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

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2.2 ⌈Sennet.⌉ Enter King Priam, Hector, Troilus, Paris, and Helenus

PRIAM

After so many hours, lives, speeches spent,

Thus once again says Nestor from the Greeks:

‘Deliver Helen, and all damage else—

As honour, loss of time, travail, expense,

Wounds, friends, and what else dear that is consumed

In hot digestion of this cormorant war—

Shall be struck off.’ Hector, what say you to’t?

HECTOR

Though no man lesser fears the Greeks than I,

As far as toucheth my particular, yet, dread Priam,

There is no lady of more softer bowels,

More spongy to suck in the sense of fear,

More ready to cry out, ‘Who knows what follows?’

Than Hector is. The wound of peace is surety,

Surety secure; but modest doubt is called

The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches

To th’ bottom of the worst. Let Helen go.

Since the first sword was drawn about this question,

Every tithe-soul, ’mongst many thousand dimes,

Hath been as dear as Helen—I mean, of ours.

If we have lost so many tenths of ours

To guard a thing not ours—nor worth to us,

Had it our name, the value of one ten—

What merit’s in that reason which denies

The yielding of her up?

TROILUS

Fie, fie, my brother!

Weigh you the worth and honour of a king

So great as our dread father in a scale

Of common ounces? Will you with counters sum

The past-proportion of his infinite,

And buckle in a waist most fathomless

With spans and inches so diminutive

As fears and reasons? Fie, for godly shame!

HELENUS

No marvel though you bite so sharp at reasons,

You are so empty of them. Should not our father

Bear the great sway of his affairs with reason

Because your speech hath none that tells him so?

TROILUS

You are for dreams and slumbers, brother priest.

You fur your gloves with ‘reason’. Here are your

reasons:

You know an enemy intends you harm,

You know a sword employed is perilous,

And reason flies the object of all harm.

Who marvels then, when Helenus beholds

A Grecian and his sword, if he do set

The very wings of reason to his heels

And fly like chidden Mercury from Jove,

Or like a star disorbed? Nay, if we talk of reason,

Let’s shut our gates and sleep. Manhood and honour

Should have hare hearts, would they but fat their

thoughts

With this crammed reason. Reason and respect

Make livers pale and lustihood deject.

HECTOR

Brother, she is not worth what she doth cost

The holding.

TROILUS What’s aught but as ’tis valued?

HECTOR

But value dwells not in particular will.

It holds his estimate and dignity

As well wherein ‘tis precious of itself

As in the prizer. ’Tis mad idolatry

To make the service greater than the god;

And the will dotes that is inclinable

To what infectiously itself affects

Without some image of th’affected merit.

TROILUS

I take today a wife, and my election

Is led on in the conduct of my will;

My will enkindled by mine eyes and ears,

Two traded pilots ‘twixt the dangerous shores

Of will and judgement. How may I avoid—

Although my will distaste what it elected—

The wife I chose? There can be no evasion

To blench from this and to stand firm by honour.

We turn not back the silks upon the merchant

When we have spoiled them; nor the remainder viands

We do not throw in unrespective sewer

Because we now are full. It was thought meet

Paris should do some vengeance on the Greeks.

Your breath of full consent bellied his sails;

The seas and winds, old wranglers, took a truce

And did him service. He touched the ports desired,

And for an old aunt whom the Greeks held captive

He brought a Grecian queen, whose youth and freshness

Wrinkles Apollo’s and makes stale the morning.

Why keep we her? The Grecians keep our aunt.

Is she worth keeping? Why, she is a pearl

Whose price hath launched above a thousand ships

And turned crowned kings to merchants.

If you’ll avouch ’twas wisdom Paris went—

As you must needs, for you all cried, ‘Go, go!’;

If you’ll confess he brought home noble prize—

As you must needs, for you all clapped your hands

And cried, ‘Inestimable!’—why do you now

The issue of your proper wisdoms rate,

And do a deed that never fortune did:

Beggar the estimation which you prized

Richer than sea and land? O theft most base,

That we have stol’n what we do fear to keep!

But thieves unworthy of a thing so stol’n,

That in their country did them that disgrace

We fear to warrant in our native place.

CASSANDRA ⌈within⌉

Cry, Trojans, cry!

PRIAM What noise? What shriek is this?

TROILUS

’Tis our mad sister. I do know her voice.

CASSANDRA ⌈within⌉ Cry, Trojans!

HECTOR It is Cassandra.

⌈Enter Cassandra raving, with her hair about her ears⌉

CASSANDRA

Cry, Trojans, cry! Lend me ten thousand eyes

And I will fill them with prophetic tears.

HECTOR Peace, sister, peace.

CASSANDRA

Virgins and boys, mid-age, and wrinkled old,

Soft infancy that nothing canst but cry,

Add to my clamours. Let us pay betimes

A moiety of that mass of moan to come.

Cry, Trojans, cry! Practise your eyes with tears.

Troy must not be, nor goodly Ilium stand.

Our firebrand brother, Paris, burns us all.

Cry, Trojans, cry! Ah Helen, and ah woe!

Cry, cry ‘Troy burns!’—or else let Helen go. Exit

HECTOR

Now, youthful Troilus, do not these high strains

Of divination in our sister work

Some touches of remorse? Or is your blood

So madly hot that no discourse of reason,

Nor fear of bad success in a bad cause,

Can qualify the same?

TROILUS

Why, brother Hector,

We may not think the justness of each act

Such and no other than the event doth form it,

Nor once deject the courage of our minds

Because Cassandra’s mad. Her brainsick raptures

Cannot distaste the goodness of a quarrel

Which hath our several honours all engaged

To make it gracious. For my private part,

I am no more touched than all Priam’s sons.

And Jove forbid there should be done amongst us

Such things as might offend the weakest spleen

To fight for and maintain.

PARIS

Else might the world convince of levity

As well my undertakings as your counsels.

But I attest the gods, your full consent

Gave wings to my propension and cut off

All fears attending on so dire a project.

For what, alas, can these my single arms?

What propugnation is in one man’s valour

To stand the push and enmity of those

This quarrel would excite? Yet I protest,

Were I alone to pass the difficulties

And had as ample power as I have will,

Paris should ne’er retract what he hath done

Nor faint in the pursuit.

PRIAM

Paris, you speak

Like one besotted on your sweet delights.

You have the honey still, but these the gall.

So to be valiant is no praise at all.

PARIS

Sir, I propose not merely to myself

The pleasures such a beauty brings with it,

But I would have the soil of her fair rape

Wiped off in honourable keeping her.

What treason were it to the ransacked queen,

Disgrace to your great worths, and shame to me,

Now to deliver her possession up

On terms of base compulsion? Can it be

That so degenerate a strain as this

Should once set footing in your generous bosoms?

There’s not the meanest spirit on our party

Without a heart to dare or sword to draw

When Helen is defended; nor none so noble

Whose life were ill bestowed or death unfamed

Where Helen is the subject. Then I say:

Well may we fight for her whom we know well

The world’s large spaces cannot parallel.

HECTOR

Paris and Troilus, you have both said well,

But on the cause and question now in hand

Have glossed but superficially—not much

Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought

Unfit to hear moral philosophy.

The reasons you allege do more conduce

To the hot passion of distempered blood

Than to make up a free determination

‘Twixt right and wrong; for pleasure and revenge

Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice

Of any true decision. Nature craves

All dues be rendered to their owners. Now,

What nearer debt in all humanity

Than wife is to the husband? If this law

Of nature be corrupted through affection,

And that great minds, of partial indulgence

To their benumbed wills, resist the same,

There is a law in each well-ordered nation

To curb those raging appetites that are

Most disobedient and refractory.

If Helen then be wife to Sparta’s king,

As it is known she is, these moral laws

Of nature and of nations speak aloud

To have her back returned. Thus to persist

In doing wrong extenuates not wrong,

But makes it much more heavy. Hector’s opinion

Is this in way of truth—yet ne’ertheless,

My sprightly brethren, I propend to you

In resolution to keep Helen still;

For ’tis a cause that hath no mean dependence

Upon our joint and several dignities.

TROILUS

Why, there you touched the life of our design.

Were it not glory that we more affected

Than the performance of our heaving spleens,

I would not wish a drop of Trojan blood

Spent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector,

She is a theme of honour and renown,

A spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds,

Whose present courage may beat down our foes,

And fame in time to come canonize us—

For I presume brave Hector would not lose

So rich advantage of a promised glory

As smiles upon the forehead of this action

For the wide world’s revenue.

HECTOR

I am yours,

You valiant offspring of great Priamus.

I have a roisting challenge sent amongst

The dull and factious nobles of the Greeks

Will shriek amazement to their drowsy spirits.

I was advertised their great general slept

Whilst emulation in the army crept;

This I presume will wake him.

⌈Flourish.⌉ Exeunt

2.3 Enter Thersites

THERSITES How now, Thersites? What, lost in the labyrinth of thy fury? Shall the elephant Ajax carry it thus? He beats me and I rail at him. O worthy satisfaction! Would it were otherwise: that I could beat him whilst he railed at me. ‘Sfoot, I’ll learn to conjure and raise devils but I’ll see some issue of my spiteful execrations. Then there’s Achilles: a rare engineer. If Troy be not taken till these two undermine it, the walls will stand till they fall of themselves. O thou great thunder-darter of Olympus, forget that thou art Jove, the king of gods; and Mercury, lose all the serpentine craft of thy caduceus, if ye take not that little, little, less than little wit from them that they have—which short-armed ignorance itself knows is so abundant-scarce it will not in circumvention deliver a fly from a spider without drawing their massy irons and cutting the web. After this, the vengeance on the whole camp—or rather, the Neapolitan bone-ache, for that methinks is the curse dependent on those that war for a placket. I have said my prayers, and devil Envy say ‘Amen’.—What ho! My lord Achilles!

Enter Patroclus ⌈at the door to the tent⌉

PATROCLUS Who’s there? Thersites? Good Thersites, come in and rail. ⌈Exit⌉

THERSITES If I could ha’ remembered a gilt counterfeit, thou wouldst not have slipped out of my contemplation; but it is no matter. Thyself upon thyself! The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance, be thine in great revenue! Heaven bless thee from a tutor, and discipline come not near thee! Let thy blood be thy direction till thy death! Then if she that lays thee out says thou art a fair corpse, I’ll be sworn and sworn upon’t she never shrouded any but lazars.

⌈Enter Patroclus⌉

Amen.—Where’s Achilles?

PATROCLUS What, art thou devout? Wast thou in prayer?

THERSITES Ay. The heavens hear me!

PATROCLUS Amen.

Enter Achilles

ACHILLES Who’s there?

PATROCLUS Thersites, my lord.

ACHILLES Where? Where? O where?—Art thou come? Why, my cheese, my digestion, why hast thou not served thyself into my table so many meals? Come: what’s Agamemnon?

THERSITES Thy commander, Achilles.—Then tell me, Patroclus, what’s Achilles?

PATROCLUS Thy lord, Thersites. Then tell me, I pray thee, what’s Thersites?

THERSITES Thy knower, Patroclus. Then tell me, Patroclus, what art thou?

PATROCLUS Thou mayst tell, that knowest.

ACHILLES O tell, tell.

THERSITES I’ll decline the whole question. Agamemnon commands Achilles, Achilles is my lord, I am Patroclus’ knower, and Patroclus is a fool.

PATROCLUS You rascal.

THERSITES Peace, fool, I have not done.

ACHILLES (to Patroclus) He is a privileged man.—Proceed, Thersites.

THERSITES Agamemnon is a fool, Achilles is a fool, Thersites is a fool, and as aforesaid Patroclus is a fool.

ACHILLES Derive this. Come.

THERSITES Agamemnon is a fool to offer to command Achilles; Achilles is a fool to be commanded of Agamemnon; Thersites is a fool to serve such a fool; and Patroclus is a fool positive.

PATROCLUS Why am I a fool?

THERSITES Make that demand to the Creator. It suffices me thou art. Look you, who comes here?

Enter Agamemnon, Ulysses, Nestor, Diomedes, Ajax, and Calchas

ACHILLES Patroclus, I’ll speak with nobody.—Come in with me, Thersites. Exit

THERSITES Here is such patchery, such juggling and such knavery. All the argument is a whore and a cuckold. A good quarrel to draw emulous factions and bleed to death upon. Now the dry serpigo on the subject, and war and lechery confound all. Exit

AGAMEMNON (to Patroclus) Where is Achilles?

PATROCLUS

Within his tent; but ill-disposed, my lord.

AGAMEMNON

Let it be known to him that we are here.

He faced our messengers, and we lay by

Our appertainments, visiting of him.

Let him be told so, lest perchance he think

We dare not move the question of our place,

Or know not what we are.

PATROCLUS I shall so say to him.

⌈Exit⌉

ULYSSES

We saw him at the opening of his tent.

He is not sick.

AJAX Yes, lion-sick: sick of proud heart. You may call it ‘melancholy’ if you will favour the man, but by my head ’tis pride. But why? Why? Let him show us the cause. ⌈To Agamemnon⌉ A word, my lord.

⌈Ajax and Agamemnon talk apart⌉

NESTOR What moves Ajax thus to bay at him?

ULYSSES Achilles hath inveigled his fool from him.

NESTOR Who? Thersites?

ULYSSES He.

NESTOR Then will Ajax lack matter, if he have lost his argument.

ULYSSES No, you see, he is his argument that has his argument: Achilles.

NESTOR All the better—their fraction is more our wish than their faction. But it was a strong council that a fool could disunite.

ULYSSES The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie.

Enter Patroclus

Here comes Patroclus.

NESTOR No Achilles with him.

ULYSSES The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy: his legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure.

PATROCLUS (to Agamemnon)

Achilles bids me say he is much sorry

If anything more than your sport and pleasure

Did move your greatness and this noble state

To call upon him. He hopes it is no other

But for your health and your digestion’s sake: no

An after-dinner’s breath.

AGAMEMNON

Hear you, Patroclus.

We are too well acquainted with these answers.

But his evasion, winged thus swift with scorn,

Cannot outfly our apprehensions.

Much attribute he hath, and much the reason

Why we ascribe it to him. Yet all his virtues,

Not virtuously on his own part beheld,

Do in our eyes begin to lose their gloss,

Yea, and like fair fruit in an unwholesome dish

Are like to rot untasted. Go and tell him

We come to speak with him—and you shall not sin

If you do say we think him over-proud

And under-honest, in self-assumption greater

Than in the note of judgement. And worthier than

himself

Here tend the savage strangeness he puts on,

Disguise the holy strength of their command,

And underwrite in an observing kind

His humorous predominance—yea, watch

His pettish lunes, his ebbs, his flows, as if

The passage and whole carriage of this action

Rode on his tide. Go tell him this, and add

That if he overhold his price so much

We’ll none of him, but let him, like an engine

Not portable, lie under this report:

‘Bring action hither, this cannot go to war.’

A stirring dwarf we do allowance give

Before a sleeping giant. Tell him so.

PATROCLUS

I shall, and bring his answer presently.

AGAMEMNON

In second voice we’ll not be satisfied;

We come to speak with him.—Ulysses, enter you.

Exit Ulysses ⌈with Patroclus⌉

AJAX What is he more than another?

AGAMEMNON No more than what he thinks he is.

AJAX Is he so much? Do you not think he thinks himself a better man than I am?

AGAMEMNON No question.

AJAX Will you subscribe his thought, and say he is?

AGAMEMNON No, noble Ajax. You are as strong, as valiant, as wise, no less noble, much more gentle, and altogether more tractable.

AJAX Why should a man be proud? How doth pride grow? I know not what it is.

AGAMEMNON Your mind is the clearer, Ajax, and your virtues the fairer. He that is proud eats up himself. Pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle—and whatever praises itself but in the deed devours the deed in the praise.

Enter Ulysses

AJAX I do hate a proud man as I hate the engendering of toads.

NESTOR (aside) Yet he loves himself. Is’t not strange?

ULYSSES

Achilles will not to the field tomorrow.

AGAMEMNON

What’s his excuse?

ULYSSES

He doth rely on none,

But carries on the stream of his dispose

Without observance or respect of any,

In will peculiar and in self-admission.

AGAMEMNON

Why, will he not, upon our fair request,

Untent his person and share the air with us?

ULYSSES

Things small as nothing, for request’s sake only,

He makes important. Possessed he is with greatness,

And speaks not to himself but with a pride

That quarrels at self-breath. Imagined worth

Holds in his blood such swoll’n and hot discourse

That ‘twixt his mental and his active parts

Kingdomed Achilles in commotion rages

And batters ’gainst himself. What should I say?

He is so plaguy proud that the death tokens of it

Cry ‘No recovery’.

AGAMEMNON

Let Ajax go to him.

(To Ajax) Dear lord, go you and greet him in his tent.

’Tis said he holds you well and will be led,

At your request, a little from himself.

ULYSSES

O Agamemnon, let it not be so.

We’ll consecrate the steps that Ajax makes

When they go from Achilles. Shall the proud lord

That bastes his arrogance with his own seam

And never suffers matter of the world

Enter his thoughts, save such as do revolve

And ruminate himself—shall he be worshipped

Of that we hold an idol more than he?

No, this thrice-worthy and right valiant lord

Must not so stale his palm, nobly acquired,

Nor by my will assubjugate his merit,

As amply titled as Achilles’ is,

By going to Achilles—

That were to enlard his fat-already pride

And add more coals to Cancer when he burns

With entertaining great Hyperion.

This lord go to him? Jupiter forbid,

And say in thunder ‘Achilles, go to him’.

NESTOR (aside to Diomedes)

O this is well. He rubs the vein of him.

DIOMEDES (aside to Nestor)

And how his silence drinks up this applause.

AJAX

If I go to him, with my armed fist

I’ll pash him o’er the face.

AGAMEMNON O no, you shall not go.

AJAX

An a be proud with me, I’ll feeze his pride.

Let me go to him.

ULYSSES

Not for the worth that hangs upon our quarrel.

AJAX A paltry insolent fellow.

NESTOR (aside) How he describes himself!

AJAX Can he not be sociable?

ULYSSES (aside) The raven chides blackness.

AJAX I’ll let his humour’s blood.

AGAMEMNON (aside) He will be the physician that should be the patient.

AJAX An all men were o’ my mind—

ULYSSES (aside) Wit would be out of fashion.

AJAX A should not bear it so. A should eat swords first.

Shall pride carry it?

NESTOR (aside) An’t would, you’d carry half.

⌈AJAX⌉ A would have ten shares.

⌈ULYSSES⌉ (aside) I will knead him; I’ll make him supple.

He’s not yet through warm.

NESTOR (aside) Farce him with praises. Pour in, pour in!

His ambition is dry.

ULYSSES (to Agamemnon)

My lord, you feed too much on this dislike.

NESTOR (to Agamemnon)

Our noble general, do not do so.

DIOMEDES (to Agamemnon)

You must prepare to fight without Achilles.

ULYSSES

Why, ‘tis this naming of him does him harm.

Here is a man—but ’tis before his face.

I will be silent.

NESTOR Wherefore should you so?

He is not emulous, as Achilles is.

ULYSSES

Know the whole world he is as valiant—

AJAX A whoreson dog, that shall palter thus with us—would he were a Trojan!

NESTOR

What a vice were it in Ajax now—

ULYSSES

If he were proud—

DIOMEDES Or covetous of praise—

ULYSSES

Ay, or surly borne—

DIOMEDES Or strange, or self-affected.

ULYSSES (to Ajax)

Thank the heavens, lord, thou art of sweet composure.

Praise him that got thee, she that gave thee suck.

Famed be thy tutor, and thy parts of nature

Thrice famed beyond, beyond all erudition.

But he that disciplined thine arms to fight—

Let Mars divide eternity in twain,

And give him half. And for thy vigour,

Bull-bearing Milo his addition yield

To sinewy Ajax. I will not praise thy wisdom,

Which like a bourn, a pale, a shore confines

Thy spacious and dilated parts. Here’s Nestor,

Instructed by the antiquary times:

He must, he is, he cannot but be, wise.

But pardon, father Nestor: were your days

As green as Ajax’, and your brain so tempered,

You should not have the eminence of him,

But be as Ajax.

AJAX Shall I call you father?

ULYSSES

Ay, my good son.

DIOMEDES Be ruled by him, Lord Ajax.

ULYSSES (to Agamemnon)

There is no tarrying here: the hart Achilles

Keeps thicket. Please it our great general

To call together all his state of war.

Fresh kings are come today to Troy; tomorrow

We must with all our main of power stand fast.

And here’s a lord, come knights from east to west

And cull their flower, Ajax shall cope the best.

AGAMEMNON

Go we to counsel. Let Achilles sleep.

Light boats sail swift, though greater hulks draw

deep. Exeunt