Act V
Scene I
The Grecian camp. Before Achilles’ tent.
Enter Achilles and Patroclus. | |
Achilles |
I’ll heat his blood with Greekish wine to-night,
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Patroclus | Here comes Thersites. |
Enter Thersites. | |
Achilles |
How now, thou core of envy!
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Thersites | Why, thou picture of what thou seemest, and idol of idiot-worshippers, here’s a letter for thee. |
Achilles | From whence, fragment? |
Thersites | Why, thou full dish of fool, from Troy. |
Patroclus | Who keeps the tent now? |
Thersites | The surgeon’s box, or the patient’s wound. |
Patroclus | Well said, adversity! and what need these tricks? |
Thersites | Prithee, be silent, boy; I profit not by thy talk: thou art thought to be Achilles’ male varlet. |
Patroclus | Male varlet, you rogue! what’s that? |
Thersites | 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, sciaticas, limekilns i’ the palm, incurable bone-ache, and the rivelled fee-simple of the tetter, take and take again such preposterous discoveries! |
Patroclus | Why, thou damnable box of envy, thou, what meanest thou to curse thus? |
Thersites | Do I curse thee? |
Patroclus | Why, no, you ruinous butt, you whoreson indistinguishable cur, no. |
Thersites | No! why art thou then exasperate, thou idle immaterial skein of sleave-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 waterflies, diminutives of nature! |
Patroclus | Out, gall! |
Thersites | Finch-egg! |
Achilles |
My sweet Patroclus, I am thwarted quite
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Thersites | 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 fellow enough and one that loves quails; but he has not so much brain as ear-wax: and the goodly transformation of Jupiter there, his brother, the bull—the primitive statue, and oblique memorial of cuckolds; a thrifty shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his brother’s leg—to what form but that he is, should wit larded with malice and malice forced with wit turn him to? To an ass, were nothing; he is both ass and ox: to an ox, were nothing; he is both ox and ass. To be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a toad, a lizard, an owl, a puttock, or a herring without a roe, I would not care; but to be Menelaus! I would conspire against destiny. Ask me not what I would be, if I were not Thersites; for I care not to be the louse of a lazar, so I were not Menelaus. Hoy-day! spirits and fires! |
Enter Hector, Troilus, Ajax, Agamemnon, Ulysses, Nestor, Menelaus, and Diomedes, with lights. | |
Agamemnon | We go wrong, we go wrong. |
Ajax |
No, yonder ’tis;
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Hector | I trouble you. |
Ajax | No, not a whit. |
Ulysses | Here comes himself to guide you. |
Re-enter Achilles. | |
Achilles | Welcome, brave Hector; welcome, princes all. |
Agamemnon |
So now, fair prince of Troy, I bid good night.
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Hector | Thanks and good night to the Greeks’ general. |
Menelaus | Good night, my lord. |
Hector | Good night, sweet lord Menelaus. |
Thersites | Sweet draught: “sweet” quoth ’a! sweet sink, sweet sewer. |
Achilles |
Good night and welcome, both at once, to those
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Agamemnon | Good night. Exeunt Agamemnon and Menelaus. |
Achilles |
Old Nestor tarries; and you too, Diomed,
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Diomedes |
I cannot, lord; I have important business,
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Hector | Give me your hand. |
Ulysses |
Aside to Troilus. Follow his torch; he goes to Calchas’ tent:
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Troilus | Sweet sir, you honour me. |
Hector | And so, good night. Exit Diomedes; Ulysses and Troilus following. |
Achilles | Come, come, enter my tent. Exeunt Achilles, Hector, Ajax, and Nestor. |
Thersites | 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: he 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. |
Scene II
The same. Before Calchas’ tent.
Enter Diomedes. | |
Diomedes | What, are you up here, ho? speak. |
Calchas | Within. Who calls? |
Diomedes | Calchas, I think. Where’s your daughter? |
Calchas | Within. She comes to you. |
Enter Troilus and Ulysses, at a distance; after them, Thersites. | |
Ulysses | Stand where the torch may not discover us. |
Enter Cressida. | |
Troilus | Cressid comes forth to him. |
Diomedes | How now, my charge! |
Cressida | Now, my sweet guardian! Hark, a word with you. Whispers. |
Troilus | Yea, so familiar! |
Ulysses | She will sing any man at first sight. |
Thersites | And any man may sing her, if he can take her cliff; she’s noted. |
Diomedes | Will you remember? |
Cressida | Remember! yes. |
Diomedes |
Nay, but do, then;
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Troilus | What should she remember? |
Ulysses | List. |
Cressida | Sweet honey Greek, tempt me no more to folly. |
Thersites | Roguery! |
Diomedes | Nay, then— |
Cressida | I’ll tell you what— |
Diomedes | Foh, foh! come, tell a pin: you are forsworn. |
Cressida | In faith, I cannot: what would you have me do? |
Thersites | A juggling trick—to be secretly open. |
Diomedes | What did you swear you would bestow on me? |
Cressida |
I prithee, do not hold me to mine oath;
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Diomedes | Good night. |
Troilus | Hold, patience! |
Ulysses | How now, Trojan! |
Cressida | Diomed— |
Diomedes | No, no, good night: I’ll be your fool no more. |
Troilus | Thy better must. |
Cressida | Hark, one word in your ear. |
Troilus | O plague and madness! |
Ulysses |
You are moved, prince; let us depart, I pray you,
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Troilus | Behold, I pray you! |
Ulysses |
Nay, good my lord, go off:
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Troilus | I pray thee, stay. |
Ulysses | You have not patience; come. |
Troilus |
I pray you, stay; by hell and all hell’s torments,
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Diomedes | And so, good night. |
Cressida | Nay, but you part in anger. |
Troilus |
Doth that grieve thee?
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Ulysses | Why, how now, lord! |
Troilus |
By Jove,
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Cressida | Guardian!—why, Greek! |
Diomedes | Foh, foh! adieu; you palter. |
Cressida | In faith, I do not: come hither once again. |
Ulysses |
You shake, my lord, at something: will you go?
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Troilus | She strokes his cheek! |
Ulysses | Come, come. |
Troilus |
Nay, stay; by Jove, I will not speak a word:
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Thersites | How the devil Luxury, with his fat rump and potato-finger, tickles these together! Fry, lechery, fry! |
Diomedes | But will you, then? |
Cressida | In faith, I will, la; never trust me else. |
Diomedes | Give me some token for the surety of it. |
Cressida | I’ll fetch you one. Exit. |
Ulysses | You have sworn patience. |
Troilus |
Fear me not, sweet lord;
|
Re-enter Cressida. | |
Thersites | Now the pledge; now, now, now! |
Cressida | Here, Diomed, keep this sleeve. |
Troilus | O beauty! where is thy faith? |
Ulysses | My lord— |
Troilus | I will be patient; outwardly I will. |
Cressida |
You look upon that sleeve; behold it well.
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Diomedes | Whose was’t? |
Cressida |
It is no matter, now I have’t again.
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Thersites | Now she sharpens: well said, whetstone! |
Diomedes | I shall have it. |
Cressida | What, this? |
Diomedes | Ay, that. |
Cressida |
O, all you gods! O pretty, pretty pledge!
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Diomedes | I had your heart before, this follows it. |
Troilus | I did swear patience. |
Cressida |
You shall not have it, Diomed; faith, you shall not;
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Diomedes | I will have this: whose was it? |
Cressida | It is no matter. |
Diomedes | Come, tell me whose it was. |
Cressida |
’Twas one’s that loved me better than you will.
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Diomedes | Whose was it? |
Cressida |
By all Diana’s waiting-women yond,
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Diomedes |
To-morrow will I wear it on my helm,
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Troilus |
Wert thou the devil, and worest it on thy horn,
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Cressida |
Well, well, ’tis done, ’tis past: and yet it is not;
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Diomedes |
Why, then, farewell;
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Cressida |
You shall not go: one cannot speak a word,
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Diomedes | I do not like this fooling. |
Thersites | Nor I, by Pluto: but that that likes not you pleases me best. |
Diomedes | What, shall I come? the hour? |
Cressida | Ay, come:—O Jove!—do come:—I shall be plagued. |
Diomedes | Farewell till then. |
Cressida |
Good night, I prithee, come. Exit Diomedes.
|
Thersites |
A proof of strength she could not publish more,
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Ulysses | All’s done, my lord. |
Troilus | It is. |
Ulysses | Why stay we, then? |
Troilus |
To make a recordation to my soul
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Ulysses | I cannot conjure, Trojan. |
Troilus | She was not, sure. |
Ulysses | Most sure she was. |
Troilus | Why, my negation hath no taste of madness. |
Ulysses | Nor mine, my lord: Cressid was here but now. |
Troilus |
Let it not be believed for womanhood!
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Ulysses | What hath she done, prince, that can soil our mothers? |
Troilus | Nothing at all, unless that this were she. |
Thersites | Will he swagger himself out on’s own eyes? |
Troilus |
This she? no, this is Diomed’s Cressida:
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Ulysses |
May worthy Troilus be half attach’d
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Troilus |
Ay, Greek; and that shall be divulged well
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Thersites | He’ll tickle it for his concupy. |
Troilus |
O Cressid! O false Cressid! false, false, false!
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Ulysses |
O, contain yourself;
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Enter Aeneas. | |
Aeneas |
I have been seeking you this hour, my lord:
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Troilus |
Have with you, prince. My courteous lord, adieu.
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Ulysses | I’ll bring you to the gates. |
Troilus | Accept distracted thanks. Exeunt Troilus, Aeneas, and Ulysses. |
Thersites | 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. |
Scene III
Troy. Before Priam’s palace.
Enter Hector and Andromache. | |
Andromache |
When was my lord so much ungently temper’d,
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Hector |
You train me to offend you; get you in:
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Andromache | My dreams will, sure, prove ominous to the day. |
Hector | No more, I say. |
Enter Cassandra. | |
Cassandra | Where is my brother Hector? |
Andromache |
Here, sister; arm’d, and bloody in intent.
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Cassandra | O, ’tis true. |
Hector | Ho! bid my trumpet sound. |
Cassandra | No notes of sally, for the heavens, sweet brother. |
Hector | Be gone, I say: the gods have heard me swear. |
Cassandra |
The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows:
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Andromache |
O, be persuaded! do not count it holy
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Cassandra |
It is the purpose that makes strong the vow;
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Hector |
Hold you still, I say;
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Enter Troilus. | |
How now, young man! mean’st thou to fight to-day? | |
Andromache | Cassandra, call my father to persuade. Exit Cassandra. |
Hector |
No, faith, young Troilus; doff thy harness, youth;
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Troilus |
Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you,
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Hector | What vice is that, good Troilus? chide me for it. |
Troilus |
When many times the captive Grecian falls,
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Hector | O, ’tis fair play. |
Troilus | Fool’s play, by heaven, Hector. |
Hector | How now! how now! |
Troilus |
For the love of all the gods,
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Hector | Fie, savage, fie! |
Troilus | Hector, then ’tis wars. |
Hector | Troilus, I would not have you fight to-day. |
Troilus |
Who should withhold me?
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Re-enter Cassandra, with Priam. | |
Cassandra |
Lay hold upon him, Priam, hold him fast:
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Priam |
Come, Hector, come, go back:
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Hector |
Aeneas is afield;
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Priam | Ay, but thou shalt not go. |
Hector |
I must not break my faith.
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Cassandra | O Priam, yield not to him! |
Andromache | Do not, dear father. |
Hector |
Andromache, I am offended with you:
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Troilus |
This foolish, dreaming, superstitious girl
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Cassandra |
O, farewell, dear Hector!
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Troilus | Away! away! |
Cassandra |
Farewell: yet, soft! Hector, I take my leave:
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Hector |
You are amazed, my liege, at her exclaim:
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Priam | Farewell: the gods with safety stand about thee! Exeunt severally Priam and Hector. Alarums. |
Troilus |
They are at it, hark! Proud Diomed, believe,
|
Enter Pandarus. | |
Pandarus | Do you hear, my lord? do you hear? |
Troilus | What now? |
Pandarus | Here’s a letter come from yond poor girl. |
Troilus | Let me read. |
Pandarus | A whoreson tisick, a whoreson rascally tisick 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, I cannot tell what to think on’t. What says she there? |
Troilus |
Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart:
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Scene IV
Plains between Troy and the Grecian camp.
Alarums: excursions. Enter Thersites. | |
Thersites | Now they are clapper-clawing one another; I’ll go look on. That dissembling abominable varlets, 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 whore-masterly villain, with the sleeve, back to the dissembling luxurious drab, of a sleeveless errand. O’ the t’other side, the policy of those crafty swearing rascals, that stale old mouse-eaten dry cheese, Nestor, and that same dog-fox, Ulysses, is not proved worthy 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. | |
Troilus |
Fly not; for shouldst thou take the river Styx,
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Diomedes |
Thou dost miscall retire:
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Thersites | Hold thy whore, Grecian!—now for thy whore, Trojan!—now the sleeve, now the sleeve! Exeunt Troilus and Diomedes, fighting. |
Enter Hector. | |
Hector |
What art thou, Greek? art thou for Hector’s match?
|
Thersites | No, no, I am a rascal; a scurvy railing knave; a very filthy rogue. |
Hector | I do believe thee: live. Exit. |
Thersites | God-a-mercy, that thou wilt believe me; but a plague break thy neck for frightening 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. Exit. |
Scene V
Another part of the plains.
Enter Diomedes and a Servant. | |
Diomedes |
Go, go, my servant, take thou Troilus’ horse;
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Servant | I go, my lord. Exit. |
Enter Agamemnon. | |
Agamemnon |
Renew, renew! The fierce Polydamas
|
Enter Nestor. | |
Nestor |
Go, bear Patroclus’ body to Achilles;
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Enter Ulysses. | |
Ulysses |
O, courage, courage, princes! great Achilles
|
Enter Ajax. | |
Ajax | Troilus! thou coward Troilus! Exit. |
Diomedes | Ay, there, there. |
Nestor | So, so, we draw together. |
Enter Achilles. | |
Achilles |
Where is this Hector?
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Scene VI
Another part of the plains.
Enter Ajax. | |
Ajax | Troilus, thou coward Troilus, show thy head! |
Enter Diomedes. | |
Diomedes | Troilus, I say! where’s Troilus? |
Ajax | What wouldst thou? |
Diomedes | I would correct him. |
Ajax |
Were I the general, thou shouldst have my office
|
Enter Troilus. | |
Troilus |
O traitor Diomed! turn thy false face, thou traitor,
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Diomedes | Ha, art thou there? |
Ajax | I’ll fight with him alone: stand, Diomed. |
Diomedes | He is my prize; I will not look upon. |
Troilus | Come, both you cogging Greeks; have at you both! Exeunt, fighting. |
Enter Hector. | |
Hector | Yea, Troilus? O, well fought, my youngest brother! |
Enter Achilles. | |
Achilles | Now do I see thee, ha! have at thee, Hector! |
Hector | Pause, if thou wilt. |
Achilles |
I do disdain thy courtesy, proud Trojan:
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Hector |
Fare thee well:
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Re-enter Troilus. | |
Troilus |
Ajax hath ta’en Aeneas: shall it be?
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Enter one in sumptuous armour. | |
Hector |
Stand, stand, thou Greek; thou art a goodly mark:
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Scene VII
Another part of the plains.
Enter Achilles, with Myrmidons. | |
Achilles |
Come here about me, you my Myrmidons;
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Enter Menelaus and Paris, fighting: then Thersites. | |
Thersites | The cuckold and the cuckold-maker are at it. Now, bull! now, dog! ’Loo, Paris, ’loo! now my double-henned sparrow! ’loo, Paris, ’loo! The bull has the game: ware horns, ho! Exeunt Paris and Menelaus. |
Enter Margarelon. | |
Margarelon | Turn, slave, and fight. |
Thersites | What art thou? |
Margarelon | A bastard son of Priam’s. |
Thersites | I am a bastard too; I love bastards: I am a bastard begot, bastard instructed, bastard in mind, bastard in valour, in every thing illegitimate. One bear will not bite another, and wherefore should one bastard? Take heed, the quarrel’s most ominous to us: if the son of a whore fight for a whore, he tempts judgment: farewell, bastard. Exit. |
Margarelon | The devil take thee, coward! Exit. |
Scene VIII
Another part of the plains.
Enter Hector. | |
Hector |
Most putrefied core, so fair without,
|
Enter Achilles and Myrmidons. | |
Achilles |
Look, Hector, how the sun begins to set;
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Hector | I am unarm’d; forego this vantage, Greek. |
Achilles |
Strike, fellows, strike; this is the man I seek. Hector falls.
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Myrmidons | The Trojan trumpets sound the like, my lord. |
Achilles |
The dragon wing of night o’erspreads the earth,
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Scene IX
Another part of the plains.
Enter Agamemnon, Ajax, Menelaus, Nestor, Diomedes, and others, marching. Shouts within. | |
Agamemnon | Hark! hark! what shout is that? |
Nestor |
Peace, drums!
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Diomedes | The bruit is, Hector’s slain, and by Achilles. |
Ajax |
If it be so, yet bragless let it be;
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Agamemnon |
March patiently along: let one be sent
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Scene X
Another part of the plains.
Enter Aeneas and Trojans. | |
Aeneas |
Stand, ho! yet are we masters of the field:
|
Enter Troilus. | |
Troilus | Hector is slain. |
All | Hector! the gods forbid! |
Troilus |
He’s dead; and at the murderer’s horse’s tail,
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Aeneas | My lord, you do discomfort all the host. |
Troilus |
You understand me not that tell me so:
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As Troilus is going out, enter, from the other side, Pandarus. | |
Pandarus | But hear you, hear you! |
Troilus |
Hence, broker-lackey! ignomy and shame
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Pandarus |
A goodly medicine for my aching bones! O world! world! world! thus is the poor agent despised! O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a-work, and how ill requited! why should our endeavour be so loved and the performance so loathed? what verse for it? what instance for it? Let me see:
Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing,
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