Enter MENELAUS, and PARIS, fighting: then 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 PARIS, and MENELAUS. Enter MARGarelon. Mar. Turn, slave, and fight. Ther. What art thou? Mar. A bastard son of Priam's. Ther. I am a bastard too; I love bastards: I am a bastard begot, bastard instructed, bastard in mind, bastard in valour, in everything 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: Farewell, bastard. Mar. The devil take thee, coward! [Exeunt. SCENE IX. Another part of the Field. Enter HECTOR. Hect. Most putrified core, so fair without, Thy goodly armour thus hath cost thy life. Now is my day's work done: I'll take good breath: Rest, sword: thou hast thy fill of blood and death! [Puts off his helmet, and hangs his shield behind him. Enter ACHILLES, and Myrmidons. Achil. Look, Hector, how the sun begins to set; How ugly night comes breathing at his heels: Even with the vail and darking of the sun, To close the day up, Hector's life is done. Hect. I am unarm'd; forego this vantage, Greek. So, Ilion, fall thou; now, Troy, sink down; [A retreat sounded. Hark! a retreat upon our Grecian part. Myr. The Trojan trumpets sound the like, my lord. Achil. The dragon wing of night o'erspreads the earth, And, stickler-like, the armies separate. My half-supp'd sword that frankly would have fed, SCENE X.-The Same. [Exeunt. Dio. The bruit is Hector's slain, and by Achilles. Ajax. If it be so, yet bragless let it be; Great Hector was a man as good as he. Agam. March patiently along:-Let one be sent To pray Achilles see us at our tent. If in his death the gods have us befriended, Great Troy is ours, and our sharp wars are ended. [Exeunt, marching. SCENE XI. Another part of the Field. Enter ENEAS, and Trojans. Ene. Stand, ho! yet are we masters of the field: Never go home; here starve we out the night. Enter TROILUS. Tro. Hector is slain. All. Hector?-The gods forbid! Tro. He's dead; and at the murtherer's horse's tail, In beastly sort, dragg'd through the shameful field. Ene. My lord, you do discomfort all the host. I'll through and through you!-And thou, greatsiz'd coward! No space of earth shall sunder our two hates; [Exeunt ÆNEAS, and Trojans. As TROILUS is going out, enter, from the other side, PANDARUS. Pan. But hear you, hear you! Tro. Hence, broker lackey! ignomy and shame Pursue thy life, and live aye with thy name, [Exit TROILUS. Pan. A goodly medicine for mine aching bones! -O world! world! world! thus is the poor agent despised! O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a' work, and how ill requited! Why should our endeavour be so desired, and the per formance so loathed? what verse for it? what instance for it?-Let me see: Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing, Till he hath lost his honey and his sting: And being once subdued in armed tail, Sweet honey and sweet notes together fail.— Good traders in the flesh, set this in your painted cloths. As many as be here of pander's hall, Your eyes, half out, weep out at Pandar's fall: Or, if you cannot weep, yet give some groans, Though not for me, yet for your aching bones. Brethren, and sisters, of the hold-door trade, Some two months hence my will shall here be made: It should be now, but that my fear is this,Some galled goose of Winchester would hiss : Till then I'll sweat, and seek about for eases; And, at that time, bequeath you my diseases. [Erit. "The princes ORGULOUS"-i. e. Proud, (the French orgueilleux.) Lord Berners, in his translation of Froissart, several times uses the word; as, "The Flemings were great, fierce, and orgulous." "Dardan, and Tymbria, Ilias, Chetas, Trojan, The names of the gates thus stand in the folio of 1623:- And Antenanidus. There can be little doubt that Shakespeare had before him Caxton's translation of the "Recuyel of the Historyes of Troy," and there the names of the gates are thus given:-"In this cittie were sixe principall gates: of which the one was named Dardane, the second Tymbria, the thyrd Helias, the fourth Chetas, the fifth Troyan, and the sixt Antenorides." But he was also familiar with the "Troy Boke," of Lydgate, in which the six gates are described as Dardanydes, Tymbria, Helyas, Cetheas, Trojana, Anthonydes. It is difficult to say whether Shakespeare meant to take the Antenorides of Caxton, or the Anthonydes of Lydgate; or whether, the names being pure inventions of the middle age of romance-writers, he deviated from both. As it is, we have retained the "Antenorides" of the modern editors. "FULFILLING bolts"-The verb fulfil is here used in the original sense of fill full-a sense still retained in the liturgy of the Church of England, which has, "ful filled with grace and benediction." "SPERR up the sons of Troy"-The original has stirre up, which Tieck considers preferable to Theobald's substitution of "sperr up." Desirous as we are to hold to the original, we cannot agree with Tieck. The relative positions of each force are contrasted. The Greeks pitch their pavilions on Dardan plains; the Trojans are shut up in their six-gated city. The commentators give us examples of the use of "sperr," in the sense of to fasten, by Spenser and earlier writers. They have overlooked a passage in Chaucer's "Troilus and Cressi da," (book v.,) which Shakespeare must have had be fore him in the composition of his play : For when he saw her dorés sperred all, KNIGHT. "A prologue ARM'D"-Johnson has pointed out that the Prologue was spoken by one of the characters in armour. This was noticed, because in general the speaker of the Prologue wore a black cloak. (See Collier's "Annals of the Stage.") Johnson thus paraphrases the lines:-"I come here to speak the prologue, and come in armour; not defying the audience, in confidence of either the author's or actor's abilities, but merely in a character suited to the subject, in a dress of war, before a warlike play." "Leaps o'er the VAUNT"-i. e. The avant; that which went before-the van. So, in LEAR, we have "vauntcouriers." ACT I.-SCENE I. "Call here my VARLET"-i. e. Servant. Tooke considers that "varlet" and valet are the same; and that, as well as harlot, they mean hireling. But, in the old usage of chivalry, it signified an attendant on a knight. Hollingshed, speaking of the battle of Agincourt, says:— "Divers were relieved by their varlets, and conveyed out of the field." "So, traitor! when she comes!-When is she thence ?" The older editions all give this line in this form: So (traitor) then she comes, when she is thence. This is evidently a confused misprint, which few readers could unravel for themselves. The taste and sagacity of Rowe corrected the first half of the line, while Pope restored the other half; so that we have the line as doubtless the Poet wrote. Such are the humble but necessary labours of editors. 49 "Handlest in thy discourse, O, that her hand, In whose comparison all whites are ink," etc. Knight cautions the reader not to take this passage as an interjection, beginning, "O! that her hand;" for what does Troilus desire?-the wish is incomplete. The meaning is rather-In thy discourse thou handlest that hand of hers, in whose comparison, etc. "Handlest" is here used metaphorically, with an allusion at the same time to its literal meaning. Shakespeare has repeatedly dwelt upon the beauty of the female hand; as, in ROMEO AND JULIET: Before the sun rose he was harness'd LIGHT," etc. The common explanation is that he was lightly armed, as going to combat on foot. But I agree with Singer. Dyce, etc., that "light here has no reference to the mode in which Hector was armed, but to the legerity or alacrity with which he armed himself before sunrise. Light and lightly are often used for nimbly, quickly. In the WINTER'S TALE, Florizel descants, with equal readily, by our old writers. No expression is more warmth and fancy, on the hand of Perdita: I take thy hand; this hand As soft as dove's down, and as white as it; "—and SPIRIT of sense Hard as the palm of ploughman," etc. "In comparison with her hand, the spirit of sense,' the most exquisite power of sensibility, which implies a soft hand, is hard as the callous and insensible palm of the ploughman."-JOHNSON. Warburton rashly altered this to "spite of sense." Hanmer reads, " to th' spirit of sense.' Johnson does not rightly understand the passage, and therefore erroneously explains it. It appears to me to mean-The spirit of sense, (i. e. sensation,) in touching the cygnet's down, is harsh and hard as the palm of a ploughman, compared to the sensation of softness in pressing Cressid's hand. "she has the MENDS in her own hands"-An old proverbial phrase, in which "mends" is a colloquial abridgement of amends; and so the phrase is sometimes found written. The sense is, She must make the best of a bad bargain; she must help herself as well as she can. 66 · She's a fool to stay behind her father"-According to Shakespeare's authority, the Destruction of Troy," Calchas was "a great learned bishop of Troy," who was sent by Priam to consult the oracle of Delphi concerning the event of the war which was threatened by Agamemnon. As soon as he made "his oblations and demands for them of Troy, Apollo answered unto him, saying, Calchas, Calchas, beware that thou return not back again to Troy; but go thou with Achilles unto the Greeks, and depart never from them; for the Greeks shall have victory of the Trojans, by the agreement of the gods." Calchas discreetly took the hint, and immediately joined the enemies of his country. "Between our Ilium and where she resides," etc. According to the old English poets and romancers, "Ilium," or Ilion, (it is spelled both ways,) was the name of Priam's palace. According to the "Destruction of Troy," it was "one of the richest and the strongest that ever was in all the world. And it was of height five hundred paces, besides the height of the towers, whereof there was great plenty and so high as that it seemed to them that saw them from far, they raught up into the heaven." There is a more particular allusion to these towers in act iv. scene 5. According to classical authority, which the Poet but partially follows, Ilium, properly speaking, is the name of the city; Troy, that of the country. "How now, prince TROILUS"-The old spelling was Troylus, and, according to it, Shakespeare and his predecessors often pronounced it as a dissyllable, and not, as the classic poets have it, in three syllables. So in his RAPE OF LUCRECE: Here manly Hector faints, here Troilus swounds. Pope, in his "Homer," has made the same classical lapse, (book xxiv. :)— Nestor the brave, renowned in ranks of war; And Troilus, dreadful on his rushing car. common than light of foot. And Shakespeare has even used light of ear." ' — a very man PER SE"-The Latin-English, halfnaturalized phrase, "per se," made such a figure, in political life, under President Tyler, that the American reader will be amused with meeting it in old English poetical and dramatic use, as collected by Stevens. It meant an extraordinary or incomparable person, like the letter A by itself. The usual mode of this old expression is A per se. Thus, in Henrysoun's "Testament of Cresseid," often attributed to Chaucer: of faire Cresseide, the floure and a per se of Troy and Greece. So in "Blunt Martin Constable," (1602 :)—" That is the a per se, the cream of all." 66 against the HAIR"-Equivalent to a phrase still in use- -Against the grain. The French say, A contre poil. "COMPASSED window"-A "compassed" window is a circular bow window. The same epithet is applied to the cape of a woman's gown, in the TAMING of the SHREW:"A small compassed cape." A coved ceiling is yet, in some places, called a compassed ceiling. "so old a LIFTER"-i. e. Thief. We still say, a shop-lifter. "give you the NOD"-To "give the nod" was a term in the game at cards, called noddy. The word also signifies a silly fellow. Cressid means to call Papdarus a noddy, and says he shall, by more nods, be made more significantly a fool. "That's Hector, that, that, look you," etc. This scene, in which Pandarus so characteristically describes the Trojan leaders, is founded upon a similar scene in Chaucer, in which the same personage recounts the merits of Priam's two valiant sons: Of Hector needeth nothing for to tell; ↑ Whose praise I should most desire. Ye say right soth, I wis, quod Pandarus. Now here, now there, he hunted them so fast, - give MONEY to boot"—Thus the folio, using an old phrase, equivalent to our " give a good deal to boot." The common reading is, "give an eye to boot," following the quarto, which was probably a misprint; but there is little to choose. "no DATE in the pie"-To understand this quibble, it should be remembered that "dates" were a common ingredient in ancient pastry; as, in ROMEO AND JU LIET: They call for dates and quinces in the pastry. 44 "To bring, uncle"--We restore the old punctuation, instead of printing the line "To bring uncle,"'-as if the speaker asked her whether he would not bring something. To be with a person to bring," is an old proverbial phrase, of constant occurrence, something like our modern slang phrases, "I'll be up to him"I'll pay him." She plays upon his use of the beginning of the phrase, as he does upon its other sense. "ACHIEV'D, MEN US command; ungain'd, beseech." This edition adopts the ingenious and very satisfactory correction of the original, proposed by Mr. Harness. In the old edition, the lines stand thus: "Upon her PATIENT breast"-The old quartos have "ancient breast;" the folio, "patient”—both happy and poetic epithets, but the last the most so. "Like PERSEUS' horse"-The flying horse, Pegasus, was said, in mythology, to have sprung from the blood of Medusa, killed by Perseus; and in this sense might well enough be termed the horse of Perseus; though, as the poets afterwards gave him to Bellerophon, the critics find a difficulty 'n the passage. - the BRIZE"-i. e. The gad-fly. "the thing of courage"-The "thing of courage" is the tiger, who is said to roar and rage most in storms and high winds. "As venerable Nestor, HATCH'D IN SILVER," etc. Ulysses evidently means to say that Agamemnon's speech should be writ in brass; and that venerable Nestor, with his silver hairs, by his speech should rivet the attention of all Greece. The phrase "hatch'd in silver," which has been the stumbling-block, is a simile borrowed from the art of design; to hatch being to fill a design with a number of consecutive fine lines; and to hatch in silver was a design inlaid with lines of silver, a process often used for the hilts of swords, handles of daggers, and stocks of pistols. The lines of the graver on a plate of metal are still called hatchings. Hence, "hatch'd in silver," for silver-haired, or grayhaired. Thus, in "Love in a Maze,” (1632:)— Thy hair is fine as gold, thy chin is hatch'd With silver. SHIRLEY. This Gifford, in his edition of Shirley, explains:That is, ornamented with a white or silvery beard. * Bees. This explains the 'venerable Nestor, hatch'd in silver,' on which the commentators have wasted so many words." "When rank Thersites opes his MASTIFF jaws," etc. We The old text has Mastick, which all the editors, except Knight, agree in considering as a typographical error for mastiff," and so print it. Knight retains mastick, and thus explains it:-" Masticke is printed with a capital initial, as marking something emphatic. In all modern editions, the word is rendered mastive. are inclined to think that mastick is not a typographical mistake. Every one has heard of Prynne's celebrated book, Histrio-Mastic: The Player's Scourge;' but it is not so generally known that this title was borrowed by the great controversialist from a play first printed in 1610, but supposed to be written earlier, which is a satire upon actors and dramatic writers, from first to last. We attach little importance to the circumstance that the author of that satire has introduced a dialogue between Troilus and Cressida; for the subject had most probably possession of the stage before Shakespeare's play. But it appears to us by no means improbable that an epithet should be applied to the rank Thersites,' which should pretty clearly point at one who had done enough to make himself obnoxious to the Poet's fraternity." "When that the general is not like the hive," etc. The meaning is, says Johnson, "When the general is not to the army like the hive to the bees-the repository of the stock of every individual; that to which each particular resorts with whatever he has collected for the good of the whole-what honey is expected? what hope of advantage?" "The heavens themselves, the planets," etc. It is possible that the Poet had this thought suggested by an analogous passage, of equal eloquence, in his contemporary Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity," of which the first parts were published in 1594. If it were not. it was no very strange coincidence between the thoughts of men of large and excursive minds, at once poetical and philosophical, applied to the most widely differing subjects. There is a noble passage in the first book of Hooker, singularly like this in thought, and in sustained, lofty, moral eloquence. In his magnificent generalization of Law, as at once the rule of moral action and government, and the rule of natural agents, he says:"If nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether, though it were but for a while, the observation of her own laws; if those principal and mother elements, whereof all things in this lower world are made, should lose the qualities which now they have; if the frame of that heavenly arch, now united above our heads, should loosen and dissolve itself; if celestial spheres should forget their wonted motions, and, by irregular volubility, turn themselves any way as it might happen; if the prince of the lights of heaven, which now, as a giant, doth run his unwearied course, should, through a languishing faintness, begin to stand and to rest himself; if the moon should wander from her beaten way, the times and seasons of the year blend themselves, by disordered and confused mixture, the winds breathe out their last gasp, the clouds yield no rain, the earth be defeated of heavenly influence, the fruits of the earth pine away, as children at the withered breast of their mother, what would become of man himself? See we not that obedience of creatures unto the law of nature is the stay of the whole world ?"—(HOOKER'S Eccl. Pol., book i. sect. 3.) Hooker's subsequent remarks, on "the law of the common weal," singularly remind the reader of the more rapid view given by the Poet of "the unity and married calm of states," and the ills by which it is disturbed. "this CENTRE"-By "this centre" Ulysses means the earth, which, according to the system of Ptolemy, is the centre around which the planets move. |