SCENE VI. Another Part of the Field. Enter AJAX. Ajax. Troilus, thou coward Troilus, show thy head! Enter DIOMED. Dio. Troilus, I say! where 's Troilus? Ajax. Dio. I would correct him. What would'st thou? Ajax. Were I the general, thou should'st have my office, Ere that correction:-Troilus, I say! what, Troilus! Enter TROILUS. Tro. O traitor Diomed!—turn thy false face, thou traitor, And pay thy life thou ow'st me for my horse! 2 Dio. Ha! art thou there? Ajax. I'll fight with him alone: stand, Diomed. Tro. Come both, you cogging Greeks; have at you [Exeunt, fighting. both. Enter HECTOR. Hect. Yea, Troilus? O, well fought, my youngest brother! I will not look upon.] That is, (as we should now speak) I will not be a looker-on. So, in King Henry VI, Part III: Why stand we here "Wailing our losses, "And look upon, as if the tragedy "Were play'd in jest by counterfeited actors?" These lines were written by Shakspeare. 3 Malone. -you cogging Greeks;] This epithet has no particular propriety in this place, but the author had heard of Gracia mendax. Johnson. Surely the epithet had propriety, in respect of Diomed at least, who had defrauded him of his mistress. Troilus bestows it on both, unius ob culpam. A fraudulent man, as I am told, is still called, in the North, a gainful Greek. Cicero bears witness to this character of the ancient Greeks: "Testimoniorum religionem et fidem nunquam ista natio coluit." Again: "Græcorum ingenia ad fallendum parata sunt.” Steevens. Enter ACHILLES. Achil. Now do I see thee: Ha!-Have at thee, Hector. Achil. I do disdain thy courtesy, proud Trojan. Hect. [Exit. Fare thee well: I would have been much more a fresher man, Tro. Ajax hath ta'en Eneas; Shall it be? [Exit. Enter one in sumptuous Armour. Hect. Stand, stand, thou Greek; thou art a goodly mark: No? wilt thou not?-I like thy armour well; I'll frush it, and unlock the rivets all, 4 I'll frush it,] The word frush I never found elsewhere, nor understand it. Sír T Hanmer explains it, to break or bruise. Johnson. Mr. M. Mason observes, that "Hanmer's explanation appears to be right; and the word frush, in this sense, to be derived from the verb froisser, to bruise, or break to pieces." To frush a chicken, &c. is a term in carving, as ancient as Wynkyn de Worde's book on that subject, 1508; and was succeeded by another phrase, which we may suppose to have been synonymous, viz.-to "break up a capon;" words that occur in Love's Labour's Lost. Holinshed (as Mr. Tollet has observed) employs the verb-to frush, in his Description of Ireland, p. 29: "When they are sore frusht with sickness, or too farre withered with age." The word seems to be sometimes used for any action of violence by which things are separated, disordered, or destroved. So, in Hinde's Eliosto Libidinoso, 1606: "High cedars are frushed with tempests, when lower shrubs are not touched with the wind." Again, in Hans Beer-pot's Invisible Comedy, &c. 1618: "And with mine arm to frush a sturdy lance." Steevens. The meaning of the word is ascertained by the following passage in The Destruction of Troy, a book which Shakspeare certainly had before him when he wrote this play: "Saying these But I'll be master of it:-Wilt thou not, beast, abide? Why then, fly on, I'll hunt thee for thy hide. [Exeunt. SCENE VII. The same. Enter ACHILLES, with Myrmidons. Achil. Come here about me, you my Myrmidons; SCENE VIII. The same. [Exeunt. Enter MENELAUS and PARIS, fighting; then THERSITES. Ther. 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 PAR. and MENE. Enter MARGARELON. Mar. Turn, slave, and fight. Ther. What art thou? Mar. A bastard son of Priam's. wordes, Hercules caught by the head poor Lychas, and threw him against a rocke so fiercely that hee to-frushed and all to-burst his bones, and so slew him." Malone. 5 ------- execute your arms.] To execute their arms is to employ them; to put them to use. A similar expression occurs in Othello, where Iago says: "Witness that here Iago doth give up "The execution of his wit, hands, heart, And in Love's Labour's Lost, Rosaline says to Biron: "Full of comparisons and wounding flouts, M. Mason. 6A bastard son of Priam's.] Bastard, in ancient times, was a reputable appellation. So, in King Henry VI, Part I: "Bastard of Orleans, thrice welcome to us." See note on this passage, Vol. X, p. 19, n. 2. Steevens. Ther. 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: Farewel, bastard. Mar. The devil take thee, coward! SCENE IX. Another Part of the Field. Enter HECTOR. [Exeunt. Hect. Most putrified core, so fair without, [Puts off his Helmet, and hangs his Shield behind him. Achil. Look, Hector, how the sun begins to set; Hect. I am unarm'd; forego this vantage, Greck. 7 Even with the vail-] The vail is, I think, the sinking of the sun; not veil or cover. Johnson. So, in Measure for Measure, "vail your regard upon," signifies,-Let your notice descend upon &c. Steevens. 8 I am unarm'd; forego this vantage, Greek.] Hector, in Lydgate's poem, falls by the hand of Achilles; but it is Troilus who, having been inclosed round by the Myrmidons, is killed after his armour had been hewn from his body, which was afterwards drawn through the field at the horse's tail. The Oxford editor, I believe, was misinformed; for in the old story-book of The Three Destructions of Troy, I find likewise the same account given of the death of Troilus. Heywood, in his Rape of Lucrece, 1638, seems to have been indebted to some such work as Sir T. Hanmer mentions: "Had puissant Hector by Achilles' hand "Dy'd in a single monomachie, Achilles "Had been the worthy; but being slain by odds, "As faint Achilles, in the Trojan's death." It is not unpleasant to observe with what vehemence Lydgate, Achil. Strike, fellows, strike; this is the man I seek. [HECT. falls. great So, Ilion, fall thou"next!"now, Troy, sink down; Here lies thy heart, thy sinews, and thy bone.— On, Myrmidons; and cry you all amain, Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain. [A Retreat sounded. Myr. The Trojan trumpets sound the like, my lord. who in the grossest manner has violated all the characters drawn by Homer, takes upon him to reprehend the Grecian poet as the original offender. Thus, in his fourth book: "Oh thou, Homer, for shame be now red, "And thee amase that holdest thy selfe so wyse, "In thy bokes for his chivalrye, "Above echone that dost hym magnyfye, "That was so sleyghty and so full of fraude, "Why gevest thou hym so hye a prayse and laude?" Steevens. 9 Strike, fellows, strike;] This particular of Achilles overpowering Hector by numbers, and without armour, is taken from the old story-book. Hanmer. 1 And, stickler-like,] A stickler was one who stood by to part the combatants when victory could be determined without bloodshed. They are often mentioned by Sidney. "Anthony (says Sir Thomas North, in his translation of Plutarch,) was himself in person a stickler to part the young men when they had fought enough." They were called sticklers, from carrying sticks or staves in their hands, with which they interposed between the duellists. We now call these sticklers-sidesmen. So, again, in a comedy, called, Fortune by Land and Sea, by Heywood and Rowley: " - 'tis not fit that every apprentice should with his shopclub play between us the stickler." Again, in the tragedy of Faire Mariam, 1613: "And was the stickler 'twixt my heart and him.” Again, in Fuimus Troes, 1633: "As sticklers in their nation's enmity." Steevens. Minsheu gives the same etymology, in his Dictionary, 1617: "A stickler betweene two, so called as putting a stick or staffe betweene two fighting or fencing together." Malone Sticklers are arbitrators, judges, or, as called in some places, sidesmen. At every wrestling in Cornwall, before the games begin, a certain number of sticklers are chosen, who regulate the proceedings and determine every dispute. The nature of the English language, as I conceive, does not allow the derivation of stickler from stick, which, as a word, it has not the remotest cen |