sbcanada
New Member
I just don't get why the have to put Shakespeare's "literature" into our English classes. First, that is NOT English! Second, what the HELL is he talking aboot?? Third, how the FUCK am I suposed to know what the HELL he's talking aboot?? Nobody speaks that way anymore "unless they be drunk," so why can't they just give us modern literature to deal with? I think Shakespeare and other old literature of that sort should be in their own subject under "Old Literature." 
Here is an example from one of my tests, and they expect me to make sense of it and tell them what he means. They could at least translate this stuff into modern English and then have us read it!
ULYSSES: Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down,
And the great Hector’s1 sword had lacked a master,
But for these instances.
5 The specialty of rule2 hath been neglected;
And look, how many Grecian tents do stand
Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions,
When that general is not like the hive
To whom the foragers shall all repair,3
10 What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded,4
Th’ unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre
Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture,5 course, proportion, season, form,
15 Office, and custom, in all line of order.
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol6
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Admidst the other; whose med’cinable eye
Corrects the influence7 of evil planets,
20 And posts,8 like the commandment of a king,
Sans check to good and bad. But when the planets
In evil mixture to disorder wander,
What plagues, and what portents, what mutiny
What raging of the sea, shaking of earth,
25 Commotion in the winds, frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate9
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixture? O, when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder of all high designs,
30 The enterprise is sick. How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenity10 and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
35 But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And hark what discord follows. Each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy.11 The bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
40 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,
45 Should lose their names, and so should justice too;
Then everything include itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite,
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
50 Must make perforce an universal prey
And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,
This chaos, when degree is suffocate,
Follows the choking.
And this neglection of degree it is
55 That by a pace goes backward with a purpose
It hath to climb. The general’s disdained
By him one step below, he by the next,
That next by min beneath; so every step,
Exampled by the first pace that is sick
60 Of his superior, grows to an envious fever
Of pale and bloodless emulation:
And ‘tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,
Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,
Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.
65 NESTOR: Most wisely hath Ulysses here discovered
The fever whereof all our power is sick.
AGAMEMNON: The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses,
What is the remedy?
ULYSSES: The great Achilles,12 whom opinion crowns
70 The sinew and the forehand of our host,
Having his ear full of his airy fame,
Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent
Lies mocking our designs. With him Patroclus13
Upon a lazy bed the livelong day
75 Breaks scurril jests,
And with ridiculous and silly action
(Which, slanderer, he imitation calls)
He pageants14 us. Sometime, great Agamemnon,
Thy topless deputation15 he puts on
80 And, like a strutting player, whose conceit
Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich
To hear the wooden dialogue and sound
‘Twist his stretched footing and the scaffoldage,
Such to-be-pitied and o’er-wrested seeming
85 He acts thy greatness in; and when he speaks,
‘Tis like a chime a-mending, with terms unsquared,
Which, from the tongue of roaring Typhon16 dropped,
Would seem hyperboles. At this fusty stuff
The large Achilles, on his pressed bed lolling
90 From his deep chest laughs out a loud applause,
Cries, “Excellent! ‘tis Agamemnon right.
Now play me Nestor; hem, and stroke thy beard,
As he being drest to some oration.”
That’s done, as near as the extremest ends
95 Of parallels, as like as Vulcan17 and his wife,
Yet god Achilles still cries, “Excellent!
‘Tis Nestor right. now play him me, Patroclus,
Arming to answer in a night alarm.”
And then, forsooth, the faint defects of age
100 Must be the scene of mirth; to cough and spit,
And with a palsy fumbling on his gorget,18
Shake in and out the rivet; and at this sport
Sir Valor dies; cries, “O! enough, Patroclus,
Or give me ribs of steel; I shall split all
105 In pleasure of my spleen!” And in this fashion
All our abilities, gifts, natures, shapes,
Severals and generals of grace exact,
Achievements, plots, orders, preventions,
Excitements to the field or speech for truce,
110 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,
Who, as Ulysses says, opinion crowns
With an imperial voice, many are infect.
115 Ajax19 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;
Makes factious feasts; rails on our state of war,
Bold as an oracle, and sets Thersites,20
120 A slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint,
To match us in comparisons with dirt,
To weaken and discredit our exposure,
How rank21 soever rounded in with danger.
ULYSSES: They tax our policy and call it cowardice,
125 Count wisdom as no member of the war,
Forstall prescience, and esteem no act
But that of hand. The still and mental parts
That do contrive how many hands shall strike
When fitness call them on, and know by measure
130 Of their observant toil the enemies’ weight—
Why, this hath not a finger’s dignity.
They call this bed-work, mapp’ry, closet-war;
So that the ram that batters down the wall,
For the great swinge22 and rudeness of his poise,
135 They place before his hand that made the engine,
Or those that with the fineness of their souls
By reason guide his execution.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Here is an example from one of my tests, and they expect me to make sense of it and tell them what he means. They could at least translate this stuff into modern English and then have us read it!
ULYSSES: Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down,
And the great Hector’s1 sword had lacked a master,
But for these instances.
5 The specialty of rule2 hath been neglected;
And look, how many Grecian tents do stand
Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions,
When that general is not like the hive
To whom the foragers shall all repair,3
10 What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded,4
Th’ unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre
Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture,5 course, proportion, season, form,
15 Office, and custom, in all line of order.
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol6
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Admidst the other; whose med’cinable eye
Corrects the influence7 of evil planets,
20 And posts,8 like the commandment of a king,
Sans check to good and bad. But when the planets
In evil mixture to disorder wander,
What plagues, and what portents, what mutiny
What raging of the sea, shaking of earth,
25 Commotion in the winds, frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate9
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixture? O, when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder of all high designs,
30 The enterprise is sick. How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenity10 and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
35 But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And hark what discord follows. Each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy.11 The bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
40 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,
45 Should lose their names, and so should justice too;
Then everything include itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite,
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
50 Must make perforce an universal prey
And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,
This chaos, when degree is suffocate,
Follows the choking.
And this neglection of degree it is
55 That by a pace goes backward with a purpose
It hath to climb. The general’s disdained
By him one step below, he by the next,
That next by min beneath; so every step,
Exampled by the first pace that is sick
60 Of his superior, grows to an envious fever
Of pale and bloodless emulation:
And ‘tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,
Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,
Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.
65 NESTOR: Most wisely hath Ulysses here discovered
The fever whereof all our power is sick.
AGAMEMNON: The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses,
What is the remedy?
ULYSSES: The great Achilles,12 whom opinion crowns
70 The sinew and the forehand of our host,
Having his ear full of his airy fame,
Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent
Lies mocking our designs. With him Patroclus13
Upon a lazy bed the livelong day
75 Breaks scurril jests,
And with ridiculous and silly action
(Which, slanderer, he imitation calls)
He pageants14 us. Sometime, great Agamemnon,
Thy topless deputation15 he puts on
80 And, like a strutting player, whose conceit
Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich
To hear the wooden dialogue and sound
‘Twist his stretched footing and the scaffoldage,
Such to-be-pitied and o’er-wrested seeming
85 He acts thy greatness in; and when he speaks,
‘Tis like a chime a-mending, with terms unsquared,
Which, from the tongue of roaring Typhon16 dropped,
Would seem hyperboles. At this fusty stuff
The large Achilles, on his pressed bed lolling
90 From his deep chest laughs out a loud applause,
Cries, “Excellent! ‘tis Agamemnon right.
Now play me Nestor; hem, and stroke thy beard,
As he being drest to some oration.”
That’s done, as near as the extremest ends
95 Of parallels, as like as Vulcan17 and his wife,
Yet god Achilles still cries, “Excellent!
‘Tis Nestor right. now play him me, Patroclus,
Arming to answer in a night alarm.”
And then, forsooth, the faint defects of age
100 Must be the scene of mirth; to cough and spit,
And with a palsy fumbling on his gorget,18
Shake in and out the rivet; and at this sport
Sir Valor dies; cries, “O! enough, Patroclus,
Or give me ribs of steel; I shall split all
105 In pleasure of my spleen!” And in this fashion
All our abilities, gifts, natures, shapes,
Severals and generals of grace exact,
Achievements, plots, orders, preventions,
Excitements to the field or speech for truce,
110 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,
Who, as Ulysses says, opinion crowns
With an imperial voice, many are infect.
115 Ajax19 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;
Makes factious feasts; rails on our state of war,
Bold as an oracle, and sets Thersites,20
120 A slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint,
To match us in comparisons with dirt,
To weaken and discredit our exposure,
How rank21 soever rounded in with danger.
ULYSSES: They tax our policy and call it cowardice,
125 Count wisdom as no member of the war,
Forstall prescience, and esteem no act
But that of hand. The still and mental parts
That do contrive how many hands shall strike
When fitness call them on, and know by measure
130 Of their observant toil the enemies’ weight—
Why, this hath not a finger’s dignity.
They call this bed-work, mapp’ry, closet-war;
So that the ram that batters down the wall,
For the great swinge22 and rudeness of his poise,
135 They place before his hand that made the engine,
Or those that with the fineness of their souls
By reason guide his execution.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
