"Stand, stand, thou Greek! thou art a goodly mark:--
No! wilt thou not?--I like thy armor well;
I'll frush it, and unlock the rivets all,
But I'll be master of it. Wilt thou not, beast, abide?
Why then, fly on, I'll hunt thee for thy hide."
Numerous passages like this have the tone which unmistakably remands
them to the original play.
But who can help feeling the joyous and tender mood of Shakspeare
reproduced by the worshipping lines of Troilus to Cressida?--
"Oh that I thought it could be in a woman
(As, if it can, I will presume in you),
To feed for aye her lamp and flame of love;
To keep her constancy in plight and youth,
Outliving beauty's outward, with a mind
That doth renew swifter than blood decays!
Or, that persuasion could but thus convince me,
That my integrity and truth to you
Might be affronted with the match and weight
Of such a winnow'd purity in love!
How were I then uplifted! but, alas!
I am as true as truth's simplicity,
And simpler than the infancy of truth."
What a pure flame mounts up from each altar of these consecrated lines
to show the detestable uncleanness of some scenes which are left over
from the original play! When the wanton Cressida sweeps the chaste
fire from those altars and leaves them standing cold in his heart,
Shakspeare cries,--
"O Cressid!
Let all untruths stand by thy stained name,
And they'll seem glorious."
Some of the sentences spoken by Ulysses have become fixed in the
English consciousness; the rings of robust reflection have grown around
and appropriated them, so that the material is quotable in every market
and is applied to modern conveniences. The famous speech that charges
the Greek factions to their neglect of "degree, priority, and place,"--
"Oh, when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,
The enterprise is sick!"--
contains a truth as applicable to a democracy as to that Shakspearian
age which reared the defeaters of the Armada, and sent Drake and
Hawkins round the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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