 

-Act I, scene iii, lines 10-12

If this is the last year of the war, as it must be, then Troy's walls have been standing nine years, not seven-but that is a small error that makes no difference.

Agamemnon goes on to point out that the difficulty of the task but tests their mettle and tries their worth.

Agamemnon is in a difficult position, for as commander in chief of the Greek army, the chief odium will fall upon him if the expedition fails. He is commander in chief because he is the king of Mycenae, which at the time of the Trojan War was the chief city of Greece and gave its name to the Mycenaean Age. It declined soon after the Trojan War thanks to the devastation that accompanied the Dorian conquest of much of Greece. It was but a disregarded village in the days of Greece's greatest period, centuries later.

Mycenae, located in the northeastern Peloponnesus, six miles north of Argos, has been excavated in the last century, and ample evidence has been discovered of past greatness.

Agamemnon was the grandson of Pelops (see page I-68) and, in theory, he ruled over all of Greece, though in actual fact the princes of northern Greece (Achilles among them) were restive in the face of the claims of leadership on the part of the southern city, Mycenae.

He was married to Clytemnestra, the daughter of Tyndareus, King of Sparta, a city located some fifty-five miles south of Mycenae.

The younger sister of Clytemnestra was none other than Helen, over whom the Greeks and Trojans were fighting. Helen's beauty was such that her life, from beginning to end, was one of fatal attraction to men. While she was still a young girl of twelve, she was kidnapped, according to the legends, by the Athenian hero Theseus. She was rescued by her brothers, Castor and Polydeuces, and after she was restored, her father, Tyndareus, decided to marry her off and let her husband have the responsibility of holding her.

That was easier said than done, for when the word went out that Helen's hand was to be given in marriage, all the heroes of Greece came to Sparta to compete for her. It seemed impossible to choose one without making enemies of all the others.

It was Ulysses who had the solution. He had no real hope of gaining Helen for himself. He suggested to Tyndareus, therefore, that the competing heroes all be required to take an oath to agree to whatever decision was made as to Helen's husband and to promise to support that husband against anyone who might attempt to take Helen away from him. This was done and Ulysses was rewarded with the hand of Penelope, Helen's cousin.

It was Menelaus who was chosen as Helen's husband. For one thing, he was wealthy; for another, he was the younger brother of the King of Mycenae, Agamemnon.

Agamemnon himself could not compete for Helen because he was already married, but he pressed hard on behalf of his younger brother, and it was very likely because of the prestige and pressure of the "Great King" that Menelaus was accepted.

This was a good stroke of policy on Agamemnon's part. Menelaus succeeded to the throne of Sparta, as Helen's husband. Since Menelaus was a rather passive character, dominated by his more forceful brother, Agamemnon found himself greatly strengthened by his indirect control of the important city of Sparta.

By the same token, Paris' abduction of Helen was a serious blow to Agamemnon, for it weakened Menelaus' claim on the Spartan throne (which was Helen's rather than his own). Agamemnon had to push hard for a punitive expedition on Troy, and it may have been, again, the influence of the Great King, rather than any vow, which gathered the feudal lords of Greece into the expedition.

In the Iliad Agamemnon does not shine. His quarrel with Achilles, in which the Great King is entirely in the wrong, nearly wrecks the Greek cause, and on more than one occasion Homer (who is always respectful to him) shows him being deservedly corrected by others.

 
… Nestor shall apply
 

When Agamemnon is done, the oldest of the Greek leaders stands up to second his words:

 
With due observance of thy godlike seat,
Great Agamemnon, Nestor shall apply Thy latest words.
 

—Act I, scene iii, lines 31-33

In the Iliad Nestor is active among the Greeks despite the fact that he is described as ruling over the third generation of subjects. Although he is so old, he survives to see Troy sacked. Then, ten years after the fall of that city, when the last of the Greek warriors returns home, Nestor is still alive and still ruling in his city of Pylos on the southwestern shore of Greece. Pylos, like Mycenae, was an important center in the time of the Trojan War, but faded away in later tunes. It left not even a village behind.

The frequent reference to Nestor's age made some of the Roman writers grant him two hundred years, but that is not really necessary. In the Mycenaean Age it is quite likely that the life expectancy would be no more than twenty-five to thirty years, and that few men would reach forty before violence or disease laid them low. If Nestor was seventy years old at the time of the play he would be ruling over the third generation of men, and even ten years after the fall of Troy, he would be only eighty.

An occasional person could reach such an age, even in the short-lived times of the ancients, but certainly he would represent a marvel.

In the Iliad Nestor is shown in the field, driving his chariot. He does not actually engage in combat, but he is always there overseeing his forces. What's more, he is constantly giving advice in long-winded speeches, and although no one in the Iliad ever indicates that he is bored by Nestor, it seems clear that Nestor is a bore just the same. He is forever recalling the feats of his youth and one gets the idea that the same feats must surely have been recalled over and over again. The old man seems more obviously a bore in Shakespeare's version.

 
The gentle Thetis …
 

Nestor seconds Agamemnon's views. The old man points out that any-} one can succeed when the task is easy, but that great enterprises call out the best in man. On calm seas, any ship can sail, but on stormy seas, it is the strong vessel that makes its mark. Nestor says:

 
But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage
The gentle Thetis, and anon behold
The strong-ribbed bark through liquid mountains cut,
Bounding between the two moist elements
Like Perseus' horse,
 

—Act I, scene iii, lines 38-42

Boreas is the personification of the north wind and Thetis is used here as the personification of the ocean, but that is wrong. There is common confusion between Thetis and Tethys. The latter was a Titaness and the wife of Oceanus (who is clearly the god of the ocean), so that Tethys can serve as a feminine version of the personification.

Thetis, in her own right, plays an important role in the Greek myths and in the Iliad particularly. She is a sea nymph (all the easier to confuse her with Tethys) and it was she who brought Briareus to the rescue of Jupiter (see page I-86).

Thetis' beauty was such that both Jupiter and Neptune tried to win her, until they found out she was fated to have a son stronger than his father. It was unsafe for either god, or any god, to marry her in that case, and she was forced to marry a mortal. The mortal chosen was a Thessalian prince named Peleus, and at the marriage (pushed through much against the will of Thetis) all the gods and goddesses assembled.

It was at this wedding that Eris appeared with her Apple of Discord. What's more, born of this marriage was Achilles, who was, indeed, far stronger than his father Peleus.

In the Iliad Thetis makes several appearances in her role as Achilles' mother, bewailing the fact that her son was fated to endless glory but short life.

The reference to Perseus' horse is to the famous winged stallion Pegasus. Perseus was a Greek hero in the generations before the Trojan War, whose great feat was the destruction of Medusa, one of the three Gorgons, whose appearance was so fearful that they turned to stone anyone who looked at them. With divine help, Perseus was able to cut off the head of Medusa. The blood that dripped from it, on striking the ground, gave rise to Pegasus, who leaped up at once and winged his way into the sky. In that sense, he was Perseus' horse, though there was no further connection between the two.

 
… hear Ulysses speak
 

When Nestor is finished, the shrewdest of the Greeks arises, and addressing the two preceding speakers says:

 
… let it please both Thou great, and wise,
to hear Ulysses speak.
 

—Act I, scene iii, lines 68-69

As Nestor is the very personification of the rather tedious wisdom of age, so Ulysses (Odysseus) is the very personification of shrewdness and clever, but not always ethical, strategy. This comes out even better in Homer's companion poem, the Odyssey, which deals with Ulysses' return home after the fall of Troy, and of the ten years of adventures he survives through cleverness and endurance.

The later tales of the Troy cycle attributed to Ulysses all the clever stratagems devised by the Greeks, notably that of the wooden horse itself, with which the fall of Troy was finally encompassed. Since cleverness easily degenerates into slyness and rascality, some of the later myths picture Ulysses as a deceitful coward. None of that, however, appears anywhere in Homer, where Ulysses is depicted as uniformly admirable. Nor does it appear in Shakespeare's play.

 
… Prince of Ithaca
 

Agamemnon says at once:

 
Speak, Prince of Ithaca;
 

—Act I, scene iii, line 70

Ithaca is the home island of Ulysses; its exact location is not certain. Indeed, it has been an interesting game among classical scholars to try to determine which Greek island it might be from the descriptions given in the Odyssey.

The general feeling is that it is one of the Ionian Islands off the west coast of Greece. The particular island (called "Ithake" on modern maps) is small, only thirty-six square miles in area, and some twenty miles from the mainland. It is surrounded by larger islands, which presumably also represented part of Ulysses' domain.

 
… rank Thersites …
 

Agamemnon states that there is as much chance that Ulysses will utter folly as that:

 
When rank Thersites opes his mastic jaws,
We shall hear music, wit, and oracle.
 

—Act I, scene iii, lines 73-74

Thersites plays one small part in the Iliad. He is the only common man, the only non-aristocrat, mentioned by name, and Homer has a field day at his expense, describing him as: "-a certain Thersites, who had no control over his tongue, and poured out an endless stream of abuse against his superiors, saying whatever came into his head that might raise a laugh. Thersites was by far the ugliest man in the Greek army: bandylegged, lame, hump-backed, crook-necked and bald."

His appearance is in Book Two, where as a result of a miscalculation by Agamemnon, the Greek army is about to break up and make for home. Ulysses is desperately trying to stop them when Thersites breaks into invective against Agamemnon and keeps it up until he is stopped by a blow from Ulysses and some stern words.

That is all! It must be remembered that the Iliad was written about aristocrats and for an aristocratic audience, and, moreover, that it was aristocratic patronage that kept bards in comfort. Homer and those like him could scarcely afford to portray a common man successfully running down warriors and noblemen.

And yet, if one reads Thersites' speech in the one scene given him, it makes good sense. He scolds Agamemnon for hogging the best of the loot and for offending Achilles, on whom the Greek victory most depends. It was all true enough, and the blow he received did not alter that fact. Homer may have been having his moment of grim fun with the aristocrats.

Shakespeare, who was likewise patronized by aristocrats and who likewise rarely showed the common people in a good light, adopted Thersites as part of the comic relief in the play, though it is black comedy indeed. Thersites' mastic (that is, abusive) jaws never open without spewing out untold bitterness, and we are prepared for that in this comment of Agamemnon's.

 
… the glorious planet Sol
 

Ulysses points out that the trouble with the Greek force rests in its divisions, the existence within it of factions that neutralize its efforts. This lack of central authority, he maintains, is against nature itself, for inanimate nature shows the beneficial effects of order even in the heavens, where the planets move through the sky in strict accordance with certain rules:

 
And therefore is the glorious planet
Sol In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Amidst the other; whose med'cinable eye
Corrects the influence of evil planets,
 

—Act I, scene iii, lines 89-92

"Sol" is the Latin word for "sun" and is the personification of the sun in the Roman myths.

This passage sounds as though Shakespeare, through Ulysses' mouth, is proclaiming the sun to be the ruler of the planets, for he is "in noble eminence enthroned" and he governs and controls the others.

If so, this is a startlingly modern view, not only for Ulysses, but even for Shakespeare, for it seems to refer to the heliocentric theory of the solar system, which places the sun at the center and makes the planets (including the earth itself) revolve about it. The mere fact that the sun is at the center would make it appear to rule the planetary system (so that it is a solar system), and Isaac Newton eventually showed, some sixty-seven years after Shakespeare's death, that the sun's overwhelming gravitational force did, indeed, keep the planets in their place.

It is surprising that Shakespeare should seem to be giving this impression, for all through his plays he shows himself a complete conservative as far as science is concerned and accepts only the Greek view of the universe. To be sure, some Greeks, notably Aristarchus of Samos, about 250 b.c., claimed the sun was the center of the planetary system, but few listened to them, and the Greek majority view continued to place the earth at the center. This latter doctrine was made final by the grand synthesis of the astronomer Ptolemy, about a.d. 150. (The earth-at-center theory is therefore called the "Ptolemaic system" in consequence.)

In 1543 Copernicus advanced the same notion that Aristarchus once had, but with much more detailed reasoning. His view was not accepted by most scholars for a long time, and in Shakespeare's lifetime the Copernican view was still widely considered rather far out and blasphemous.

Can Shakespeare, then, be taking the progressive Copernican view against the conservative Ptolemaic attitude?

No! That he remains conservative is clear at several points. He refers, for instance, to the "planet Sol." The Greeks observed that several heavenly bodies shifted position constantly against the background of non-shifting of "fixed" stars. These bodies they called "planets," meaning, in English, "wanderers." The known planets included the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, seven bodies in all.

Once the Copernican view of the planetary system was established, it seemed unreasonable to call the sun a planet, since it didn't wander among the stars, really, but was thought to be the motionless center of the planetary system.

It fell out of fashion to call the sun a planet, therefore. The name "planet" was then applied only to those bodies which revolved about the sun. This meant that the earth itself would have to be viewed as a planet. The moon revolves about the earth, the only body to retain its Ptolemaic position, and it is not, strictly speaking, viewed as a planet any longer. It is a satellite. Of the Greek planets, therefore, only Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn retain the name and to these are added the earth and the planetary bodies since discovered: Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and a host of tiny bodies called planetoids or asteroids.

Shakespeare refers to Sol as a planet, however, thus insisting that the sun moves and is not the center of the planetary system. He has the sun not merely enthroned but also "sphered." That is, it is embedded in a sphere that encircles the earth (see page I-25), whereas if it were the center of the planetary system, it could not be part of a sphere.

Finally, in speaking of the necessity of order in the heavens, Shakespeare has Ulysses say, a bit earlier in the speech:

 
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center
Observe degree, priority, and place.
 

—Act I, scene iii, lines 85-86

That makes a clear distinction between the planets and "this center," that is, earth.

If the sun is "in noble eminence enthroned," then, it is only because, in Shakespeare's view, it is the brightest and most magnificent of the planets and not because it has a central position.

 
In evil mixture …
 

Ulysses goes on to point out the harmful effects of disorder in the heavens:

 
But when the planets
In evil mixture to disorder wander,
What plagues, and what portents, what mutiny,
 

—Act I, scene iii, lines 94-96

This seems to reflect the universal belief in astrology in Greek times, in Shakespeare's times, and, for that matter, in our own times. The planets were supposed to influence matters on earth by their ever changing positions against the stars and relative to each other. Certain positions foreboded evil and therefore represented "the planets in evil mixture."

And yet the motions of the planets followed a fixed pattern that could be worked out, and was worked out, by Greek astronomers (a thousand years after the Trojan War, to be sure) so that such "evil mixture" could not really represent disorder. They followed inevitably from planetary motion.

There were, however, some heavenly phenomena which were very spectacular and which took place only rarely; notably eclipses of the sun and of the moon. These therefore were particularly baleful and frightening, and remained signs of apparent disorder in the heavens even after they had been explained astronomically and had been proven to be predictable.