Hark how Troy roars; how Hecuba cries out;How poor Andromache shrills her dolours forth;
Behold distraction, frenzy, and amazement,
Like witless antics, one another meet,
And all cry, Hector! Hector’s dead! O Hector!
TROILUS.
Away, away!
CASSANDRA.
Farewell! yet, soft! Hector, I take my leave.
Thou dost thyself and all our Troy deceive.
[Exit.]
HECTOR.
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.
PRIAM.
Farewell. The gods with safety stand about thee!
[Exeunt severally PRIAM and HECTOR. Alarums.]
TROILUS.
They are at it, hark! Proud Diomed, believe,
I come to lose my arm or win my sleeve.
[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 curs’d I cannot tell what to think on’t. What says she there?
TROILUS.
Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart;
Th’ effect doth operate another way.
[Tearing the letter.]
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.]
SCENE 4. The plain 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 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 of a sleeve-less errand. O’ the 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 prov’d 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.
[Enter DIOMEDES, TROILUS following.]
Soft! here comes sleeve, and t’other.
TROILUS.
Fly not; for shouldst thou take the river Styx
I would swim after.
DIOMEDES.
Thou dost miscall retire.
I do not fly; but advantageous care
Withdrew me from the odds of multitude.
Have at thee.
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?
Art thou of blood and honour?
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 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.
[Exit.]
SCENE 5. Another part of the plain
[Enter DIOMEDES and A SERVANT.]
DIOMEDES.
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.
SERVANT.
I go, my lord.
[Exit.]
[Enter AGAMEMNON.]
AGAMEMNON.
Renew, renew! The fierce Polydamus
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;
Amphimacus and Thoas deadly hurt;
