Honor, health, and compassion to the Senate!

Alcibiades
Honor, health, and compassion to the Senate!
First Senator
Now, captain?

He’s truly valiant that can wisely suffer
The worst that man can breathe

Alcibiades
I am an humble suitor to your virtues,
For pity is the virtue of the law,
And none but tyrants use it cruelly.
It pleases time and fortune to lie heavy
Upon a friend of mine, who in hot blood
Hath stepped into the law, which is past depth
To those that without heed do plunge into ’t.
He is a man—setting his fate aside—
Of comely virtues.
Nor did he soil the fact with cowardice—
An honor in him which buys out his fault—
But with a noble fury and fair spirit,
Seeing his reputation touched to death,
He did oppose his foe;
And with such sober and unnoted passion
He did behave his anger, ere ’twas spent,
As if he had but proved an argument.
First Senator
You undergo too strict a paradox,
Striving to make an ugly deed look fair.
Your words have took such pains as if they labored
To bring manslaughter into form and set quarreling
Upon the head of valor—which indeed
Is valor misbegot, and came into the world
When sects and factions were newly born.
He’s truly valiant that can wisely suffer
The worst that man can breathe
And make his wrongs his outsides,
To wear them like his raiment, carelessly,
And ne’er prefer his injuries to his heart
To bring it into danger.
If wrongs be evils and enforce us kill,
What folly ’tis to hazard life for ill!
Alcibiades
My lord—
First Senator
You cannot make gross sins look clear.
To revenge is no valor, but to bear.
Alcibiades
My lords, then, under favor, pardon me
If I speak like a captain.
Why do fond men expose themselves to battle
And not endure all threats? Sleep upon ’t,
And let the foes quietly cut their throats
Without repugnancy? If there be
Such valor in the bearing, what make we
Abroad? Why, then, women are more valiant
That stay at home, if bearing carry it,
And the ass more captain than the lion, the felon
Loaden with irons wiser than the judge,
If wisdom be in suffering. O my lords,
As you are great, be pitifully good.
Who cannot condemn rashness in cold blood?
To kill, I grant, is sin’s extremest gust,
But in defense, by mercy, ’tis most just.
To be in anger is impiety,
But who is man that is not angry?
Weigh but the crime with this.
Second Senator
You breathe in vain.
Alcibiades
In vain? His service done
At Lacedaemon and Byzantium
Were a sufficient briber for his life.
First Senator
What’s that?
Alcibiades
Why, I say, my lords, has done fair service
And slain in fight many of your enemies.
How full of valor did he bear himself
In the last conflict, and made plenteous wounds!
Second Senator
He has made too much plenty with ’em.
He’s a sworn rioter. He has a sin
That often drowns him and takes his valor prisoner.
If there were no foes, that were enough
To overcome him. In that beastly fury,
He has been known to commit outrages
And cherish factions. ’Tis inferred to us
His days are foul and his drink dangerous.
First Senator
He dies.