Page 2786 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

That’s done, as near as the extremest ends
Of parallels, as like as Vulcan and his wife;
Yet god Achilles still cries ‘Excellent!
’Tis Nestor right. Now play him me, Patroclus, [170]

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 on his gorget

Shake in and out the rivet − and at this sport [175]
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, [180]
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.

NESTOR
And in the imitation of these twain, [185]
Who, as Ulysses says, opinion crowns
With an imperial voice, many are infect.

Ajax is grown self-willed, and bears his head
In such a rein, in full as proud a place
As broad Achilles; keeps his tent like him, [190]

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, [195]

How rank soever rounded in with danger.

ULYSSES
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, [200]