6 Life every man holds dear; but the dear man Holds honour far more precious-dear than life.— Enter TROILUS. How now, young man? mean'st thou to fight to-day? And. Cassandra, call my father to persuade. [Exit CASSANDRA. Hect. No, 'faith, young Troilus; doff thy harness, youth; I am to-day i' the vein of chivalry: Let grow thy sinews till their knots be strong, And tempt not yet the brushes of the war. Unarm thee, go; and doubt thou not, brave boy, I'll stand to-day, for thee, and me, and Troy. Tro. Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you, Which better fits a lion, than a man7. Hect. What vice is that, good Troilus? chide me for it. Tro. When many times the captive Grecians fall, Even in the fan and wind of your fair sword, You bid them rise, and live3. 6 The dear man is the man of worth. 7 The traditions and stories of the darker ages abounded with examples of the lion's generosity. Upon the supposition that these acts of clemency were true, Troilus reasons not improperly, that to spare against reason, by mere instinct and pity, became rather a generous beast than a wise man. We find it recorded in Pliny's Natural History, c. 16, that the lion alone of all wild beasts is gentle to those that humble themselves before him, and will not touch any such upon their submission, but spareth what creature soever lieth prostrate before him.' Hence Spenser's Una, attended by a Lion; and Perceval's Lion, in Morte Arthur, b. xiv. c. 6. 8 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: • Ου γάρ μέιλικος ἔσκε πατὴρ τεὸς ἐν δαι λυγρῆ. For thy stern father never spar'd a foe.' Thy father, boy, bore never into fight A milky mind.' Pope. Cowper. Hect. O, 'tis fair play. Tro. Fool's play, by heaven, Hector. Hect. How now? how now? Tro. For the love of all the gods, Let's leave the hermit Pity with our mother; The venom'd vengeance ride upon our swords; Tro. Hector, then 'tis wars. Hect. Troilus, I would not have you fight to-day. Tro. Who should withhold me? Not fate, obedience, nor the hand of Mars Their eyes o'ergalled with recourse of tears 11; Re-enter CASSANDRA, with PRIAM. Cas. Lay hold upon him, Priam, hold him fast: He is thy crutch; now if thou lose thy stay, Thou on him leaning, and all Troy on thee, Pri. Come, Hector, come, go back: Thy wife hath dream'd; thy mother hath had visions; Cassandra doth foresee; and I myself Am like a prophet suddenly enrapt, 9 Ruthful is rueful, woful; and ruth is mercy. The words are opposed to each other. io Antiquity acknowledges no such ensign of command as a truncheon. The spirit of the passage, however, is such as might atone for a greater impropriety. 11 i. e. tears that continue to course each other down the face. So in As You Like It: To tell thee-that this day is ominous: Hect. Eneas is afield; And I do stand engag'd to many Greeks, Pri. Aye, but thou shalt not go. Hect. I must not break my faith. You know me dutiful; therefore, dear sir, 12 Let me not shame respect 12; but give me leave 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. Tro. This foolish, dreaming, superstitious girl, Makes all these bodements. Cas. O farewell, dear Hector 13. Look, how thou diest! look, how thy eye turns pale! Look, how thy wounds do bleed at many vents! Hark, how Troy roars! how Hecuba cries out! How poor Andromache shrills 14 her dolours forth! Behold, destruction 15, frenzy, and amazement, Like witless anticks, one another meet, And all cry-Hector! Hector's dead! O Hector! 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. And in Heywood's Silver Age, 1613: 'Through all th' abyss I have shrill'd thy daughter's loss With my concave trump.' 15 The folio reads 'distraction.' ૨ ૨ 2 Tro. Away!-Away! Cas. Farewell.-Yet, soft:-Hector, I take my 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! [Exeunt severally PRIAM and HECTOR. Alarums. Tro. They are at it; hark! Proud Diomed, believe, I come to lose my arm, or win my sleeve. As TROILUS is going out, enter, from the other side, PANDARUS. Pan. Do you hear, my Tro. What now? lord? do you hear? Pan. Here's a letter from yon' poor girl. Tro. Let me read. 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? the heart; Tro. Words, words, mere words, no matter from [Tearing the letter. The effect doth operate another way. Go, wind, to wind, there turn and change together.- [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. 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 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 rascals1,-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. : Tro. Fly not; for, shouldst thou take the river Styx, I would swim after. Dio. Thou dost miscall retire: I do not fly; but advantageous care Theobald proposes to read 'sneering rascals;' which Mason thinks more suitable to the characters of Ulysses and Nestor than swearing. 2 To set up the authority of ignorance, and to declare that they will be governed by policy no longer. |