sword,
You bid them rise and live.
HECTOR.
O, ‘tis fair play!
TROILUS.
Fool’s play, by heaven, Hector.
HECTOR.
How now! how now!
TROILUS.
For th’ love of all the gods,
Let’s leave the hermit Pity with our mothers;
And when we have our armours buckled on,
The venom’d vengeance ride upon our swords,
Spur them to ruthful work, rein them from ruth!
HECTOR.
Fie, savage, fie!
TROILUS.
Hector, then ‘tis wars.
HECTOR.
Troilus, I would not have you fight to-day.
TROILUS.
Who should withhold me?
Not fate, obedience, nor the hand of Mars
Beckoning with fiery truncheon my retire;
Not Priamus and Hecuba on knees,
Their eyes o’ergalled with recourse of tears;
Nor you, my brother, with your true sword drawn,
Oppos’d to hinder me, should stop my way,
But by my ruin.
[Re-enter CASSANDRA, with PRIAM.]
CASSANDRA.
Lay hold upon him, Priam, hold him fast;
He is thy crutch; now if thou lose thy stay,
Thou on him leaning, and all Troy on thee,
Fall all together.
PRIAM.
Come, Hector, come, go back.
Thy wife hath dreamt; thy mother hath had visions;
Cassandra doth foresee; and I myself
Am like a prophet suddenly enrapt
To tell thee that this day is ominous.
Therefore, come back.
HECTOR.
Aeneas is a-field;
And I do stand engag’d to many Greeks,
Even in the faith of valour, to appear
This morning to them.
PRIAM.
Ay, but thou shalt not go.
HECTOR.
I must not break my faith.
You know me dutiful; therefore, dear sir,
Let me not shame respect; but give me leave
To take that course by your consent and voice
Which you do here forbid me, royal Priam.
CASSANDRA.
O Priam, yield not to him!
ANDROMACHE.
Do not, dear father.
HECTOR.
Andromache, I am offended with you.
Upon the love you bear me, get you in.
[Exit ANDROMACHE.]
TROILUS.
This foolish, dreaming, superstitious girl
Makes all these bodements.
CASSANDRA.
O, farewell, dear Hector!
Look how thou diest. Look how thy eye turns pale.
Look how thy wounds do bleed at many vents.
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