Bid me do any thing but that, sweet Greek. Dro. No, no, good night: I'll be your fool no more. TRO. Thy better must. CRES. Hark! one word in your ear. TRO. O plague and madness! ULYSS. You are mov'd, prince; let us depart, I Lest your displeasure should enlarge itself ULYSS. Now, good my lord, go off: You flow to great destruction'; come, my lord. ULYSS. You have not patience; come. TRO. I pray you, stay; by hell, and all hell's torments, I will not speak a word. 1 You flow to great destruction;] Means, I think, your impetuosity is such as must necessarily expose you to imminent danger. MALONE. The folio has : The quarto: 66 'You flow to great distraction "You flow to great destruction; JOHNSON. I would adhere to the old reading: You flow to great destruction, or distraction, means the tide of your imagination will hurry you either to noble death from the hand of Diomedes, or to the height of madness from the predominance of your own passions. STEEVENS. Possibly we ought to read destruction, as Ulysses has told Troilus just before: 66 this place is dangerous; DIO. And so, good night. CRES. Nay, but you part in anger. TRO. Doth that grieve thee? O wither'd truth! ULYSS. Why, how now, lord? TRO. By Jove, I will be patient. CRES. Guardian!-why, Greek! Dro. Pho, pho! adieu; you palter 2. CRES. In faith, I do not; come hither once again. ULYSS. You shake, my lord, at something; will TRO. Nay, stay; by Jove, I will not speak a word: There is between my will and all offences A guard of patience:-stay a little while. THER. How the devil luxury, with his fat rump, and potatoe finger, tickles these together! Fry, lechery, fry! Dro. But will you then? CRES. In faith, I will, la: never trust me else. DIO. Give me some token for the surety of it. CRES. I'll fetch you one. ULYSS. You have sworn patience. TRO. [Exit. Fear me not, my lord *; I will not be myself, nor have cognition * First folio, sweet lord. 2-palter.] i. e. shuffle, behave with duplicity. So, in Antony and Cleopatra : "And palter in the shifts of lowness." STEEVENS. 3 How the devil LUXURY, with his fat rump, and POTATOE finger, tickles these together!] Potatoes were anciently regarded as provocatives. See Mr. Collins's note, which, on account of its length, is given at the end of the play. STEEVENS. Re-enter CRESSIDA. THER. Now the pledge; now, now, now! 4-keep this SLEEVE.] The custom of wearing a lady's sleeve for a favour, is mentioned in Hall's Chronicle, fol. 12: "One ware on his head-piece his lady's sleeve, and another bare on his helme the glove of his deareling." Again, in the second canto of The Barons' Wars, by Drayton : "A lady's sleeve high-spirited Hastings wore." Again, in the Morte Arthur, p. 3, ch. 119: "When Queen Genever wist that Sir Launcelot beare the red sleeve of the faire maide of Astolat, she was nigh out of her minde for anger." Holinshed, p. 884, says, King Henry VIII. "had on his head a ladies sleeve full of diamonds." The circumstance, however, was adopted by Shakspeare from Chaucer. T. and C. 1. 5. 1040: "She made him were a pencell of her sleeve." A pencell is a small pennon or streamer. STEEVENS. In an old play, (in six acts,) called Histriomastix, 1610, this incident seems to be burlesqued. Troilus and Cressida are introduced by way of interlude; and Cressida breaks out : "Ó Knight, with valour in thy face, 66 Here take my skreene, wear it for grace; "Within thy helmet put the same, "Therewith to make thine enemies lame." A little old book, The Hundred Hystoryes of Troye, tells us, "Bryseyde whoin master Chaucer called Cresseyde, was a damosell of great beaute; and yet was more quaynte, mutable, and full of vagaunt condysions." FARMER. This sleeve was given by Troilus to Cressida at their parting, and she gave him a glove in return. M. MASON. What Mr. Steevens has observed on the subject of ladies' sleeves is certainly true; but the sleeve given in the present instance was the sleeve of Troilus. It may be supposed to be an ornamented cuff, such perhaps as was worn by some of our young nobility at a tilt, in Shakspeare's age. On second consideration, I believe, the sleeve of Troilus, which is here given to Diomedes, was such a one as was formerly worn at tournaments. See Spenser's View of Ireland, p. 43, edit. 1633: " Also the deepe smocke sleive, which the Irish' women use, they say, was old Spanish, and is used yet in Barbary; and yet that should seeme rather to be an old English fashion, for in armory the fashion of the manche which is given in armes by many, being indeed nothing else but a sleive, is fashioned much like to that sleive." MALONE. 1 TRO. O beauty! where's thy faith? ULYSS. My lord, TRO. I will be patient; outwardly I will. CRES. You look upon that sleeve; Behold it well.He loved me-O false wench!-Give't me again. DIO. Who was't? 5 CRES. It is no matter, now I have't again. I will not meet with you to-morrow night: I pr'ythee, Diomed, visit me no more. THER. Now she sharpens ;-Well said, whetstone. DIO. I shall have it ". : CRES. DIO. What, this? Ay, that. CRES. O, all you gods!-O pretty pretty pledge! Thy master now lies thinking in his bed Of thee, and me; and sighs, and takes my glove, And gives memorial dainty kisses to it, As I kiss thee 7.-Nay, do not snatch it from me; He, that takes that, must take my heart withal. DIO. I had your heart before, this follows it. TRO. I did swear patience. CRES. You shall not have it, Diomed; 'faith you shall not; I'll give you something else. DIO. I will have this; Whose was it? CRES. DIO. Come, tell me whose it was. "Tis no matter. 5 No matter, now, &c.] Old copies, redundantly,-It is nc matter, &c. STEEVENS. 6 I shall have it.] Some word. or words, necessary to the metre, are here apparently omitted. STEEVENS. 7 As I kiss thee, &c.] In old editions: "Cres. He, that takes that, must take my heart withal.' Dr. Thirlby thinks this should be all placed to Cressida. She had the sleeve, and was kissing it rapturously; and Diomedes snatches it back from her. THEOBALD. CRES. "Twas one's that loved me better than you will. But, now you have it, take it. DIO. Whose was it? CRES. By all Diana's waiting-women yonder, And by herself, I will not tell you whose. Dio. To-morrow will I wear it on my helm; And grieve his spirit, that dares not challenge it. TRO. Wert thou the devil, and wor'st it on thy horn, It should be challeng'd. CRES. Well, well, 'tis done, 'tis past ;-And yet it is not; I will not keep my word. DIO. Why then, farewell; Thou never shalt mock Diomed again. CRES. You shall not go :-One cannot speak a word, But it straight starts you. DIO. I do not like this fooling. THER. Nor I, by Pluto: but that that likes not you, pleases me best. Dio. What, shall I come? the hour? 8 By all Diana's waiting-women yonder,] i. e. the stars which So, in our author's Rape of Lucrece : "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.” MALONE. Milton, in his Elegy I. v. 77, has imitated Shakspeare: STEEVENS. cœlo scintillant astra sereno Endymionea turba ministra deæ. 9 Ther. Nor I, by Pluto, &c.] Sir Thomas Hanmer gives this speech to Troilus. It does not very much resemble the language of Thersites. If indeed it belongs to the former character, it should assume a metrical form, though it is here given as it stands in the folio, and the quarto 1609, "imprinted by G. Eld, for R. Bonian and H. Walley." STEEVENS. |