The primogenitive and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentick place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,

And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere 16 oppugnancy: The bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe17 :
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, 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 18 of degree it is,

That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose
It hath to climb 19. 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 :

16 i. e. absolute. See vol. ii. p. 96, note 14.

17 So in Lear: I'll make a sop of the moonshine of you.' In a former speech a boat is said to be made a toast for Neptune. 18 This uncommon word occurs again in Pericles, 1609:

19

That goes backward step by step, with a design in each man to aggrandize himself by slighting his immediate superior.'

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 20 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 21,

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;

22

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 23,
Such to-be-pitied and o'er-wrested seeming

20. Army, force.

21 Verbal elogium. In Macbeth called mouth honour. 22 Supreme, sovereign.

'And topless honours he bestow'd on thee.'

Blind Beggar of Alexandria, 1598. 23 Malone's sagacious note informs us that the galleries of the theatre were sometimes called the scaffolds.' This may be very true, but what has it to do with the present passage? The scaffoldage here is the floor of the stage, the wooden dialogue is between the player's foot and the boards. A scaffold more frequently meant the stage itself than the gallery: thus Baret, 'A scaffold or stage where to behold plays. Spectaculum, theatrum.' And Chaucer:

He playeth Herode on a skaffold hie.' Milleres Tale, 3383, 24 i, e, overstrained, wrested beyond true semblance,

He acts thy greatness in: and when he speaks,
"Tis like a chime a mending; with terms unsquar'd 25,
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 drest to some oration.

That's done;-as near as the extremest ends
Of parallels 26; 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, And, with a palsy-fumbling 27 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 28, 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. Nest. And in the imitation of these twain (Whom, as Ulysses says, opinion crowns With an imperial voice) many are infect. Ajax is grown self-will'd; and bears his head

25 i. e. unsuited, unfitted.

26 Johnson says the allusion seems to be made to the parallels on a map. As like as east to west.'

27 Paralytic fumbling.

28 Grace exact seems to mean decorous habits.

In such a rein 29, in full as proud a place

As broad Achilles: 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 soever rounded in with danger 30.
Ulyss. 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 enemies' weight,-
Why, this hath not a finger's dignity:
They call this-bed-work, mappery, closet-war :
So that the ram, that batters down the wall,
For the great swing and rudeness of his poize,
They place before his hand that made the engine;
Or those, that with the fineness of their souls
By reason guide his execution.

Nest. Let this be granted, and Achilles' horse

Makes many Thetis' sons.

[Trumpet sounds. What trumpet? look, Menelaus,

Agam.

29 i. e. carries himself haughtily; bridles up.

See Cotgrave

in Se rengorger.'

30 How rank soever rounded in with danger. How strongly

soever encompassed by danger, So in King Henry V.:—

How dread an army hath enrounded him.'

Agam.

Even this.

Ene. May one, that is a herald, and a prince, Do a fair message to his kingly ears?

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

Ene. Fair leave, and large security. How may A stranger to those most imperial looks Know them from eyes of other mortals 31 ? Agam.

Ene. Ay;

I ask, that I might waken reverence,
And bid the cheek be ready with a blush
Modest as morning when she coldly eyes
The youthful Phœbus :

Which is that god in office, guiding men?
Which is the high and mighty Agamemnon?

How?

Agam. This Trojan scorns us; or the men of Troy Are ceremonious courtiers.

Ene. Courtiers as free, as debonair, unarm'd, 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, Jove's accord:

Nothing so full of heart 32. But peace, Æneas,

31 And yet this was the seventh year of the war. Shakspeare, who so wonderfully preserves character, usually confounds the customs of all nations, and probably supposed that the ancients (like the heroes of chivalry) fought with beavers to their helmets. In the fourth act of this play, Nestor says to Hector :But this thy countenance, still lock'd in steel,

I never saw till now.'

Those who are acquainted with the embellishments of ancient manuscripts and books well know that the artists gave the costume of their own time to all ages. But in this anachronism they have been countenanced by other ancient poets as well as Shakspeare.

32 Malone and Steevens see difficulties in this passage; the former proposed to read Jove's a god;' the latter, Love's a