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Enter AJAX.

AJAX. Troilus! thou coward Troilus!

DIO.

[Exit.

Ay, there, there.

NEST. So, so, we draw together.*

ACHIL.

Enter ACHIlles.

Where is this Hector?

5

Come, come, thou boy-queller, show thy face; Know what it is to meet Achilles angry.

Hector! where's Hector? I will none but Hector. [Exeunt.

SCENE VI.

Another Part of the Field.

Enter AJAX.

AJAX. Troilus, thou coward Troilus, show thy head!

Enter DIOMEedes.

DIO. Troilus, I say! where's Troilus?

AJAX.

What would'st thou?

we draw together.] This remark seems to be made by Nestor in consequence of the return of Ajax to the field, he having lately refused to co-operate or draw together with the Greeks, though at present he is roused from his sullen fit by the loss of a friend. So, in Cynthia's Revels, by Ben Jonson: "'Tis the swaggering coach-horse Anaides, that draws with him there." STEEVENS.

5

boy-queller,] i. e. murderer of a boy. So, in King Henry IV. Part II: "a man-queller and a woman-queller.' See Vol. X. p. 91, n. 9.

VOL. XV.

STEEVENS.

2 H

DIO. I would correct him.

AJAX. Were I the general, thou should'st have my office

Ere that correction:-Troilus, I say! what, Troilus!

Enter TROILUS.

TRO. O traitor Diomed!-turn thy false face, thou traitor,

And pay thy life thou ow'st me for my horse!
DIO. Ha! art thou there?

AJAX. I'll fight with him alone: stand, Diomed.
Dio. He is my prize, I will not look upon."
TRO. Come both, you cogging Greeks; have at
you both.
[Exeunt, fighting.

6 I will not look upon.] That is, (as we should now speak,) I will not be a looker-on.

Part III:

66 Why stand we here

"Wailing our losses,

So, in King Henry VI.

"And look upon, as if the tragedy

"Were play'd in jest by counterfeited actors?"

These lines were written by Shakspeare. MALONE.

7 -you cogging Greeks;] This epithet has no particular propriety in this place, but the author had heard of Græcia mendax. JOHNSON.

Surely the epithet had propriety, in respect of Diomedes at least, who had defrauded him of his mistress. Troilus bestows it on both, unius ob culpam. A fraudulent man, as I am told, is still called, in the North, a gainful Greek. Cicero bears wit ness to this character of the ancient Greeks: "Testimoniorum religionem & fidem nunquam ista natio coluit."

Again: "Græcorum ingenia ad fallendum parata sunt."

STEEVENS.

Enter HECTOR.

HECT. Yea, Troilus? O, well fought, my youngest brother!

Enter ACHIlles.

ACHIL. Now do I see thee: Ha!-Have at thee, Hector.

HECT. Pause, if thou wilt.

ACHIL. I do disdain thy courtesy, proud Trojan. Be happy, that my arms are out of use:

My rest and negligence befriend thee now,
But thou anon shalt hear of me again;
Till when, go seek thy fortune.

HECT.

[Exit.

Fare thee well :

I would have been much more a fresher man, Had I expected thee.-How now, my brother?

Re-enter TROILUS.

TRO. Ajax hath ta'en Æneas; Shall it be?
No, by the flame of yonder glorious heaven,
He shall not carry him; I'll be taken too,
Or bring him off:-Fate, hear me what I say!
I reck not though I end my life to-day.

[Exit.

by the flame of yonder glorious heaven,] So, in King John:

9

66

-by the light that shines above our heads."

STEEVENS.

carry him ;] i. e. prevail over him. So, in All's well that ends well:

66

-The count he wooes your daughter,

"Resolves to carry

her;

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STEEVENS.

Enter one in sumptuous Armour.

HECT. Stand, stand, thou Greek; thou art a goodly mark:

No? wilt thou not?-I like thy armour well;'

2

I like thy armour well;] This circumstance is taken from Lydgate's poem, p. 196:

66

Guido in his historie doth shew

"By worthy Hector's fall, who coveting

"To have the sumptuous armour of that king, &c.
"So greedy was thereof, that when he had
"The body up, and on his horse it bare,

"To have the spoil thereof such haste he made
"That he did hang his shield without all care
"Behind him at his back, the easier

"To pull the armour off at his desire,

"And by that means his breast clean open lay," &c. This furnished Shakspeare with the hint for the following line: "I am unarm❜d; forego this vantage, Greek."

I quote from the original, 1555:

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in this while a Grekish king he mette, "Were it of hap or of adventure,

STEEVENS

"The which in sothe on his cote armoure
"Embrouded had full many ryche stone,
"That gave a lyght, when the sonne shone,
"Full bryght and cleare, that joye was to sene,
"For perles white and emerawdes grene
"Full many one were therein sette.—
"Of whose arraye when Hector taketh hede,
"Towardes him fast gan him drawe.

"And fyrst I fynde how he hath him slawe,
"And after that by force of his manheade
"He hent him up afore him on his stede,
"And fast gan wyth him for to ryde
"From the wardes a lytell out of syde,
"At good leyser playnly, if he maye,
"To spoyle him of his rych arraye.—
"On horse-backe out whan he him ladde,
"Recklessly the storye maketh mynde
"He caste his shelde at his backe behynde,
"To weld him selfe at more libertye,—

"So that his brest disarmed was and bare." MALONE.

I'll frush it, and unlock the rivets all,

3 I'll frush it,] The word frush I never found elsewhere, nor understand it. Sir T. Hanmer explains it, to break or

bruise. JOHNSON.

Mr. M. Mason observes, that " Hanmer's explanation appears to be right and the word frush, in this sense, to be derived from the verb froisser, to bruise, or break to pieces.”

:

To frush a chicken, &c. is a term in carving, as ancient as Wynkyn de Worde's book on that subject, 1508; and was succeeded by another phrase, which we may suppose to have been "break synonymous, viz.-to up a capon;" words that occur in Love's Labour's Lost.

Holinshed (as Mr. Tollet has observed) employs the verb-to frush, in his Description of Ireland, p. 29: "When they are sore frusht with sickness, or too farre withered with age."

The word seems to be sometimes used for any action of violence by which things are separated, disordered, or destroyed. So, in Hinde's Eliosto Libidinoso, 1606: "High cedars are frushed with tempests, when lower shrubs are not touched with the wind."

Again, in Hans Beer-pot's Invisible Comedy, &c. 1618:

"And with mine arm to frush a sturdy lance."

Again, in The History of Helyas Knight of the Swan, bl. 1. no date: " smote him so courageously with his sworde, that he frushed all his helm, wherewith the erle fell backward," &c. Again, in Stanyhurst's translation of the first Book of Virgil's Eneid, 1582:

Again:

"All the frushe and leavings of Greeks, of wrathful Achilles."

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yf that knight Antheus haplye "Were frusht, or remanent," &c.

Again, in Sir John Mandevile's account of the magical entertainments exhibited before the Grete Chan, p. 285: "And then they make knyghts to jousten in armes full lustyly, &c.— and they fruschen togidere full fiercely."

Again, in Fairfax's Tasso:

"Rinaldo's armour frush'd and hack'd they had." STEEVENS.

The meaning of the word is ascertained by the following passage in The Destruction of Troy, a book which Shakspeare certainly had before him when he wrote this play: "Saying these wordes, Hercules caught by the head poor Lychas, -and

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