Take but degree away, untune that string,
And mark 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.
I wrote then of the war for Troy, but hath it not a familiar sound?
Ulysses, in my Troilus and Cressida, speaks these words: an thou wouldst see war stripped bare of glory or any moralising claim of right, in this play is it shown forth. By God, had any the heart to play it now, 'twould be timely done.
Yet e'en in the midst of war, a man must laugh: and if it cannot be at saucy English fellows eating raw leek at the hands of overweening Welshmen, then it had best be at this: Jean-Luc Picard his Galliard. That same Patrick Stewart hath a most pleasing dulcet voice, whether he intoneth the Klingon tongue or indeed mine own sonnets 147, 141 and 18. For myself, I have but small Klingon, and less geek.
And whiles we speak of sonnets, Master Petrarch, cold in his grave, lacks a head. I wonder whether to mention it when I see him next?
Perchance not. Dante and Boccaccio will so by this have plagu'd him that I were best merely to pour him a cup of wine. And no gibes about his having no head for liquor, neither.
Posted by Shakespeare at May 6, 2004 3:46 AM