Shakespeare · Soliloquies & Solo Speeches
Production Notes
Ulysses addresses the Greek war council with a diagnosis of why the siege of Troy has stalled: because degree — hierarchy, order, precedent — has been allowed to collapse. Without degree, he argues, everything reverts to brute force. The speech is Shakespeare’s most systematic political statement, and it has been debated ever since as a defense of, or an attack on, hierarchy itself.
The speech rewards Players who can hold an abstract argument with physical conviction. Ulysses is not philosophizing in an armchair — he is making a political case, and the audience he addresses (the Greek commanders) can act on what he says. The scale of the argument — from military camps to the movements of planets — should be felt in the body.
Script
ULYSSES
The specialty of rule hath been neglected, And look how many Grecian tents do stand Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions. When that the general is not like the hive To whom the foragers shall all repair, What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded, Th’ unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask. The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office, and custom, in all line of order. And therefore is the glorious planet Sol In noble eminence enthroned and sphered Amidst the other, whose med’cinable eye Corrects the influence of evil planets, And posts, 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, Commotion in the winds, frights, changes, horrors Divert and crack, rend and deracinate The unity and married calm of states Quite from their fixture! O, when degree is shaked, Which is the ladder of all high designs, The enterprise is sick. How could communities, Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities, Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, The primogeneity and due of birth, Prerogative of age, crowns, scepters, laurels, 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. 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.
Facilitator Notes
Warm-up: Ask Players to find a word or phrase in the speech they don’t fully understand — and explore it physically before looking it up. Let the strange sound carry meaning.
Debrief prompts:
- Ulysses uses the cosmos — stars, planets, tides — as evidence for his political argument. Does the argument work? Do Players believe him?
- “Take but degree away, untune that string” — the metaphor is musical. What does music have to do with political order?
- Ulysses is manipulating his audience as well as persuading them. Where does the manipulation show?
- This speech has been used to justify rigid hierarchy and also to critique it. What evidence does the speech itself offer for each reading?