TROILUS & CRESSIDA. William Shakespeare

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       As Agamemnon and the hand of Greece

       Should hold up high in brass; and such again

       As venerable Nestor, hatch’d in silver,

       Should with a bond of air, strong as the axletree

       On which heaven rides, knit all the Greekish ears

       To his experienc’d tongue—yet let it please both,

       Thou great, and wise, to hear Ulysses speak.

       AGAMEMNON.

       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 mastic jaws,

       We shall hear music, wit, and oracle.

       ULYSSES.

       Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down,

       And the great Hector’s sword had lack’d a master,

       But for these instances:

       The specialty 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,

       Th’ 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 enthron’d and spher’d

       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 shak’d,

       Which is the ladder of all high designs,

       The enterprise is sick! How could communities,

       Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,

       Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,

       The primogenity 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 melts

       In mere 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 everything 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 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 ever step,

       Exampl’d 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.

       NESTOR.

       Most wisely hath Ulysses here discover’d

       The fever whereof all our power is sick.

       AGAMEMNON.

       The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses,

       What is the remedy?

       ULYSSES.

       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—

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