“… Then a soldier,
Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation,
Even in the cannon mouth.”
Tips for use. “Bubble reputation” applies at large and not only to those who seek it in the military. In fact, a moment of reflection will show how easily reputation, often a euphemism for notoriety, vanishes as quickly as the bubble found in these lines. As we all know, often the military finds recruits not among those seeking a reputation but among those seeking to survive in the so called “new world order”, fashioned by the 1% to the detriment of the other 99%.
But limiting the meaning to these lines to war, we may recall the lines of Plutarch introduced as a comment on the life of Pyrrhus, “For men whose ambition neither seas, nor mountains, nor unpeopled deserts can limit, nor the bounds dividing Europe from Asia confine their vast desires, it would be hard to expect to forbear from injuring one another when they touch and are close together. These are ever naturally at war, envying and seeking advantages of one another.” And we may add “for the sake of democracy”, of course.
This is the fourth age of man. To locate the previous related blogs, the “ages of men, all the world is a stage” etc., the introduction to these famous Shakespeare lines are in the blog of Feb 29, 2012. Stage 1 – the infant, in the blog of Apr 9, 2012; stage 2 – the whining schoolboy in the blog of Jun 2, 2012; stage 3 – the lover, in the blog of Jun 8, 2012.
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In the play. Jacques – a forerunner of a certain type of Voltairean character, philosophizes on the main chapters of everyone’s life
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