I tell thee, yea. Hect. Wert thou an oracle to tell me so, I'd not believe thee. Henceforth guard thee well; For I'll not kill thee there, nor there, nor there; But, by the forge that stithied' Mars his helm, Pll kill thee every where, yea, o'er and o'er.You wisest Grecians, pardon me this brag, His insolence draws folly from my lips; But I'll endeavour deeds to match these words, Or may I never Ajax. Do not chafe thee, cousin ;And you Achilles, let these threats alone, Till accident, or purpose, bring you to't: You may have every day enough of Hector, If you have stomach;2 the general state, I fear, Can scarce entreat you to be odd with him. Hect. I pray you, let us see you in the field; We have had pelting3 wars, since you refus'd The Grecians' cause. Achil Dost thou entreat me, Hector? To-morrow, do I meet thee, fell as death; To-night, all friends. Hect. Thy hand upon that match. Agam. First, all you peers of Greece, go to my tent; There in the full convive4 we; afterwards, [Eceunt all but TROILUS and ULYSSES. Tro. My Lord Ulysses, tell me, I beseech you, In what place of the field doth Calchas keep? Ulyss. At Menelaus' tent, most princely Troilus: There Diomed doth feast with him to-night; Who neither looks upon the heaven, nor earth, But gives all gaze and bent of amorous view On the fair Cressid. Tro. Shall I, sweet lord, be bound to you so much, After we part from Agamemnon's tent, Ulyss. You shall command me, sir. As gentle tell me, of what honour was This Cressida in Troy? Had she no lover there That wails her absence? Tro. O, sir, to such as boasting show their scars, A mock is due. Will you walk on, my lord? She was belov'd, she lov'd; she is, and doth: But, still sweet love is food for fortune's tooth. [Exeunt. ACT V. SCENE I. The Grecian Camp. Before Achilles' Tent. Enter ACHILLES and PATROCLUS. Achil. I'll heat his blood with Greekish wine to night, Which with my scimitar I'll cool to-morrow.6 Achil. Enter THERSITES. f How now, thou core of envy? Thou crusty batch' of nature, what's the news? Ther. Why, thou picture of what thou seemest, and idol of idiot-worshippers, here's a letter for thee. Achil. From whence, fragment? Ther. Why, thou full dish of fool, from Troy. Ther. The surgeon's box, or the patient's wound. Patr. Well said, Adversity!" and what need these tricks? Ther. Pr'ythee be silent, boy; I profit not by thy talk thou art thought to be Achilles' male varlet. Patr. Male varlet, 10 you rogue! what's that? Ther. Why, his masculine whore. Now, the rotten diseases of the south, the guts-griping, ruptures, catarrhs, loads o' gravel i' the back, lethargies, cold palsies, raw eyes, dirt-rotten livers, wheezing lungs, bladders full of imposthume, sciati cas, lime kilns i' the palm, incurable bone-ach, and the rivelled fee simple of the tetter, take and take again such preposterous discoveries! Patr. Why thou damnable box of envy, thou, what meanest thou to curse thus? Ther. Do I curse thee? Patr. Why, no, you ruinous butt; you whoreson indistinguishable cur, no. 11 Ther. No? why art thou then exasperate, thou idle immaterial skein of sleive12 silk, thou green sarcenet flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal's purse, thou? Ah, how the poor world is pestered with such water-flies: 13 diminutives of nature! Patr. Out, gall! Ther. Finch egg! Achil. My sweet Patroclus, I am thwarted quite A token from her daughter, my fair love;14 Γ [Exeunt ACHILLES and PATROCLUS. Ther. With too much blood, and too little brain, these two may run mad; but if with too much brain, and too little blood, they do, I'll be a curer of madmen. Here's Agamemnon,-an honest fel 9 Adversity is here used for contrariety. The reply of Thersites having been studiously adverse to the drift of the question urged by Patroclus. So in Love's Labour's Lost, the Princess addressing Boyet, (who had been capriciously employing himself to perpler the dialogue,) says, Avaunt, Perplexity! 10 This expression is met with in Decker's Honest Whore: Tis a male varlet, sure, my lord! The person spoken of is Bellafronte, a harlot, who is introduced in boy's clothes. Man-mistress is a term of reproach thrown out by Dorax, in Dryden's Don Sebastian. See Professor Heyne's Seventeenth Excursus on the first book of the Æneid. 11 Patroclus reproaches Thersites with deformity, with having one part crowded into another. The same idea occurs in the Second Part of King Henry IV. : 'Crowd us and crush us to this monstrous form.' 12 See Macbeth, Act ii. Sc. 2. 13 So Hamlet, speaking of Osrick: Dost know this water-fly? 14 This is a circumstance taken from the old story book of The Destruction of Troy. The same. Dio. What are you up here, ho? speak. Cal. [Within.] She comes to you, low enough, and one that loves quails; but he has SCENE II. Enter HECTOR, TROILUS, AJAX, AGAMEMNON, Agam. We go wrong, we go wrong. There, where we see the lights. Hect. Ajax. No, not a whit. No, yonder 'tis ; I trouble you. Here comes himself to guide you. Enter ACHILLES. Achil. Good night. And welcome, both to those that go, or tarry. [Exeunt AGAMEMNON and MENELAUS. Achil. Old Nestor tarries; and you too, Diomed, Keep Hector company an hour or two. Dio. I cannot, lord; I have important business, Follow his torch, he goes Achil. Come, come, enter my tent. [Exeunt ACHILLES, HECTOR, AJAX, and 8 Enter TROILUS and ULYSSES, at a distance; after them THERSITES. Ulyss. Stand where the torch may not discover us. Tro. Cressid comes forth to him! Tro. Yea, so familiar! Ulyss. She will sing any man at first sight. Ther. And any man may sing her, if he can take her cliff!" she's noted. Dio. Will you remember? Cres. Dio. Remember? yes. Nay, but do, then, And let your mind be coupled with your words. T Tro. What should she remember? Ulyss. List! Cres. Sweet honey Greek, tempt me no more to Dio. Nay, then, Cres. I'll tell you what: Dio. Pho! pho! come, tell a pin: You are for sworn. Cres. In faith, I cannot: What would you have Ther. A juggling trick, to be-secretly open. Tro. Hold, patience! Cres. How now, Trojan? Diomed, Dio. No, no, good night,: I'll be your fool no more. pray you, Hark! one word in your ear. Now, good my lord, go off; You flow to great destruction;10 come, my lord. Ther. That same Diomed's a false-hearted rogue, a most unjust knave; I will no more trust him when he leers, than I will a serpent when he hisses: heI will spend his mouth, and promise, like Brabbler the hound; but when he performs, astronomers foretell it; it is prodigious, there will come some change; the sun borrows of the moon, when Diomed keeps his word. I will rather leave to see Hector, than not to dog him; they say, he keeps a Trojan drab, and uses the traitor Calchas' tent: I'll after.-Nothing but lechery! all incontinent varlets! [Exit. 1 By quails are meant tromen, and probably those of a looser description. Caille coeflée' is a sobriquet for a harlot. Chaud comme un caille is a French proverb. The quail being remarkably salacious. 2 He calls Menelaus the transformation of Jupiter, that is, the bull, on account of his horns, which are the oblique memorial of cuckolds. Ulyss. You have not patience; come. Tro. I pray you, stay; by hell, and all hell's tor By Jove, will be patient. Cres. Guardian!-why, Greek! 6 Draught is the old word for forica. It is used in the translation of the Bible, in Holínshed, and by all old writers. 7 If a hound gives mouth, and is not upon the scent of the game, he is called a babbler or brabbler. The proverb says, 'Brabbling curs never want sore ears? S Portentous, ominous. 9 That is, her key. Clef, Fr. A mark in music at the beginning of the lines of a song, &c. which indicates the pitch, and whether it is suited for a bass, treble, or tenor voice. 10 i. e. your impetuosity exposes you to imminent peril. The folio reads distraction. Ther. Now the pledge; now, now, now! My lord! Tro. I will be patient; outwardly I will. He loved me-O false wench!-Give't me again, Cres. Well, well, 'tis done, 'tis past,—And yo I will not keep my word. Why then, farewell; Cres. You shall not go :-One cannot speak a But it straight starts you. Dio. What, shall I come? the hour? Ay, come :-O Jove! Do come :-I shall be plagu'd.' Farewell till then. Cres. Good night. I pr'ythee, come. [Exit DIOMEDES. Troilus, farewell! one eye yet looks on thee; But with my heart the other eye doth see." Ah! poor our sex! this fault in us I find, The error of our eye directs our mind: What error leads, must err; O then conclude, Minds, sway'd by eyes, are full of turpitude. [Exu CRESSIDA. Ther. A proof of strength, she could not publish more, then? Unless she said, My mind is now turn'd whore. No matter, now I have't again. stone. What, this? Dio. Cres. You shall not have it, Diomed; 'faith you I'll give you something else. Dio. I will have this; Whose was it? 'Tis no matter. Dio. Come, tell me whose it was. But, now you have it, take it. Dio. Dio. To-morrow will I wear it on my helm; 1 To palter is to equivocate, to shuffle. Thus in Macbeth : "That palter with us in a double sense. * 2 Lururia was the appropriate term of the old school divines for the sin of incontinence, which is accordingly called luxury by all our old English writers. The degrees of this sin and its partitions are enumerated by Richard Rolle, the Hermit of Hampole, in his Speculum Vita, MS. penes me. And Chaucer, in his Parson's Tale, makes it one of the seven deadly sins. Luxury, or lasciviousness, is said to have a potatoe-finger, because that root was thought to strengthen the bodie, and procure bodily lust.' 3 This sleeve was given by Troilus to Cressida at their parting, and she gave him a glove in return. It was probably such a sleeve as was formerly worn at tournaments: one of which Spenser describes in his View of the State of Ireland, p. 42, ed, 1663. That doth invert the attest of eyes and ears;" Ulyss. I cannot conjure, Trojan. Tro. Why, my negation hath no taste of mad Tro. Nothing at all, unless that this were she. This was not she. O madness of discourse, 4 i. e. the stars which she points to. The silver-shining queen he would disdain; Her twinkling hand-maids too, by him defil'd, Through Night's black bosom should not peep again.’ 5 The characters of Cressida and Pandarus are more immediately formed from Chaucer than from Lydgate; for though the latter mentions them both characteristi cally, he does not sufficiently dwell on either to have furnished Shakspeare with many circumstances to be found in this tragedy. 6 She could not publish a stronger proof. 7 i. e. turns the very testimony of seeing and hearing against themselves. 8 For the sake of womanhood. 9 Critic has here probably the signification of cynic.' So lago says in Othello: 'I am nothing if not critical.' 10 If it be true that one individual cannot be two distinct persons. 11 The folio reads By foul authority,' &c. There is Without perdition, and loss assume all reason› 5 And with another knot, five-finger-tied, Hark, Greek ;-As much as I do Cressid love, 8 Ther. He'll tickle it for his concupy." Tro. O Cressid! O false Cressid! false, false, false! Let all untruths stand by thy stained name, And they'll seem glorious. Ulyss. O, contain yourself Your passion draws ears hither. Enter ENEAS. ne. I have been seeking you this hour, my lord: Hector, by this, is arming him in Troy; -Ajax, your guard stays to conduct you home. Tro. Have with you, prince :-My courteous lord, Farewell, revolted fair!-and, Diomed, [Exeunt TROILUS, ENEAS, and ULYSSES. Ther. 'Would, I could meet that rogue Diomed! I would croak like a raven; I would bode, I would bode. Patroclus will give me any thing for the intelligence of this whore: the parrot will not do more for an almond, than he for a commodious drab, Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery; nothing else holds fashion: A burning devil take them! [Exit, a madness in that disquisition, in which a man reasons at once for and against himself upon authority which he knows not to be valid. The words loss and perdi tion, in the subsequent line, are used in their common sense; but they mean the loss or perdition of reason. 1 Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting 2 i. e. the plighted faith of lovers. Troilus considers it inseparable, or at least that it ought never to be bro. ken, though he has unfortunately found that it some times is. Hamlet. 3 One quarto copy reads Ariachna's; the other Ariathna's; the folio Ariachne's. It is evident Shak. speare intended to make Ariachne a word of four syllables. Our ancestors were not very exact either in writing or pronouncing proper names, even of classical origin. Steevens thinks it not improbable that the poet may have written Ariadne's broken woof,' confounding the two stories in his imagination, or alluding to the clue of thread, by the assistance of which Theseus escaped from the Cretan labyrinth. 4 A knot tied by giving her hand to Diomed. 5 The image is not of the most delicate kind. Her o'er-eaten faith' means her troth plighted to Troilus, of which she was surfeited, and, like one who has o'er eaten himself, had thrown off. So in Twelfth Night:Their over-greedy love hath surfeited,' &c. Cas. The gods are deaf to hot and peevish13 vows; They are polluted offerings, more abhorr'd Than spotted livers in the sacrifice. And. O! be persuaded: Do not count it holy To hurt by being just: it is as lawful, For we would give much, to use violent thefts, 14 I And rob in the behalf of charity. Cas. It is the purpose that makes strong the vow; But vows to every purpose must not hold; Unarm, sweet Hector. Hect. Hold you still, I say; Mine honour keeps the weather's of my fate: Life every man holds dear; but the dear man's Holds honour far more precious-dear than life.Enter TROILUS. 1 How now, young man? mean'st thou to fight today? And. Cassandra, call my father to persuade. I am to-day i' the vein of chivalry: you, 6 Can Troilus really feel, on this occasion, half of what he utters?" A question suitable to the calm Ulysses. 7 Love. 8. 'And down the shower impetuously doth fall, Like that which men the hurricano call.' Drayton. 9 A cant word, formed from concupiscence. 10 1. e. defend thy head with armour of more than common security. So in The History of Prince Arthur, 1634, c. clviii. Do thou thy best, said Sir Gawaine; therefore hie thee fast that thou wert gone, and wit thou well we shall soon come after, and breake the strongest castle that thou hast upon thy head. It appears that a kind of close helmet was called a castle. See Titus Andronicus, Act iii. Sc. 1. 11 The hint for this dream of Andromache might be taken from Lydgate, or Chaucer's Nonne's Prestes Tale, v. 15147. My dreams of last night will prove ominous to the day: forebode ill to it, and show that it will be a fatal day to Troy. So in the seventh scene of this act :the quarrel's most ominous to us.' 13 Foolish. 12 i. e. earnest, anxious petition. 14 i. e. to use violent thefts, because we would give much. In the first line of Andromache's speech she alludes to a doctrine which Shakspeare has often en. forced:- Do not you think you are acting virtuously by adhering to an oath, if you have sworn to do amiss 15 To keep the weather is to keep the wind or advantage. Esire au dessus du vent is the French proverbial phrase. 16 The dear man is the man of worth. 17 The traditions and stories of the darker ages Not fate, obedience, nor the hand of Mars Not Priamus and Hecuba on knees, Their eyes o'ergalled with recourse of tears;4 Cas. Farewell. Yet, soft :-Hector, I take my Thou dost thyself and all our Troy deceive. [Exit. [Exeunt severally PRIAM and HECTOR. Tro. They are at it; hark! Proud Diomed, be lieve, I come to lose my arm, or win my sleeve. As TROILUS is going out, enter, from the other side, Pan. Do you hear, my lord? do you hear? Pan. Here's a letter from yon' poor girl. Pan. A whoreson ptisic, a whoreson rascally Nor you, my brother, with your true sword drawn,ptisic so troubles me, and the foolish fortune of this visions; Cassandra doth foresee; and I myself Hect. Eneas is afield; And I do stand engag'd to many Greeks, Even in the faith of valour, to appear This morning to them. Pri. girl; and what one thing, what another, that I shall But edifies another with her deeds. [Exeunt severally. SCENE IV. Between Troy and the Grecian Camp. Alarums: Excursions. Enter THERSITES. 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 Aye, but thou shalt not go. Trojan ass, that loves the whore there, might send Hect. I must not break my faith. You know me dutiful; therefore, dear sir, Let me not shame respect; but give me leave To take that course by your consent and voice, Which you do here forbid me, royal Priam. Cas. O, Priam, yield not to him. And. Do not, dear father. Hect. Andromache, I am offended with you: Upon the love you bear me, get you in. [Exit ANDROMACHE. Look, how thy wounds do bleed at many vents! abounded with examples of the lion's generosity. Upon 1 Shakspeare seems not to have studied the Homeric character of Hector; whose disposition was by no means inclined to clemency, as we learn from Andromache's speech in the 24th Iliad. 2 Ruthful is rueful, woful; and ruth is mercy. The words are opposed to each other. 3 Antiquity acknowledges no such sign of command as a truncheon. The spirit of the passage, however, is such as might atone for a greater impropriety. Y that Greekish whoremasterly villain, with the sleeve, Enter DIOMEDES, TROILUS following. Thou dost miscall retire: |