Текст книги "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition"

Автор книги: William Shakespeare

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1.3 Sennet. Enter Agamemnon, Nestor, Ulysses, Diomedes, and Menelaus, with others

AGAMEMNON

Princes, what grief hath set the jaundice on your

cheeks?

The ample proposition that hope makes

In all designs begun on earth below

Fails in the promised largeness. Checks and disasters

Grow in the veins of actions highest reared,

As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,

Infects the sound pine and diverts 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 seven years’ siege yet Troy walls stand,

Sith every action that hath gone before,

Whereof we have record, trial 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 abashed behold our works,

And think them shames, which are indeed naught else

But the protractive trials of great Jove

To find persistive constancy in men?

The fineness of which mettle 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 affined and kin.

But in the wind and tempest of her frown

Distinction with a loud and powerful fan,

Puffing at all, winnows the light away,

And what hath mass or matter by itself

Lies rich in virtue and unminglèd.

NESTOR

With due observance of thy godly 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 nobler bulk!

But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage

The gentle Thetis, and anon behold

The strong-ribbed barque through liquid mountains

cut,

Bounding between the two moist elements

Like Perseus’ horse. Where’s then the saucy boat

Whose weak untimbered sides but even now

Co-rivalled greatness? Either to harbour fled,

Or made a toast for Neptune. Even so

Doth valour’s show and valour’s worth divide

In storms of fortune. For in her ray and brightness

The herd hath more annoyance by the breese

Than by the tiger; but when the splitting wind

Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks

And flies flee under shade, why then the thing of

courage,

As roused with rage, with rage doth sympathize,

And with an accent tuned in selfsame key

Retorts to chiding fortune.

ULYSSES 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, (to Agamemnon) most mighty for thy place

and sway,

And thou, (to Nestor) most reverend for thy stretched-out

life,

I give to both your speeches—which were such

As, Agamemnon, every hand of Greece

Should hold up high in brass, and such again

As, venerable Nestor, hatched in silver,

Should with a bond of air, strong as the axle-tree

On which the heavens ride, knit all Greeks’ ears

To his experienced tongue—yet let it please both,

Thou (to Agamemnon) great, and (to Nestor) wise, to

hear Ulysses speak.

AGAMEMNON

Speak, Prince of Ithaca, and be’t of less expect

That matter needless, of importless burden,

Divide thy lips, than we are confident

When rank Thersites opes his mastic jaws

We shall hear music, wit, and oracle.

ULYSSES

Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down

And the great Hector’s sword had lacked 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 shows as fairly in the masque

⌈ ⌉.

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre

Observe degree, priority, and place,

Infixture, course, proportion, season, form,

Office and custom, in all line of order.

And therefore is the glorious planet Sol

In noble eminence enthroned and sphered

Amidst the other, whose med‘cinable eye

Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil

And posts like the commandment 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. O when degree is shaked,

Which is the ladder to all high designs,

The enterprise is sick. How could communities,

Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,

Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,

The primogenity 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 no

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,

Should lose their names, and so should justice too.

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 in 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 ’tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,

Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length:

Troy in our weakness lives, not in her strength.

NESTOR

Most wisely hath Ulysses here discovered

The fever whereof all our power is sick.

AGAMEMNON

The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses,

What is the remedy?

ULYSSES

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 scurrile 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

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 dressed to some oration.’

That’s done as near as the extremest ends

Of parallels, as like as Vulcan and his wife.

Yet god 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 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,

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.

NESTOR

And in the imitation of these twain

Who, as Ulysses says, opinion crowns

With an imperial voice, many are infect.

Ajax is grown self-willed and bears his head

In such a rein, in full as proud a place

As broad Achilles, and 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 so ever rounded in with danger.

ULYSSES

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 enemy’s weight,

Why, this hath not a finger’s dignity.

They call this ‘bed-work’, ‘mapp’ry’, ‘closet war’.

So that the ram that batters down the wall,

For the great swinge and rudeness of his poise

They place before his hand that made the engine,

Or those that with the finesse of their souls

By reason guide his execution.

NESTOR

Let this be granted, and Achilles’ horse

Makes many Thetis’ sons.

Tucket

AGAMEMNON

What trumpet?

Look, Menelaus.

MENELAUS

From Troy.

Enter Aeneas ⌈and a trumpeter⌉

AGAMEMNON What would you fore our tent?

AENEAS

Is this great Agamemnon’s tent I pray you?

AGAMEMNON Even this.

AENEAS

May one that is a herald and a prince

Do a fair message to his kingly ears?

AGAMEMNON

With surety stronger than Achilles’ arm,

Fore all the Greekish heads, which with one voice

Call Agamemnon heart and general.

AENEAS

Fair leave and large security. How may

A stranger to those most imperial looks

Know them from eyes of other mortals?

AGAMEMNON How?

AENEAS

Ay, I ask that I might waken reverence

And on the cheek be ready with a blush

Modest as morning when she coldly eyes

The youthful Phoebus.

Which is that god in office, guiding men?

Which is the high and mighty Agamemnon?

AGAMEMNON (to the Greeks)

This Trojan scorns us, or the men of Troy

Are ceremonious courtiers.

AENEAS

Courtiers as free, as debonair, unarmed,

As bending angels—that’s their fame in peace.

But when they would seem soldiers they have galls,

Good arms, strong joints, true swords—and great

Jove’s acorn

Nothing so full of heart. But peace, Aeneas,

Peace, Trojan; lay thy finger on thy lips.

The worthiness of praise distains his worth,

If that the praised himself bring the praise forth.

But what, repining, the enemy commends,

That breath fame blows; that praise, sole pure,

transcends.

AGAMEMNON

Sir, you of Troy, call you yourself Aeneas?

AENEAS

Ay, Greek, that is my name.

AGAMEMNON What’s your affair, I pray you?

AENEAS

Sir, pardon, ’tis for Agamemnon’s ears.

AGAMEMNON

He hears naught privately that comes from Troy.

AENEAS

Nor I from Troy come not to whisper him.

I bring a trumpet to awake his ear,

To set his sense on the attentive bent,

And then to speak.

AGAMEMNON Speak frankly as the wind.

It is not Agamemnon’s sleeping hour.

That thou shalt know, Trojan, he is awake,

He tells thee so himself.

AENEAS Trumpet, blow loud.

Send thy brass voice through all these lazy tents,

And every Greek of mettle let him know

What Troy means fairly shall be spoke aloud.

The trumpet sounds

We have, great Agamemnon, here in Troy

A prince called Hector—Priam is his father—

Who in this dull and long-continued truce

Is resty grown. He bade me take a trumpet

And to this purpose speak: ‘Kings, princes, lords,

If there be one among the fair’st of Greece

That holds his honour higher than his ease,

That seeks his praise more than he fears his peril,

That knows his valour and knows not his fear,

That loves his mistress more than in confession

With truant vows to her own lips he loves,

And dare avow her beauty and her worth

In other arms than hers—to him this challenge.

Hector in view of Trojans and of Greeks

Shall make it good, or do his best to do it:

He hath a lady wiser, fairer, truer,

Than ever Greek did compass in his arms,

And will tomorrow 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 honour him.

If none, he’ll say in Troy when he retires

The Grecian dames are sunburnt and not worth

The splinter of a lance.’ Even so much.

AGAMEMNON

This shall be told our lovers, Lord Aeneas.

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’ll be he.

NESTOR (to Aeneas)

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 mould

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 vambrace put this withered brawn,

And meeting him will tell him that my lady

Was fairer than his grandam, and as chaste

As may be in the world. His youth in flood,

I’ll prove this truth with my three drops of blood.

AENEAS

Now heavens forbid such scarcity of youth.

ULYSSES Amen.

AGAMEMNON

Fair Lord Aeneas, let me touch your hand.

To our pavilion shall I lead you first.

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.

Exeunt all but Ulysses and Nestor

ULYSSES

Nestor!

NESTOR What says Ulysses?

ULYSSES I have a young

Conception in my brain; be you my time

To bring it to some shape.

NESTOR What is’t?

ULYSSES This ’tis:

Blunt wedges rive hard knots. The seeded pride

That hath to this maturity blown up

In rank Achilles must or now be cropped

Or, shedding, breed a nursery of like evil

To overbulk us all.

NESTOR Well, and how?

ULYSSES

This challenge that the gallant Hector sends,

However it is spread in general name,

Relates in purpose only to Achilles.

NESTOR

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 Libya—though, Apollo knows,

’Tis dry enough—will with great speed of judgement,

Ay with celerity, find Hector’s purpose

Pointing on him.

ULYSSES

And wake him to the answer, think you?

NESTOR

Yes, ‘tis most meet. Who may you else oppose,

That can from Hector bring his honour off,

If not Achilles? Though’t be a sportful combat,

Yet in this 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,

Although particular, shall give a scantling

Of good or bad unto the general—

And in such indices, although small pricks

To their subsequent volumes, there is seen

The baby figure of the giant mass

Of things to come at large. It is supposed

He that meets Hector issues from our choice,

And choice, being mutual act of all our souls,

Makes merit her election, and doth boil,

As ’twere, from forth us all a man distilled

Out of our virtues—who miscarrying,

What heart from hence receives the conqu‘ring part

To steel a strong opinion to themselves?

Which entertained, limbs are e’en his instruments,

In no less working than are swords and bows

Directive by the limbs.

ULYSSES Give pardon to my speech:

Therefore ’tis meet Achilles meet not Hector.

Let us like merchants show our foulest wares

And think perchance they’ll sell. If not,

The lustre of the better yet to show

Shall show the better. Do not consent

That ever Hector and Achilles meet,

For both our honour and our shame in this

Are dogged with two strange followers.

NESTOR

I see them not with my old eyes. What are they?

ULYSSES

What glory our Achilles shares from Hector,

Were he not proud we all should wear with him.

But he already is too insolent,

And we were better parch in Afric sun

Than in the pride and salt scorn of his eyes,

Should he scape Hector fair. If he were foiled,

Why then we did our main opinion crush

In taint of our best man. No, make a lott’ry,

And by device let blockish Ajax draw

The sort to fight with Hector. Among ourselves

Give him allowance as the worthier man—

For that will physic the great Myrmidon,

Who broils in loud applause, and make him fall

His crest, that prouder than blue Iris bends.

If the dull brainless Ajax come safe off,

We’ll dress him up in voices; if he fail,

Yet go we under our opinion still

That we have better men. But hit or miss,

Our project’s life this shape of sense assumes:

Ajax employed plucks down Achilles’ plumes.

NESTOR

Now, Ulysses, I begin to relish thy advice,

And I will give a taste of it forthwith

To Agamemnon. Go we to him straight.

Two curs shall tame each other; pride alone

Must tarre the mastiffs on, as ’twere their bone.

Exeunt

2.1 Enter Ajax and Thersites

AJAX Thersites.

THERSITES Agamemnon—how if he had boils, full, all over, generally?

AJAX Thersites.

THERSITES And those boils did run? Say so, did not the General run then? Were not that a botchy core?

AJAX Dog.

THERSITES Then there would come some matter from him.

I see none now.

AJAX Thou bitch-wolf’s son, canst thou not hear? Feel then.

He strikes Thersites

THERSITES The plague of Greece upon thee, thou mongrel beef-witted lord!

AJAX Speak then, thou unsifted leaven, speak! I will beat thee into handsomeness.

THERSITES I shall sooner rail thee into wit and holiness. But I think thy horse will sooner con an oration than thou learn a prayer without book.

⌈Ajax strikes him⌉

Thou canst strike, canst thou? A red murrain o’ thy jade’s tricks.

AJAX Toad’s stool!

⌈He strikes Thersites⌉

Learn me the proclamation.

THERSITES Dost thou think I have no sense, thou strikest me thus?

AJAX The proclamation.

THERSITES Thou art proclaimed a fool, I think.

AJAX Do not, porcupine, do not. My fingers itch.

THERSITES I would thou didst itch from head to foot. An I had the scratching of thee, I would make thee the loathsomest scab in Greece.

AJAX I say, the proclamation.

THERSITES Thou grumblest and railest every hour on Achilles, and thou art as full of envy at his greatness as Cerberus is at Proserpina’s beauty, ay, that thou barkest at him.

AJAX Mistress Thersites.

THERSITES Thou shouldst strike him.

AJAX Cobloaf.

THERSITES He would pun thee into shivers with his fist, as a sailor breaks a biscuit.

AJAX You whoreson cur.

⌈He strikes Thersites⌉

THERSITES Do! Do!

AJAX Thou stool for a witch.

⌈He strikes Thersites⌉

THERSITES Ay, do, do! Thou sodden-witted lord, thou hast in thy skull no more brain than I have in mine elbows. An asnico may tutor thee. Thou scurvy valiant ass, thou art here but 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.

THERSITES You scurvy lord.

AJAX You cur.

⌈He strikes Thersites⌉

THERSITES Mars his idiot! Do, rudeness! Do, camel, do, do!

Enter Achilles and Patroclus

ACHILLES

Why, how now, Ajax? Wherefore do ye thus?

How now, Thersites? What’s the matter, man?

THERSITES You see him there? Do you?

ACHILLES Ay. What’s the matter?

THERSITES Nay, look upon him.

ACHILLES So I do. What’s the matter?

THERSITES Nay, but regard him well.

ACHILLES ‘Well’? Why, I do so.

THERSITES But yet you look not well upon him. For whosomever you take him to be, he is Ajax.

ACHILLES I know that, fool.

THERSITES Ay, but ‘that fool’ knows not himself.

AJAX Therefore I beat thee.

THERSITES 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.

ACHILLES What?

THERSITES I say, this Ajax—

⌈Ajax threatens to strike him⌉

ACHILLES Nay, good Ajax.

THERSITES Has not so much wit—

⌈Ajax threatens to strike him⌉

ACHILLES (to Ajax) Nay, I must hold you.

THERSITES As will stop the eye of Helen’s needle, for whom he comes to fight.

ACHILLES Peace, fool.

THERSITES 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—

ACHILLES (to Ajax) Will you set your wit to a fool’s?

THERSITES No, I warrant you, for a fool’s will shame it.

PATROCLUS Good words, Thersites.

ACHILLES (to Ajax) What’s the quarrel?

AJAX I bade the vile owl go learn me the tenor of the proclamation, and he rails upon me.

THERSITES I serve thee not.

AJAX Well, go to, go to.

THERSITES I serve here voluntary.

ACHILLES Your last service was sufferance. ‘Twas not voluntary: no man is beaten voluntary. Ajax was here the voluntary, and you as under an impress.

THERSITES E’en so. A great deal of your wit, too, lies in your sinews, or else there be liars. Hector shall have a great catch an a knock out either of your brains. A were as good crack a fusty nut with no kernel.

ACHILLES What, with me too, Thersites?

THERSITES 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 war.

ACHILLES What? What?

THERSITES Yes, good sooth. To Achilles! To, Ajax, to—

AJAX I shall cut out your tongue.

THERSITES ’Tis no matter. I shall speak as much wit as thou afterwards.

PATROCLUS No more words, Thersites, peace.

THERSITES I will hold my peace when Achilles’ brach bids me, shall I?

ACHILLES There’s for you, Patroclus.

THERSITES I will see you hanged like clodpolls ere I come any more to your tents. I will keep where there is wit stirring, and leave the faction of fools.

Exit

PATROCLUS A good riddance.

ACHILLES (to Ajax)

Marry, this, sir, is proclaimed through all our host:

That Hector, by the fifth hour of the sun,

Will with a trumpet ‘twixt our tents and Troy

Tomorrow morning call some knight to arms

That hath a stomach, and such a one that dare

Maintain—I know not what. ’Tis trash. Farewell.

AJAX Farewell. Who shall answer him?

ACHILLES

I know not. ‘Tis put to lott’ry. Otherwise,

He knew his man. ⌈Exeunt Achilles and Patroclus⌉

AJAX O, meaning you? I will go learn more of it.

⌈Exit⌉