The Grecian camp.
Before Achilles’ tent.[Enter AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES,
DIOMEDES, NESTOR, AJAX,
MENELAUS, and CALCHAS]
CALCHAS
Now, princes, for the service I have done you,
The advantage of the time prompts me aloud
To call for recompense. Appear it to your mind
That, through the sight I bear in things to love,
I have abandon’d Troy, left my possession,
Incurr’d a traitor’s name; exposed myself,
From certain and possess’d conveniences,
To doubtful fortunes; sequestering from me all
That time, acquaintance, custom and condition
Made tame and most familiar to my nature,
And here, to do you service, am become
As new into the world, strange, unacquainted:
I do beseech you, as in way of taste,
To give me now a little benefit,
Out of those many register’d in promise,
Which, you say, live to come in my behalf.
AGAMEMNON What wouldst thou of us,
Trojan? make demand.
CALCHAS You have a Trojan prisoner, call’d Antenor,
Yesterday took: Troy holds him very dear.
Oft have you–often have you thanks therefore–
Desired my Cressid in right great exchange,
Whom Troy hath still denied: but this Antenor,
I know, is such a wrest in their affairs
That their negotiations all must slack,
Wanting his manage; and they will almost
Give us a prince of blood, a son of Priam,
In change of him: let him be sent, great princes,
And he shall buy my daughter; and her presence
Shall quite strike off all service I have done,
In most accepted pain.
AGAMEMNON Let Diomedes bear him,
And bring us Cressid hither: Calchas shall have
What he requests of us. Good Diomed,
Furnish you fairly for this interchange:
Withal bring word if Hector will to-morrow
Be answer’d in his challenge: Ajax is ready.
DIOMEDES This shall I undertake; and ’tis a burden
Which I am proud to bear.
[Exeunt DIOMEDES and CALCHAS]
[Enter ACHILLES and PATROCLUS,
before their tent]
ULYSSES Achilles stands i’ the entrance of his tent:
Please it our general to pass strangely by him,
As if he were forgot; and, princes all,
Lay negligent and loose regard upon him:
I will come last. ‘Tis like he’ll question me
Why such unplausive eyes are bent on him:
If so, I have derision medicinable,
To use between your strangeness and his pride,
Which his own will shall have desire to drink:
It may be good: pride hath no other glass
To show itself but pride, for supple knees
Feed arrogance and are the proud man’s fees.
AGAMEMNON We’ll execute your purpose, and put on
A form of strangeness as we pass along:
So do each lord, and either greet him not,
Or else disdainfully, which shall shake him more
Than if not look’d on. I will lead the way.
ACHILLES What, comes the general to speak with me?
You know my mind, I’ll fight no more ‘gainst Troy.
AGAMEMNON What says Achilles?
would he aught with us?
NESTOR Would you, my lord, aught with the general?
ACHILLES No.
NESTOR Nothing, my lord.
AGAMEMNON The better.
[Exeunt AGAMEMNON and NESTOR]
ACHILLES Good day, good day.
MENELAUS How do you? how do you?
[Exit]
ACHILLES What, does the cuckold scorn me?
AJAX How now, Patroclus!
ACHILLES Good morrow, Ajax.
AJAX Ha?
ACHILLES Good morrow.
AJAX Ay, and good next day too.
[Exit]
ACHILLES What mean these fellows?
Know they not Achilles?
PATROCLUS
They pass by strangely: they were used to bend
To send their smiles before them to Achilles;
To come as humbly as they used to creep
To holy altars.
ACHILLES What, am I poor of late?
‘Tis certain, greatness, once fall’n out with fortune,
Must fall out with men too: what the declined is
He shall as soon read in the eyes of others
As feel in his own fall; for men, like butterflies,
Show not their mealy wings but to the summer,
And not a man, for being simply man,
Hath any honour, but honour for those honours
That are without him, as place, riches, favour,
Prizes of accident as oft as merit:
Which when they fall, as being slippery standers,
The love that lean’d on them as slippery too,
Do one pluck down another and together
Die in the fall. But ’tis not so with me:
Fortune and I are friends: I do enjoy
At ample point all that I did possess,
Save these men’s looks; who do, methinks, find out
Something not worth in me such rich beholding
As they have often given. Here is Ulysses;
I’ll interrupt his reading.
How now Ulysses!
ULYSSES Now, great Thetis’ son!
ACHILLES What are you reading?
ULYSSES A strange fellow here
Writes me: ‘That man, how dearly ever parted,
How much in having, or without or in,
Cannot make boast to have that which he hath,
Nor feels not what he owes, but by reflection;
As when his virtues shining upon others
Heat them and they retort that heat again
To the first giver.’
ACHILLES This is not strange, Ulysses.
The beauty that is borne here in the face
The bearer knows not, but commends itself
To others’ eyes; nor doth the eye itself,
That most pure spirit of sense, behold itself,
Not going from itself; but eye to eye opposed
Salutes each other with each other’s form;
For speculation turns not to itself,
Till it hath travell’d and is mirror’d there
Where it may see itself. This is not strange at all.
ULYSSES I do not strain at the position,–
It is familiar,–but at the author’s drift;
Who, in his circumstance, expressly proves
That no man is the lord of any thing,
Though in and of him there be much consisting,
Till he communicate his parts to others:
Nor doth he of himself know them for aught
Till he behold them form’d in the applause
Where they’re extended; who, like an arch, reverberates
The voice again, or, like a gate of steel
Fronting the sun, receives and renders back
His figure and his heat. I was much wrapt in this;
And apprehended here immediately
The unknown Ajax.
Heavens, what a man is there! a very horse,
That has he knows not what. Nature, what things there are
Most abject in regard and dear in use!
What things again most dear in the esteem
And poor in worth! Now shall we see to-morrow–
An act that very chance doth throw upon him–
Ajax renown’d. O heavens, what some men do,
While some men leave to do!
How some men creep in skittish fortune’s hall,
Whiles others play the idiots in her eyes!
How one man eats into another’s pride,
While pride is fasting in his wantonness!
To see these Grecian lords!–why, even already
They clap the lubber Ajax on the shoulder,
As if his foot were on brave Hector’s breast
And great Troy shrieking.
ACHILLES I do believe it; for they pass’d by me
As misers do by beggars, neither gave to me
Good word nor look: what, are my deeds forgot?
ULYSSES Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:
Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour’d
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done: perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honour bright: to have done is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;
For honour travels in a strait so narrow,
Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path;
For emulation hath a thousand sons
That one by one pursue: if you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an enter’d tide, they all rush by
And leave you hindmost;
Or like a gallant horse fall’n in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O’er-run and trampled on: then what they do in present,
Though less than yours in past, must o’ertop yours;
For time is like a fashionable host
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretch’d, as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles,
And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;
For beauty, wit,
High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,
That all with one consent praise new-born gawds,
Though they are made and moulded of things past,
And give to dust that is a little gilt
More laud than gilt o’er-dusted.
The present eye praises the present object.
Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,
That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax;
Since things in motion sooner catch the eye
Than what not stirs. The cry went once on thee,
And still it might, and yet it may again,
If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive
And case thy reputation in thy tent;
Whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late,
Made emulous missions ‘mongst the gods themselves
And drave great Mars to faction.
ACHILLES Of this my privacy
I have strong reasons.
ULYSSES But ‘gainst your privacy
The reasons are more potent and heroical:
‘Tis known, Achilles, that you are in love
With one of Priam’s daughters.
ACHILLES Ha! known!
ULYSSES Is that a wonder?
The providence that’s in a watchful state
Knows almost every grain of Plutus’ gold,
Finds bottom in the uncomprehensive deeps,
Keeps place with thought and almost, like the gods,
Does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles.
There is a mystery–with whom relation
Durst never meddle–in the soul of state;
Which hath an operation more divine
Than breath or pen can give expressure to:
All the commerce that you have had with Troy
As perfectly is ours as yours, my lord;
And better would it fit Achilles much
To throw down Hector than Polyxena:
But it must grieve young Pyrrhus now at home,
When fame shall in our islands sound her trump,
And all the Greekish girls shall tripping sing,
‘Great Hector’s sister did Achilles win,
But our great Ajax bravely beat down him.’
Farewell, my lord: I as your lover speak;
The fool slides o’er the ice that you should break.
[Exit]
PATROCLUS
To this effect, Achilles, have I moved you:
A woman impudent and mannish grown
Is not more loathed than an effeminate man
In time of action. I stand condemn’d for this;
They think my little stomach to the war
And your great love to me restrains you thus:
Sweet, rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid
Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold,
And, like a dew-drop from the lion’s mane,
Be shook to air.
ACHILLES Shall Ajax fight with Hector?
PATROCLUS Ay,
and perhaps receive much honour by him.
ACHILLES I see my reputation is at stake
My fame is shrewdly gored.
PATROCLUS O, then, beware;
Those wounds heal ill that men do give themselves:
Omission to do what is necessary
Seals a commission to a blank of danger;
And danger, like an ague, subtly taints
Even then when we sit idly in the sun.
ACHILLES Go call Thersites hither, sweet Patroclus:
I’ll send the fool to Ajax and desire him
To invite the Trojan lords after the combat
To see us here unarm’d: I have a woman’s longing,
An appetite that I am sick withal,
To see great Hector in his weeds of peace,
To talk with him and to behold his visage,
Even to my full of view.
[Enter THERSITES]
A labour saved!
THERSITES A wonder!
ACHILLES What?
THERSITES Ajax goes up and down the field,
asking for himself.
ACHILLES How so?
THERSITES He must fight singly to-morrow with Hector,
and is so prophetically proud of an heroical cudgelling
that he raves in saying nothing.
ACHILLES How can that be?
THERSITES Why, he stalks up and down like a peacock,
–a stride and a stand: ruminates like an hostess that hath
no arithmetic but her brain to set down her reckoning:
bites his lip with a politic regard, as who should
say ‘There were wit in this head, an ‘twould out;’
and so there is, but it lies as coldly in him as fire
in a flint, which will not show without knocking.
The man’s undone forever; for if Hector break not his
neck i’ the combat, he’ll break ‘t himself in
vain-glory. He knows not me: I said ‘Good morrow,
Ajax;’ and he replies ‘Thanks, Agamemnon.’ What think
you of this man that takes me for the general? He’s
grown a very land-fish, language-less, a monster.
A plague of opinion! a man may wear it on both
sides, like a leather jerkin.
ACHILLES
Thou must be my ambassador to him, Thersites.
THERSITES Who, I? why, he’ll answer nobody; he
professes not answering: speaking is for beggars;
he wears his tongue in’s arms. I will put on his presence:
let Patroclus make demands to me, you shall see the
pageant of Ajax.
ACHILLES To him, Patroclus; tell him I humbly desire
the valiant Ajax to invite the most valorous Hector
to come unarmed to my tent, and to procure
safe-conduct for his person of the magnanimous
and most illustrious six-or-seven-times-honoured
captain-general of the Grecian army, Agamemnon,
et cetera. Do this.
PATROCLUS Jove bless great Ajax!
THERSITES Hum!
PATROCLUS I come from the worthy Achilles,–
THERSITES Ha!
PATROCLUS Who most humbly desires you to
invite Hector to his tent,–
THERSITES Hum!
PATROCLUS
And to procure safe-conduct from Agamemnon.
THERSITES Agamemnon!
PATROCLUS Ay, my lord.
THERSITES Ha!
PATROCLUS What say you to’t?
THERSITES God b’ wi’ you, with all my heart.
PATROCLUS Your answer, sir.
THERSITES If to-morrow be a fair day,
by eleven o’clock it will go one way or other:
howsoever, he shall pay for me ere he has me.
PATROCLUS Your answer, sir.
THERSITES Fare you well, with all my heart.
ACHILLES Why, but he is not in this tune, is he?
THERSITES No, but he’s out o’ tune thus. What music
will be in him when Hector has knocked out his brains,
I know not; but, I am sure, none, unless the fiddler Apollo
get his sinews to make catlings on.
ACHILLES Come, thou shalt bear a letter to him straight.
THERSITES Let me bear another to his horse;
for that’s the more capable creature.
ACHILLES My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr’d;
And I myself see not the bottom of it.
[Exeunt ACHILLES and PATROCLUS]
THERSITES Would the fountain of your mind were
clear again, that I might water an ass at it! I had rather
be a tick in a sheep than such a valiant ignorance.
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