ABSTRACT
In the Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, Hooker’s ‘eloquent passage on the necessity of Order’ is cited as a source for Ulysses’ speech in Troilus and Cressida.1
And as it cometh to passe in a kingdom rightly ordered, that after a law is once published, it presently takes effect far and wide, all states framing themselves therunto; even so let us thinke it fareth in the naturall course of the world: since the time that God did first proclaime the edicts of his law upon it, heaven and earth have hearkened unto his voice, and their labour hath bene to do his wil: He made a law for the raine, He gave his decree unto the sea, that the waters should not passe his commandment. Now if nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether, though it were but for a while, the observation of her own lawes: if those principall and mother elements of the world, whereof all things in this lower world are made, should loose the qualities which now they have, if the frame of that heavenly arch erected over our heads should loosen and dissolve itself; if celestiall spheres should forget their wonted motions and by irregular volubilitie, turne themselves any way as it might happen: if the prince of the lightes of heaven which now as a Giant doth runne his unwearied course, should as it were through a languishing faintnes begin to stand and to rest himselfe: if the Moone should wander from her beaten way, the times and seasons of the yeare blend themselves by disordered and confused mixture, the winds breath out their last gaspe, the cloudes yeeld no rayne. The earth be defeated of heavenly influence, the fruites of the earth pine away as children of the withered breasts of their mother no longer able to yeeld them reliefe, what would become of man himselfe, whom these things now do all serve?2
