The primogenitive and due of birth, 3 Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores, 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, So doubly seconded with will and power, And, last, eat up himself. Great Agamemnon, And this neglection of degree it is, 5 That by a pace1 goes backward, with a purpose And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot, 4 That by a pace-] That goes backward step by step. S with a purpose It hath to climb.] With a design in each man to aggrandize himself, by slighting his immediate superior. 6 bloodless emulation:] An emulation not vigorous and active, but malignant and sluggish. 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 Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent Breaks scurril jests; And with ridiculous and aukward action (Which, slanderer, he imitation calls,) He pageants us. Sometime, great Agamemnon, And, like a strutting player,-whose conceit 7 our power-] i. e. our army. 8 Thy topless deputation-] Topless is that which has nothing topping or overtopping it; supreme; sovereign. 'Twixt his stretch'd footing and the scaffoldage,] The galleries of the theatre, in the time of our author, were sometimes termed the scaffolds. o'er-wrested seeming —] i. e. wrested beyond the truth. unsquar'd,] i. e. unadapted to their subject, as stones are unfitted to the purposes of architecture, while they are yet unsquar❜d. Cries-Excellent!-'Tis Agamemnon just.- That's done;-as near as the extremest ends 3 Of parallels: as like as Vulcan and his wife: 'Tis Nestor right! Now play him me, Patroclus, And then, forsooth, the faint defects of age Nest. And in the imitation of these twain 4 As broad Achilles; keeps his tent like him; (A slave, whose gall coins slanders like a mint,3) as near as the extremest ends Of parallels:] The parallels to which the allusion seems to be made, are the parallels on a map. As like as east to west. bears his head In such a rein,] That is, holds up his head as haughtily. We still say of a girl, she bridles. 5 whose gall coins slanders like a mint,] i. e. as fast as a mint coins money. To match us in comparisons with dirt; Ulyss. They tax our policy, and call it cowardice; They call this-bed-work, mappery, closet-war : Nest. Let this be granted, and Achilles' horse Makes many Thetis' sons. Agam. [Trumpet sounds. What trumpet? look, Menelaus, Agam. 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. How rank soever rounded in with danger.] A rank weed is a high weed. 7 by measure-] i. e. " by means of their observant toil." 8 Ene. Fair leave, and large security. How may A stranger to those most imperial looks Know them from eyes of other mortals? Agam. Ene. Ay; I ask, that I might waken reverence, How? Which is that god in office, guiding men? Agam. This Trojan scorns us; or the men of Troy Are ceremonious courtiers. Ene. Courtiers as free, as debonair, unarm'd, Nothing so full of heart. But peace, Æneas, & A stranger to those most imperial looks-] 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. So, 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." Shakspeare might have adopted this error from the wooden cuts to ancient books, or from the illuminators of manuscripts, who never seem to have entertained the least idea of habits, manners, or customs more ancient than their own. There are books in the British Museum of the age of King Henry VI; and in these the heroes of ancient Greece are represented in the very dresses worn at the time when the books received their decorations. 9 they have galls, &c.] This is not very intelligible, but perhaps the speaker meant to say, that, when they have the ac cord of Jove on their side, nothing is so courageous as the Trojans. |