Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare

Act 1 - Scene 3

The Grecian camp. Before Agamemnon’s tent.

Agamemnon : Princes, [p]What grief hath set the jaundice on your cheeks? [p]The
ample proposition that hope makes [p]In all designs begun on earth
below [p]Fails in the promised largeness: cheques and
disasters [p]Grow in the veins of actions highest rear'd, [p]As knots,
by the conflux of meeting sap, [p]Infect the sound pine and divert his
grain [p]Tortive and errant from his course of growth. [p]Nor,
princes, is it matter new to us [p]That we come short of our suppose
so far [p]That after seven years' siege yet Troy walls stand; [p]Sith
every action that hath gone before, [p]Whereof we have record, trial
did draw [p]Bias and thwart, not answering the aim, [p]And that
unbodied figure of the thought [p]That gave't surmised shape. Why
then, you princes, [p]Do you with cheeks abash'd behold our
works, [p]And call them shames? which are indeed nought else [p]But
the protractive trials of great Jove [p]To find persistive constancy
in men: [p]The fineness of which metal is not found [p]In fortune's
love; for then the bold and coward, [p]The wise and fool, the artist
and unread, [p]The hard and soft seem all affined and kin: [p]But, in
the wind and tempest of her frown, [p]Distinction, with a broad and
powerful fan, [p]Puffing at all, winnows the light away; [p]And what
hath mass or matter, by itself [p]Lies rich in virtue and unmingled.

Nestor : With due observance of thy godlike seat, [p]Great Agamemnon, Nestor
shall apply [p]Thy latest words. In the reproof of chance [p]Lies the
true proof of men: the sea being smooth, [p]How many shallow bauble
boats dare sail [p]Upon her patient breast, making their way [p]With
those of nobler bulk! [p]But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage [p]The
gentle Thetis, and anon behold [p]The strong-ribb'd bark through
liquid mountains cut, [p]Bounding between the two moist
elements, [p]Like Perseus' horse: where's then the saucy boat [p]Whose
weak untimber'd sides but even now [p]Co-rivall'd greatness? Either to
harbour fled, [p]Or made a toast for Neptune. Even so [p]Doth valour's
show and valour's worth divide [p]In storms of fortune; for in her ray
and brightness [p]The herd hath more annoyance by the breeze [p]Than
by the tiger; but when the splitting wind [p]Makes flexible the knees
of knotted oaks, [p]And flies fled under shade, why, then the thing of
courage [p]As roused with rage with rage doth sympathize, [p]And with
an accent tuned in selfsame key [p]Retorts to chiding fortune.

Ulysses : Agamemnon, [p]Thou great commander, nerve and bone of Greece, [p]Heart
of our numbers, soul and only spirit. [p]In whom the tempers and the
minds of all [p]Should be shut up, hear what Ulysses
speaks. [p]Besides the applause and approbation To which, [p][To
AGAMEMNON] [p]most mighty for thy place and sway, [p][To
NESTOR] [p]And thou most reverend for thy stretch'd-out life [p]I give
to both your speeches, which were such [p]As Agamemnon and the hand of
Greece [p]Should hold up high in brass, and such again [p]As venerable
Nestor, hatch'd in silver, [p]Should with a bond of air, strong as the
axle-tree [p]On which heaven rides, knit all the Greekish ears [p]To
his experienced tongue, yet let it please both, [p]Thou great, and
wise, to hear Ulysses speak.

Agamemnon : Speak, prince of Ithaca; and be't of less expect [p]That matter
needless, of importless burden, [p]Divide thy lips, than we are
confident, [p]When rank Thersites opes his mastic jaws, [p]We shall
hear music, wit and oracle.

Ulysses : Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down, [p]And the great Hector's
sword had lack'd a master, [p]But for these instances. [p]The
specialty of rule hath been neglected: [p]And, look, how many Grecian
tents do stand [p]Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow
factions. [p]When that the general is not like the hive [p]To whom the
foragers shall all repair, [p]What honey is expected? Degree being
vizarded, [p]The unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask. [p]The
heavens themselves, the planets and this centre [p]Observe degree,
priority and place, [p]Insisture, course, proportion, season,
form, [p]Office and custom, in all line of order; [p]And therefore is
the glorious planet Sol [p]In noble eminence enthroned and
sphered [p]Amidst the other; whose medicinable eye [p]Corrects the ill
aspects of planets evil, [p]And posts, like the commandment of a
king, [p]Sans cheque to good and bad: but when the planets [p]In evil
mixture to disorder wander, [p]What plagues and what portents! what
mutiny! [p]What raging of the sea! shaking of earth! [p]Commotion in
the winds! frights, changes, horrors, [p]Divert and crack, rend and
deracinate [p]The unity and married calm of states [p]Quite from their
fixure! O, when degree is shaked, [p]Which is the ladder to all high
designs, [p]Then enterprise is sick! How could communities, [p]Degrees
in schools and brotherhoods in cities, [p]Peaceful commerce from
dividable shores, [p]The primogenitive and due of
birth, [p]Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, [p]But by
degree, stand in authentic place? [p]Take but degree away, untune that
string, [p]And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets [p]In
mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters [p]Should lift their bosoms higher
than the shores [p]And make a sop of all this solid globe: [p]Strength
should be lord of imbecility, [p]And the rude son should strike his
father dead: [p]Force should be right; or rather, right and
wrong, [p]Between whose endless jar justice resides, [p]Should lose
their names, and so should justice too. [p]Then every thing includes
itself in power, [p]Power into will, will into appetite; [p]And
appetite, an universal wolf, [p]So doubly seconded with will and
power, [p]Must make perforce an universal prey, [p]And last eat up
himself. Great Agamemnon, [p]This chaos, when degree is
suffocate, [p]Follows the choking. [p]And this neglection of degree it
is [p]That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose [p]It hath to
climb. The general's disdain'd [p]By him one step below, he by the
next, [p]That next by him beneath; so every step, [p]Exampled by the
first pace that is sick [p]Of his superior, grows to an envious
fever [p]Of pale and bloodless emulation: [p]And 'tis this fever that
keeps Troy on foot, [p]Not her own sinews. To end a tale of
length, [p]Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.

Nestor : Most wisely hath Ulysses here discover'd [p]The fever whereof all our
power is sick.

Agamemnon : The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses, [p]What is the remedy?

Ulysses : The great Achilles, whom opinion crowns [p]The sinew and the forehand
of our host, [p]Having his ear full of his airy fame, [p]Grows dainty
of his worth, and in his tent [p]Lies mocking our designs: with him
Patroclus [p]Upon a lazy bed the livelong day [p]Breaks scurril
jests; [p]And with ridiculous and awkward action, [p]Which, slanderer,
he imitation calls, [p]He pageants us. Sometime, great
Agamemnon, [p]Thy topless deputation he puts on, [p]And, like a
strutting player, whose conceit [p]Lies in his hamstring, and doth
think it rich [p]To hear the wooden dialogue and sound [p]'Twixt his
stretch'd footing and the scaffoldage,-- [p]Such to-be-pitied and
o'er-wrested seeming [p]He acts thy greatness in: and when he
speaks, [p]'Tis like a chime a-mending; with terms
unsquared, [p]Which, from the tongue of roaring Typhon
dropp'd [p]Would seem hyperboles. At this fusty stuff [p]The large
Achilles, on his press'd bed lolling, [p]From his deep chest laughs
out a loud applause; [p]Cries 'Excellent! 'tis Agamemnon just. [p]Now
play me Nestor; hem, and stroke thy beard, [p]As he being drest to
some oration.' [p]That's done, as near as the extremest ends [p]Of
parallels, as like as Vulcan and his wife: [p]Yet god Achilles still
cries 'Excellent! [p]'Tis Nestor right. Now play him me,
Patroclus, [p]Arming to answer in a night alarm.' [p]And then,
forsooth, the faint defects of age [p]Must be the scene of mirth; to
cough and spit, [p]And, with a palsy-fumbling on his gorget, [p]Shake
in and out the rivet: and at this sport [p]Sir Valour dies; cries 'O,
enough, Patroclus; [p]Or give me ribs of steel! I shall split
all [p]In pleasure of my spleen.' And in this fashion, [p]All our
abilities, gifts, natures, shapes, [p]Severals and generals of grace
exact, [p]Achievements, plots, orders, preventions, [p]Excitements to
the field, or speech for truce, [p]Success or loss, what is or is not,
serves [p]As stuff for these two to make paradoxes.

Nestor : And in the imitation of these twain-- [p]Who, as Ulysses says, opinion
crowns [p]With an imperial voice--many are infect. [p]Ajax is grown
self-will'd, and bears his head [p]In such a rein, in full as proud a
place [p]As broad Achilles; keeps his tent like him; [p]Makes factious
feasts; rails on our state of war, [p]Bold as an oracle, and sets
Thersites, [p]A slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint, [p]To
match us in comparisons with dirt, [p]To weaken and discredit our
exposure, [p]How rank soever rounded in with danger.

Ulysses : They tax our policy, and call it cowardice, [p]Count wisdom as no
member of the war, [p]Forestall prescience, and esteem no act [p]But
that of hand: the still and mental parts, [p]That do contrive how many
hands shall strike, [p]When fitness calls them on, and know by
measure [p]Of their observant toil the enemies' weight,-- [p]Why, this
hath not a finger's dignity: [p]They call this bed-work, mappery,
closet-war; [p]So that the ram that batters down the wall, [p]For the
great swing and rudeness of his poise, [p]They place before his hand
that made the engine, [p]Or those that with the fineness of their
souls [p]By reason guide his execution.

Nestor : Let this be granted, and Achilles' horse [p]Makes many Thetis' sons.

Agamemnon : What trumpet? look, Menelaus.

Menelaus : From Troy.

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, [p]Do a fair message to his
kingly ears?

Agamemnon : With surety stronger than Achilles' arm [p]'Fore all the Greekish
heads, which with one voice [p]Call Agamemnon head and general.

Aeneas : Fair leave and large security. How may [p]A stranger to those most
imperial looks [p]Know them from eyes of other mortals?

Agamemnon : How!

Aeneas : Ay; [p]I ask, that I might waken reverence, [p]And bid the cheek be
ready with a blush [p]Modest as morning when she coldly eyes [p]The
youthful Phoebus: [p]Which is that god in office, guiding
men? [p]Which is the high and mighty Agamemnon?

Agamemnon : This Trojan scorns us; or the men of Troy [p]Are ceremonious
courtiers.

Aeneas : Courtiers as free, as debonair, unarm'd, [p]As bending angels; that's
their fame in peace: [p]But when they would seem soldiers, they have
galls, [p]Good arms, strong joints, true swords; and, [p]Jove's
accord, [p]Nothing so full of heart. But peace, AEneas, [p]Peace,
Trojan; lay thy finger on thy lips! [p]The worthiness of praise
distains his worth, [p]If that the praised himself bring the praise
forth: [p]But what the repining enemy commends, [p]That breath fame
blows; that praise, sole sure, [p]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: [p]I bring a trumpet to awake
his ear, [p]To set his sense on the attentive bent, [p]And then to
speak.

Agamemnon : Speak frankly as the wind; [p]It is not Agamemnon's sleeping
hour: [p]That thou shalt know. Trojan, he is awake, [p]He tells thee
so himself.

Aeneas : Trumpet, blow loud, [p]Send thy brass voice through all these lazy
tents; [p]And every Greek of mettle, let him know, [p]What Troy means
fairly shall be spoke aloud. [p][Trumpet sounds] [p]We have, great
Agamemnon, here in Troy [p]A prince call'd Hector,--Priam is his
father,-- [p]Who in this dull and long-continued truce [p]Is rusty
grown: he bade me take a trumpet, [p]And to this purpose speak. Kings,
princes, lords! [p]If there be one among the fair'st of Greece [p]That
holds his honour higher than his ease, [p]That seeks his praise more
than he fears his peril, [p]That knows his valour, and knows not his
fear, [p]That loves his mistress more than in confession, [p]With
truant vows to her own lips he loves, [p]And dare avow her beauty and
her worth [p]In other arms than hers,--to him this
challenge. [p]Hector, in view of Trojans and of Greeks, [p]Shall make
it good, or do his best to do it, [p]He hath a lady, wiser, fairer,
truer, [p]Than ever Greek did compass in his arms, [p]And will
to-morrow with his trumpet call [p]Midway between your tents and walls
of Troy, [p]To rouse a Grecian that is true in love: [p]If any come,
Hector shall honour him; [p]If none, he'll say in Troy when he
retires, [p]The Grecian dames are sunburnt and not worth [p]The
splinter of a lance. Even so much.

Agamemnon : This shall be told our lovers, Lord AEneas; [p]If none of them have
soul in such a kind, [p]We left them all at home: but we are
soldiers; [p]And may that soldier a mere recreant prove, [p]That means
not, hath not, or is not in love! [p]If then one is, or hath, or means
to be, [p]That one meets Hector; if none else, I am he.

Nestor : Tell him of Nestor, one that was a man [p]When Hector's grandsire
suck'd: he is old now; [p]But if there be not in our Grecian
host [p]One noble man that hath one spark of fire, [p]To answer for
his love, tell him from me [p]I'll hide my silver beard in a gold
beaver [p]And in my vantbrace put this wither'd brawn, [p]And meeting
him will tell him that my lady [p]Was fairer than his grandam and as
chaste [p]As may be in the world: his youth in flood, [p]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; [p]To our pavilion shall I
lead you, sir. [p]Achilles shall have word of this intent; [p]So shall
each lord of Greece, from tent to tent: [p]Yourself shall feast with
us before you go [p]And find the welcome of a noble foe.

Ulysses : Nestor!

Nestor : What says Ulysses?

Ulysses : I have a young conception in my brain; [p]Be you my time to bring it
to some shape.

Nestor : What is't?

Ulysses : This 'tis: [p]Blunt wedges rive hard knots: the seeded pride [p]That
hath to this maturity blown up [p]In rank Achilles must or now be
cropp'd, [p]Or, shedding, breed a nursery of like evil, [p]To overbulk
us all.

Nestor : Well, and how?

Ulysses : This challenge that the gallant Hector sends, [p]However it is spread
in general name, [p]Relates in purpose only to Achilles.

Nestor : The purpose is perspicuous even as substance, [p]Whose grossness
little characters sum up: [p]And, in the publication, make no
strain, [p]But that Achilles, were his brain as barren [p]As banks of
Libya,--though, Apollo knows, [p]'Tis dry enough,--will, with great
speed of judgment, [p]Ay, with celerity, find Hector's
purpose [p]Pointing on him.

Ulysses : And wake him to the answer, think you?

Nestor : Yes, 'tis most meet: whom may you else oppose, [p]That can from Hector
bring his honour off, [p]If not Achilles? Though't be a sportful
combat, [p]Yet in the trial much opinion dwells; [p]For here the
Trojans taste our dear'st repute [p]With their finest palate: and
trust to me, Ulysses, [p]Our imputation shall be oddly poised [p]In
this wild action; for the success, [p]Although particular, shall give
a scantling [p]Of good or bad unto the general; [p]And in such
indexes, although small pricks [p]To their subsequent volumes, there
is seen [p]The baby figure of the giant mass [p]Of things to come at
large. It is supposed [p]He that meets Hector issues from our
choice [p]And choice, being mutual act of all our souls, [p]Makes
merit her election, and doth boil, [p]As 'twere from us all, a man
distill'd [p]Out of our virtues; who miscarrying, [p]What heart
receives from hence the conquering part, [p]To steel a strong opinion
to themselves? [p]Which entertain'd, limbs are his instruments, [p]In
no less working than are swords and bows [p]Directive by the limbs.

Ulysses : Give pardon to my speech: [p]Therefore 'tis meet Achilles meet not
Hector. [p]Let us, like merchants, show our foulest wares, [p]And
think, perchance, they'll sell; if not, [p]The lustre of the better
yet to show, [p]Shall show the better. Do not consent [p]That ever
Hector and Achilles meet; [p]For both our honour and our shame in
this [p]Are dogg'd with two strange followers.

Nestor : I see them not with my old eyes: what are they?

Ulysses : What glory our Achilles shares from Hector, [p]Were he not proud, we
all should share with him: [p]But he already is too insolent; [p]And
we were better parch in Afric sun [p]Than in the pride and salt scorn
of his eyes, [p]Should he 'scape Hector fair: if he were
foil'd, [p]Why then, we did our main opinion crush [p]In taint of our
best man. No, make a lottery; [p]And, by device, let blockish Ajax
draw [p]The sort to fight with Hector: among ourselves [p]Give him
allowance for the better man; [p]For that will physic the great
Myrmidon [p]Who broils in loud applause, and make him fall [p]His
crest that prouder than blue Iris bends. [p]If the dull brainless Ajax
come safe off, [p]We'll dress him up in voices: if he fail, [p]Yet go
we under our opinion still [p]That we have better men. But, hit or
miss, [p]Our project's life this shape of sense assumes: [p]Ajax
employ'd plucks down Achilles' plumes.

Nestor : Ulysses, [p]Now I begin to relish thy advice; [p]And I will give a
taste of it forthwith [p]To Agamemnon: go we to him straight. [p]Two
curs shall tame each other: pride alone [p]Must tarre the mastiffs on,
as 'twere their bone.

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