TROILUS passes over.

Pan. Where? yonder? that's Deiphobus: "Tis Troilus! there's a man, niece!-Hem!-Brave Troilus! the prince of chivalry! Cres. Peace, for shame, peace!

Pan. Mark him; note him;-O brave Troilus !-look well upon him, niece; look you, how his sword is bloodied, and his helm more hack'd than Hector's; And how he looks, and how he goes!-O admirable youth! he ne'er saw three and twenty. Go thy way, Troilus, go thy way; had I a sister were a grace, or a daughter a goddess, he should take his choice. O admirable man! Paris?-Paris is dirt to him; and I warrant, Helen, to change, would give an eye to boot.

Forces pass over the stage.

Cres. Here come more.

Pan. Asses, fools, dolts! chaff and bran, chaff and bran! porridge after meat! I could live and die i'the eyes of Troilus. Ne'er look, ne'er look; the eagles are gone; crows and daws, crows and daws! I had rather be such a man as Troilus, than Agamemnon and all Greece.

Cres. There is among the Greeks, Achilles; a better man than Troilus.

Pan. Achilles? a drayman, a porter, a very camel.

Cres. Well, well.

Pan. Well, well ?-Why, have you any discretion? have you any eyes? Do you know what a man is? Is not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man?

Cres. Ay, a minced man: and then to be baked with no date in the pye,-for then the man's date is out.

Pan. You are such a woman? one knows not at what ward* you lie.

Cres. Upon my back, to defend my belly; upon my wit, to defend my wiles; upon my secrecy, to defend mine honesty; my mask, to defend my beauty; and you, to defend all these: and at all these wards I lie, at a thousand watches.

Pan. Say one of your watches.

Cres. Nay, I'll watch you for that; and that's one of the chiefest of them too: if I cannot ward what I would not have hit, I can watch you for telling how I took the blow; unless it swell past hiding, and then it is past watching.

Pan. You are such another!

Enter TROILUS' Boy.

Boy. Sir, my lord would instantly speak with you.

Pan. Where?

Boy. At your own house; there he unarms him.

Pan. Good boy, tell him I come: [Exit Boy.] I doubt, he be hurt.-Fare ye well, good niece.

Cres. Adieu, uncle.

Pan. I'll be with you, niece, by and by.

* Guard.

Cres. To bring, uncle.

Pan. Ay, a token from Troilus.

Cres. By the same token you are a bawd.

[Exit PANDArus.

Words, vows, griefs, tears, and love's full sacrifice,
Ile offers in another's enterprise:

But more in Troilus thousand fold I see

Than in the glass of Pandar's praise may be;

Yet hold I off. Women are angels, wooing:

Things won are done, joy's soul lies in the doing:

That she beloved knows nought, that knows not this,-
Men prize the thing ungain'd more than it is:
That she was never yet, that ever knew
Love got so sweet, as when desire did sue:
Therefore this maxim out of love I teach,-

Achieved, men us command; ungain'd, beseech :*
Then though my heart's content firm love doth bear,
Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear.

[Exit.

SCENE III.-The Grecian Camp. Before Agamem

non's Tent.

Trumpets. Enter AGAMEMNON, NESTOR, ULYSSES,
MENELAUS, and others.

Agam. 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 rear'd;

As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,

Infect the sound pine, and divert 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 abash'd behold our works;

And think them shames, which are, indeed, nought else
But the protractive trials of great Jove.

To find persistive constancy in men?

The fineness of which metal 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 affin'd and kin:
But, in the wind and tempest of her frown,
Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan,

*I. e. a woman once possessed is under command; but not gained, is still besought.

Capacity.

Twisted and rambling.

§ Since.

Puffing at all, winnows the light away;
And what hath mass, or matter, by itself
Lies, rich in virtue, and unmingled.

Nest. With due observance of thy godlike 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 ribb'd bark through liquid mountains cut,
Bounding between the two moist elements,

Like Perseus' horse: Where's then the saucy boat,
Whose weak untimber'd sides but even now
Co-rival'd 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 brize, †
Than by the tiger: but when the splitting wind
Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks,

And flies fled under shade, why, then, the thing of courage, §
As roused with rage, with rage doth sympathize,

And with an accent turn'd in self-same key,

Returns to chiding || fortune.

Ulyss. 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 the applause and approbation

The which,-most mighty for thy place and sway,

[To AGAMEMNON.

And thou most reverend for thy stretch'd-out life,―[TO NESTOR.

I give to both your speeches,-which were such,

As Agamemnon and the hand of Greece
Should hold up high in brass; and such again,
As venerable Nestor, hatch'd in silver, T

Should with a bond of air (strong as the axletree
On which heaven rides), knit all the Greekish ears
To his experienced tongue, yet let it please both,-

Thou great, and wise, to hear Ulysses speak.

Agam. 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 mastiff jaws,
We shall hear music, wit, and oracle.

*The throne.

+ The gad fly.

↑ (Are).

The tiger, which is said to be most furious in storms. Noisy, clamorous. **Expectation.

I. e. ornamented with a silvery beard.

Ulyss. 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:
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, †
The unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre ‡
Observe degree, priority, and place,

Insisture, § 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 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 merett 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 every thing includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;

And appetite, a universal wolf,

So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce a universal prey,

And, last, eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,

* Rights of authority.

§ Constancy.

**Divided.

† Masked.

I Uproot.

++ Absolute.

I. e. the earth itself. Corporations, companies.

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 disdain'd
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 stands, not in her strength.
Nest. Most wisely hath Ulysses here discover'd
The fever whereof all our power is sick.

Agam. The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses,
What is the remedy?

Ulyss. 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. 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 stretch'd footing and the scaffoldage, T-
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 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.-
Now play me Nestor;-hem, and stroke thy beard,
As he, being dress'd 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,

*Step by step.

Takes us off.

The galleries of the theatre. †† Unadapted.

† Inactive.

Supreme.

+ Army.

**Beyond the truth.

+ I. e. as like as east to west.