Hect. Eneas is a-field; And I do stand engag'd to many Greeks, Even in the faith of valour, to appear This morning to them. Pri. Ay, but thou shalt not go. Hect. 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. Cas. O Priam, yield not to him! And. Do not, dear father. Hect. Andromache, I am offended with you. Upon the love you bear me, get you in. [Exit Andromache. Tro. This foolish, dreaming, superstitious girl Makes all these bodements. My love with words and errors still she feeds, But edifies another with her deeds. Pan. Why, but hear you! Tro. Hence, broker! lackey! Ignomy and shame Pursue thy life, and live aye with thy name! 115 [Exeunt [severally]. [SCENE IV. Plains between Troy and the Greek camp.] Alarum. Enter THERSITES in excursion. Ther. 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 Troyan ass, [5 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' the t'other side, the policy of those crafty swearing rascals, that [10 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 [15 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 the other. Tro. Fly not; for shouldst thou take the river Styx, I would swim after. 20 24 - now for Ther. Hold thy whore, Grecian! thy whore, Troyan! -now the sleeve, now the sleeve! [Exeunt Troilus and Diomedes fighting.] 20 Nest. Go, bear Patroclus' body to Achilles; And bid the snail-pac'd Ajax arm for shame. 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 scaled 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 call'd impossibility. Enter ULYSSES. 26 come to him, Crying on Hector. Ajax hath lost a friend 35 And foams at mouth, and he is arm'd and at it, Roaring for Troilus, who hath done to-day Mad and fantastic execution, Engaging and redeeming of himself With such a careless force and forceless care 40 Enter AJAX. Ajax. Troilus! thou coward Troilus! [Exit. [Exit. 38 Achil. [SCENE V. Another part of the plains.] Enter DIOMEDES and a SERVANT. Dio. Go, go, my servant, take thou Troilus' horse; Present the fair steed to my lady Cressid. Enter ACHILLES. [Exit. Where is this Hector? Come, come, thou boy-queller, show thy face; Know what it is to meet Achilles angry. Hector! where 's Hector? I will none but [Exeunt. Hector. 46 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, 1: Enter Bastard [MARGARELON]. Mar. Turn, slave, and fight. 15 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 judgement. Farewell, bastard. Mar. The devil take thee, coward! [Exeunt. [SCENE VIII. Another part of the plains.] Enter HECTOR. Hect. Most putrefied 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 kis shield behind him.] Enter ACHILLES and Myrmidons. Achil. Look, Hector, how the sun begins to set, How ugly night comes breathing at his heels. Achil. Strike, fellows, strike; this is the man I seek. [Hector falls.] 19 So, Ilion, fall thou! 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 Hark! a retreat upon our Grecian part. Myr. The Troyan trumpets sound the like, my lord. 15 Achil. The dragon wing of night o'erspreads the earth, And, stickler-like, the armies separates. My half-supp'd sword, that frankly would have fed, [SCENE IX. Another part of the plains.] Enter AGAMEMNON, AJAX, MENELAUS, NES- Soldiers. (Within.) Achilles ! Achilles ! Hector's slain! Achilles 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. 5 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. 10 [SCENE X. Another part of the plains.] Enter ENEAS, PARIS, ANTENOR, and DEIPHO BUS. Ene. Stand, ho! yet are we masters of the field. I'll through and through you! and, thou greatsiz'd coward, No space of earth shall sunder our two hates. I'll haunt thee like a wicked conscience still, That mouldeth goblins swift as frenzy's thoughts. Strike a free march to Troy! With comfort Pan. A goodly medicine for mine aching bones! O world! world! world! thus is the poor agent despis'd! O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a-work, and how ill Never go home; here starve we out the night.requited! Why should our endeavour be so de Enter TROILUS. sir'd and the performance so loath'd? What Overse for it? What instance for it? Let me see: 41 Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing, Good traders in the flesh, set this in your painted cloths: As many as be here of Pandar's hall, Your eyes, half out, weep out at Pandar's fall; It should be now, but that my fear is this, ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL THE present text is based upon that of the First Folio, no earlier edition having been found. This lack of an early quarto is the more to be regretted, since the corruptions of the existing text are unusually frequent and hopeless. There is no certain external evidence of date. In Meres's list there occurs the title Love's Labour's Won, which on the whole fits this play better than it fits any other. The only serious rival is The Taming of the Shrew, in which, though Petruchio wins Katherine as the result of his labors, the labors are hardly to be called love's. On the other hand, Helena's efforts and success stand in sufficiently clear contrast to the ineffectiveness of the King and his lords in Love's Labour's Lost to give point to the parallelism in title. This identification would place the play before 1598; and there are parts of the play, notably the rimed passages, which suggest Shakespeare's earliest manner in comedy. As against this, there is much which points to a later date. The subtlety of the psychology, especially in the heroine, the frequency of passages of condensed expression, and the general sombreness of tone, all tend to associate the play with the productions of the early years of the seventeenth century. Such resemblances, however, as that between the Countess's advice to Bertram (1. i. 73–79) and Polonius's maxims to Laertes, and that between the devices resorted to by Helena and by Mariana in Measure for Measure, however interesting, are of little force in arguing questions of date. In view of these two sets of consid erations, it is plausibly conjectured that Shakespeare may have written an early play with the title or sub-title of Love's Labour's Won, and have re-cast it in his maturity. It is to be observed that this implies a much more thorough re-writing than Love's Labour's Lost, for example, was subjected to; so that, on this hypothesis, the play as we have it belongs rather to the period about 1602 than to the early nineties of the sixteenth century. The source of the main plot is the ninth Novel of the third Day of Boccaccio's Decameron, a story which was most probably known to Shakespeare in the translation by Painter in his Palace of Pleasure (1566). The chief features of this tale are indicated in the argument prefixed by Painter: "Giletta, a Phisicians doughter of Narbon, healed the Frenche Kyng of a Fistula, for reward wherof she demaunded Beltramo Count of Rossiglione to husband. The Counte beyng maried againste his will, for despite fled to Florence and loved an other. Giletța his wife, by pollicie founde meanes to lye with her husbande, in place of his lover; and was begotten with child of twoo soonnes: whiche knowen to her husbande, he received her againe, and afterwarde she lived in great honor and felicitie." To the characters involved here Shakespeare added the Countess, Lafeu, the clown, the steward, and Parolles; but the most essential change made by him was in the interpretation of the character of the heroine. The Countess and Lafeu, delightful and individual as they are in themselves, are dramatically important mainly for the effect produced on us by their warm appreciation of Helena. To render sympathetic a character play ing such a rôle as Helena's was exceedingly difficult, and it is achieved by Shakespeare by an insistence on her poverty (Boccaccio makes her rich), her humility, and the pathos of a passion more fatal than wilful. Parolles, besides affording occasion for the low comedy scenes at the French court and in the Florentine camp- all of which are of Shakespeare's invention - helps to define the character of Bertram. The weakness of the hero implied in this undiscriminating association with a worthless braggart, and his boggling and lying in the elaborate dénouement created by Shakespeare in v. iii., result in a degradation of his character which, if meant to throw our sym pathy by contrast on Helena, comes perilously near overshooting the mark. |