cursed, I cannot tell what to think on 't.-What says she there? Tro. Words, words, mere words, no matter from the [Tearing the letter. heart; The effect doth operate another way.— Go, wind, to wind, there turn and change together. 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 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 rascals, that stale old mouse-eaten dry cheese, Nestor; and that same dogfox, 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 bar 8 cursed,] i. e. under the influence of a malediction, such as mischievous beings have been supposed to pronounce upon those who had offended them. Steevens. 90' the other side, The policy of those crafty swearing rascals, &c.] But in what sense are Nestor and Ulysses accused of being swearing rascals? What, or to whom, did they swear? I am positive that sneering is the true reading. They had collogued with Ajax, and trimmed him up with insincere praises, only in order to have stirred Achilles's emulation. In this, they were the true sneerers; betraying the first, to gain their ends on the latter by that artifice. Theobald. Sneering was applicable to the characters of Nestor and Ulysses, and to their conduct in this play; but swearing was not. M. Mason. barism,1 and policy grows into an ill opinion. Soft! here come sleeve, and t'other." Sleeveless Enter DIOMED, 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 Withdrew me from the odds of multitude: Have at thee! Ther. Hold thy whore, Grecian!-now for thy whore, Trojan-now the sleeve, now the sleeve less [Exeunt TRO. and D10. fighting. Enter HECTOR. Hect. What art thou, Greek? art thou for Hector's match? Art thou of blood, and honour?2 Ther. No, no:-I am a rascal; a scurvy railing knave; a very filthy rogue. Hect. I do believe thee;-live. [Exit. Ther. 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. 1- to proclaim barbarism,] To set up the authority of igno rance, to declare that they will be governed by policy no longer. Johnson. 2 Art thou of blood, and honour?] This is an idea taken from the ancient books of romantick chivalry, as is the following one in the speech of Diomed: "And am her knight by proof." Steevens. It appears from Segar on Honor, Military and Civil, folio, 1602, p. 122, that a person of superior birth might not be challenged by an inferior, or if challenged, might refuse the combat. Alluding to this circumstance, Cleopatra says: "These hands do lack nobility, that they strike "A meaner than myself." We learn from Melvil's Memoirs, p. 165, edit. 1735, that "the Laird of Grange offered to fight Bothwell, who answered, that he was neither Earl nor Lord, but a Baron; and so was not his equal. The like answer made he to Tullibardine. Then my Lord Lindsay offered to fight him, which he could not well refuse. But his heart failed him, and he grew cold on the business." These punctilios are well ridiculed in Albumazar, Act IV, sc. vii. Reed. SCENE V. The same. Enter DIOMED, and a Servant. Dio. 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. Serv. I go, my lord. [Exit Serv. Enter AGAMEMNON. Agam. Renew, renew! The fierce Polydamus And stands colossus-wise, waving his beam,4 Enter NESTOR. Nest. Go, bear Patroclus' body to Achilles; 3 bastard Margarelon] The introduction of a bastard son of Priam, under the name of Margarelon, is one of the circumstances taken from the story book of The Three Destructions of Troy. Theobald. The circumstance was taken from Lydgate, p. 194: "Which when the valiant knight, Margareton, "One of king Priam's bastard children," &c. Steevens. 4 waving his beam,] i. e. his lance like a weaver's beam, as Goliath's spear is described. So, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, B. III, vii, 40: 5. "All were the beame in bignes like a mast." Steevens. pashed - i. e. bruised, crushed. So, before, Ajax says:“I'll pash him o'er the face." Steevens. Before the belching whale; then is he yonder, 6 scaled sculls - Sculls are great numbers of fishes swimming together. The modern editors, not being acquainted with the term, changed it into shoals. My knowledge of this word is derived from Bullokar's English Expositor, London, printed by John Legatt, 1616. The word likewise occurs in Lyly's Midas, 1592: "He hath, by this, started a covey of bucks, or roused a scull of pheasants." The humour of this short speech consists in a misapplication of the appropriate terms of one amusement to another. Again, in Milton's Paradise Lost, B. VII, v. 399, &c.: each bay "With fry innumerable swarms, and shoals "Of fish, that with their fins and shining scales Again, in the 26th Song of Drayton's Polyolbion: "My silver-scaled sculs about my streams do sweep." Steevens Scaled means here dispersed, put to flight. This is proved decisively by the original reading of the quarto, scaling, which was either changed by the poet himself to scaled, (with the same sense) or by the editor of the folio. If the latter was the case, it is probable that not being sufficiently acquainted with our author's manner, who frequently uses the active for the passive participle, he supposed that the epithet was merely descriptive of some quality in the thing described. The passage quoted above from Drayton does not militate against this interpretation. There the added epithet silver shows that the word scaled is used in its common sense; as the context here (to say nothing of the evidence arising from the reading of the oldest copy) ascertains it to have been employed with the less usual signification already stated. "The cod from the banks of Newfoundland (says a late writer) pursues the whiting, which flies before it even to the southern shores of Spain. The cachalot, a species of whale, is said, in the same manner, to pursue a shoal of herrings, and to swallow hun dreds in a mouthful." Knox's History of Fish, 8vo. 1787. The throat of the cachalot (the species of whale alluded to by Shak speare) is so large, that, according to Goldsmith, he could with ease swallow an ox. Malone. Sculls and shoals have not only one and the same meaning, but are actually, or at least originally, one and the same word. A scull of herrings (and it is to those fish that the speaker alludes} so termed on the coast of Norfolk and Suffolk, is elsewhere call ed a shoal. Ritson. 7 the strawy Greeks,] In the folio it is-the straying Greeks. Johnson. Fall down before him, like the mower's swath : That what he will, he does; and does so much, That proof is call'd impossibility. Enter ULYSSES. Ulyss. O, courage, courage, princes! great Achilles Is arming, weeping, cursing, vowing vengeance: Patroclus' wounds have rous'd his drowsy blood, Together with his mangled Myrmidons, That noseless, handless, hack'd and chipp'd, come to him, Crying on Hector. Ajax hath lost a friend, With such a careless force, and forceless care, Bade him win all. Come, come, thou boy-queller,1 show thy face; Hector! where 's Hector? I will none but Hector. [Exeunt. 8 the mower's swath;] Swath is the quantity of grass cut down by a single stroke of the mower's scythe. Steevens. 9 we draw together] This remark seems to be made by Nestor in consequence of the return of Ajax to the field, he having lately refused to co-operate or draw together with the Greeks, though at present he is roused from his sullen fit by the loss of a friend. So, in Cynthia's Revels, by Ben Jonson: "'Tis the swaggering coach-horse Anaides, that draws with him there." Steevens. 1 •boy-queller,] i. e. murderer of a boy. So, in King Henry IV, Part II: "— a man-queller and a woman-queller." See Vol. VII, p. 76, n. 4. Steevens. |