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.