PRIAM

Farewell. The gods with safety stand about thee.

Exeunt Priam and Hector severally. Alarum

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 yon poor girl.

TROILUS Let me read.

Troilus reads the letter

PANDARUS A whoreson phthisic, a whoreson rascally phthisic 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? no

TROILUS (tearing the letter)

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart.

Th’effect doth operate another way.

Go, wind, to wind: there turn and change together.

My love with words and errors still she feeds,

But edifies another with her deeds.

PANDARUS Why, but hear you—

TROILUS

Hence, broker-lackey! Ignomy and shame

Pursue thy life, and live aye with thy name.

Exeunt severally

5.4 Alarum. Enter Thersites ⌈in⌉ excursions

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 sleeveless errand. O‘th’ 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 proved not 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 today—whereupon the Grecians began to proclaim barbarism, and policy grows into an ill opinion.

Enter Diomedes, followed by Troilus

Soft, here comes sleeve and t’other.

TROILUS (to Diomedes)

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!

They fight

THERSITES Hold thy whore, Grecian! Now for thy whore, Trojan! Now the sleeve, now the sleeve!

Exit Diomedes ⌈driving in⌉ Troilus

Enter Hector ⌈behind⌉

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.

THERSITES God-a-mercy, that thou wilt believe me—

⌈Exit Hector⌉

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

5.5 Enter Diomedes and Servants

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 chastised the amorous Trojan,

And am her knight by proof.

SERVANT I go, my lord. Exit

Enter Agamemnon

AGAMEMNON

Renew, renew! The fierce Polydamas

Hath beat down Menon; bastard Margareton

Hath Doreus prisoner,

And stands colossus-wise waving his beam

Upon the pashèd corpses of the kings

Epistropus and Cedius; Polixenes is slain,

Amphimacus and Thoas deadly hurt,

Patroclus ta’en or slain, and Palamedes

Sore hurt and bruised; the dreadful sagittary

Appals our numbers. Haste we, Diomed,

To reinforcement, or we perish all.

Enter Nestor ⌈with Patroclus’ body⌉

NESTOR

Go, bear Patroclus’ body to Achilles,

And bid the snail-paced Ajax arm for shame.

⌈Exit one or more with the body⌉

There is a thousand Hectors in the field.

Now here he fights on Galathe his horse,

And there lacks work; anon he’s there afoot,

And there they fly or die, like scalèd schools

Before the belching whale. Then is he yonder,

And there the strawy Greeks, ripe for his edge,

Fall down before him like the mower’s swath.

Here, there, and everywhere he leaves and takes,

Dexterity so obeying appetite

That what he will he does, and does so much

That proof is called impossibility.

Enter Ulysses

ULYSSES

O courage, courage, princes! Great Achilles

Is arming, weeping, cursing, vowing vengeance.

Patroclus’ wounds have roused his drowsy blood,

Together with his mangled Myrmidons,

That noseless, handless, hacked and chipped come to

him

Crying on Hector. Ajax hath lost a friend

And foams at mouth, and he is armed and at it,

Roaring for Troitus—who hath done today

Mad and fantastic execution,

Engaging and redeeming of himself

With such a careless force and forceless care

As if that luck, in very spite of cunning,

Bade him win all.

Enter Ajax

AJAX Troilus, thou coward Troitus! Exit

DIOMEDES Ay, there, there! ⌈Exit⌉

NESTOR So, so, we draw together.

Enter Achilles

ACHILLES Where is this Hector?

Come, come, thou brave boy-queller, show thy face.

Know what it is to meet Achilles angry.

Hector! Where’s Hector? I will none but Hector.

⌈Exeunt⌉

5.6 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.