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 mock‘ry. 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 entered 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’errun 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 th’ hand

And, with his arms outstretched 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 gauds,

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 drove 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 Pluto’s gold,

Finds bottom in th’uncomprehensive deeps,

Keeps place with aught, and almost like the gods

Do infant 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 his island 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 condemned 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

T’invite the Trojan lords after the combat

To see us here unarmed. I have a woman’s longing,

An appetite that I am sick withal,

To see great Hector in his weeds of peace,

Enter Thersites

To talk with him and to behold his visage

Even to my full of view.—A labour saved.

THERSITES A wonder!

ACHILLES What?

THERSITES Ajax goes up and down the field, as asking for himself.

ACHILLES How so?

THERSITES He must fight singly tomorrow with Hector, and is so prophetically proud of an heroical cudgelling that he raves in saying nothing.

ACHILLES How can that be?

THERSITES Why, a 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’t would 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 for ever, for if Hector break not his neck i‘th’ combat he’ll break’t himself in vainglory. 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, languageless, a monster. A plague of opinion! A man may wear it on both sides like a leather jerkin.