To tell thee—that this day is ominous : Æneas is afield; Aye, but thou shalt not go. my faith. you do here forbid me, royal Priam. Do not, dear father. you [Exit ANDROMACHE. O farewell, dear Hector 13. Andromache shrills 14 her dolours forth ! 12 i. e. disgrace the respect I owe you, by acting in opposition to your commands. 13 The interposition and clamorous sorrow of Cassandra are copied from Lydgate. 14 So in Spenser's Epithalamium :: : Hark how the minstrels gin to shrill aloud Their merry music,' &c. • Through all th' abyss I have shrilld thy daughter's loss Q Q 2 Tro. Away!-Away! leave: Thou dost thyself and all our Troy deceive. [Exit. Hect. You are amaz’d, my liege, at her exclaim: Go in, and cheer the town: we'll forth, and fight; Do deeds worth praise, and tell you them at night. Pri. Farewell; the gods with safety stand about thee! Alarums. lieve, I come to lose my arm, or win my sleeve. As Troilus is going out, enter, from the other side, PANDARUS. hear? Pan. A whoreson ptisick, a whoreson rascally ptisick so troubles me, and the foolish fortune of this girl; and what one thing, what another, that I shall leave you one o'these days: And I have a rheum in mine eyes too; and such an ache in my bones, that, unless a man were cursed 16, I cannot tell what to think on't. - What says she there? Tro. Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart; [Tearing the letter. The effect doth operate another way.Go, wind, to wind, there turn and change together. My love with words and errors still she feeds; But edifies another with her deeds. [Exeunt severally. 16 That is, under the influence of a malediction, such as mischievous beings have been supposed to pronounce upon those who offended them. SCENE IV. Between Troy and the Grecian Camp. Ther. Now they are clapper-clawing one another; I'll go look on. That dissembling abominable varlet, Diomed, has got that same scurvy doting foolish young knave's sleeve of Troy there, in his helm : I would fain see them meet; that that same young Trojan ass, that loves the whore there, might send that Greekish whoremasterly villain, with the sleeve, back to the dissembling luxurious drab, on a sleeveless errand. O'the other side, The policy of those crafty swearing rascals?,—that stale old mouseeaten dry cheese, Nestor; and that same dog-fox, Ulysses,-is not proved worth a blackberry: They set me up, in policy, that mongrel cur, Ajax, against that dog of as bad a kind, Achilles: and now is the cur Ajax prouder than the cur Achilles, and will not arm to-day: whereupon the Grecians begin to proclaim barbarism”, and policy grows into an ill opinion. Soft! here comes sleeve, and t'other. Enter DIOMEDES, TROILUS following. Styx, Thou dost miscall retire: Theobald proposes to read ‘sneering rascals;' which Mason thinks more suitable to the characters of Ulysses and Nestor than swearing. ? To set up the authority of ignorance, and to declare that they will be governed by policy no longer. Withdrew me from the odds of multitude: Ther. Hold thy whore, Grecian ! -now for thy whore, Trojan!—now the sleeve, now the sleeve! [Exeunt TROILUS and DIOMEDES, fighting. Enter HECTOR. Hect. What art thou, Greek? art thou for Hec tor's match? Art thou of blood, and honour 3? Ther. No, no :--I am a rascal; a scurvy railing knave; a very filthy rogue. Hect. I do believe thee:-live. [Exit. Ther. God-a-mercy, that thou wilt believe me; But a plague break thy neck, for frighting me! What's become of the wenching rogues? I think, they have swallowed one another: I would laugh at that miracle. Yet, in a sort, lechery eats itself. I'll seek them. [Erit. 3 This is an idea taken from the ancient books of romantic chivalry, and even from the usage of the poet's age; as is the following one in the speech of Diomedes : • And am her knight by proof.' It appears from Segar's Honour, Military and Civil, folio, 1602, That a person of superior birth might not be challenged by an inferior, or if challenged might refuse combat. Alluding to this circumstance, Cleopatra says: • These hands do lack nobility, that they strike Ant. and Cleop. We learn from Melvil's Memoirs, p. 165, ed. 1735, ‘ the laird of Grange offered to fight Bothwell, who answered that he was neither earl nor lord, but a baron; and so was not bis equal. The like answer made he to Tullibardine. Then my Lord Lindsay offered to fight him, which he could not well refuse; but his heart failed him, and he grew cold on the business. These punctilios are well ridiculed in Albumazar, Act iv. Sc. 7. SCENE V. The same. I go, my lord. Enter DIOMEDES and a Servant. Dio. Go, go, my servant, take thou Troilus’horse?; Present the fair steed to my lady Cressid: Fellow, commend my service to her beauty; Tell her, I have chastis’d the amorous Trojan, And am her knight by proof. Serv. [Exit Servant. Enter AGAMEMNON. Agam. Renew, renew! The fierce Polydamas Hath beat down Menon: bastard Margarelon Hath Doreus prisoner: And stands colossus-wise, waving his beam”, Upon the pashed: corses of the kings Epistrophus and Cedius : Polixenes is slain; Amphimachus, and Thoas, deadly hurt; · Patroclus ta’en, or slain; and Palamedes Sore hurt and bruised: the dreadful Sagittaryo Appals our numbers; haste we, Diomed, To reinforcement, or we perish all. 1 This circumstance is taken from Lydgate, as is the introduction of a bastard son of Priam under the name of Margarelon. The latter is also in the Old History of the Destruction of Troy. ? i.e. his lance, like a weaver's beam ; as Goliath's spear is described. So in Spenser's Faerie Queene, b. iii. vii. 40: • All were the beame in bigness like a mast.' 3 Bruised, crushed. See Act ii. Sc. 3, note 24, p. 373. 4 • A mervayllous beaste that was called Sagittayre, that behynde the myddes was an horse, and to fore, a man: this beste was heery like an horse, and shotte well with a bowe: this beste made the Grekes sore aferde, and slewe many of them with his bowe.'-Destruction of Troy, by Caxton. A more circumstantial account of this Sagittary is to be found in Lydgate. |