Enter NESTOR.

Nes. Go, bear Patroclus' body to Achilles; And bid the snail-paced Ajax arm for shame.There is a thousand Hectors in the field: Now here he fights on Galathé his horse, And there lacks work: anon, he's there afoot, And there they fly or die, like scaled sculls 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.

Ulys. 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 Troilus; who hath done to-day
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 DIOMEDES.

Dio. Troilus, I say! where's Troilus?
Ajax. What wouldst thou?

Dio. I would correct him.

Ajax. Were I the general, thou shouldst have my office,

Ere that correction: - Troilus, I say! what Troilus!

Enter TROILUS.

Tro. O, traitor Diomed! - turn thy false face, thou traitor,

And pay thy life thou ow'st me for my horse!
Dio. Ha! art thou there?

Ajax. I'll fight with him alone: stand, Diomed.

Dio. He is my prize; I will not look upon. Tro. Come both, you cogging Greeks; have at you both. [Exeunt, fighting.

Enter HECTOR.

Hect. Yea, Troilus? O, well fought, my youngest brother!

Enter ACHILLES.

Achil. Now do I see thee:- Ha? have at thee, Hector.

Hect. Pause, if thou wilt

Come, come, thou boy-queller, shew thy face;
Know what it is to meet Achilles angry.
Hector? where's Hector? I will none but Hector.
[Exeunt.

SCENE VI.- Another part of the Field.

Enter AJAX.

Ajax. Troilus, thou coward Troilus, shew thy head!

Hect.

[Exit.

I would have been much more a fresher man, Had I expected thee.- How now, my brother?

Re-enter TROILUS.

Tro. Ajax hath ta'en Æneas; shall it be? No, by the flame of yonder glorious heaven, He shall not carry him; I'll be taken too, Or bring him off: Fate, hear me what I say! I reck not though thou end my life to-day. [Exit.

Enter one in sumptuous armor.

Hect. Stand, stand, thou Greek; thou art a goodly mark:

SCENE IX. Another part of the field.

Enter HECTOR.

Hect. Most putrified core, so fair without, Thy goodly armor 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 darkening of the sun, To close the day up, Hector's life is done. Hect. I am unarmed; forego this 'vantage,

Greek.

Achil. Strike, fellows, strike; this is the man I seek. [HECTOR falls. So, Ilion, fall thou! Now, Troy, sink down; Here lies thy heart, thy sinews, and thy bone.On, Myrmidons; and ery you all amain, "Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain."

[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 separates. My half-supped sword, that frankly would have fed,

Pleased with this dainty bit, thus goes to bed.—
[Sheathes his sword.
[Exeunt.

Come, tie his body to my horse's tail;
Along the field I will the Trojan trail.

Voices within.

Achilles!

Achilles! Hector's slain!- Achilles !

Hector is dead; there is no more to say.

Stay yet:

You vile abominable tents,

Thus proudly pight upon our Phrygian plains,

Let Titan rise as early as he dare,

Achilles.

Ajax. If it be so, yet bragless let it be;

Great Hector was a man as good as he.

sized coward!

No space of earth shall sunder our two hates; I'll haunt thee like a wicked conscience still,

To pray Achilles see us at our tent.—

If in his death the gods have us befriended, Great Troy is curs, and our sharp wars are ended. [Exeunt, marching.

All.

Hector? The gods forbid!

Tro. He's dead; and at the murderer's horse's tail,

In beastly sort, dragged through the shameful field.

Frown on, you heavens, effect your rage with speed!

Sit, gods, upon your thrones, and smile at Troy! I say, at once let your brief plagues be mercy, And linger not our sure destruction on!

Ene. My lord, you do discomfort all the host. Tro. You nnderstand me not, that tell me so: I do not speak of flight, of fear, of death; But dare all imminence that gods and men Address their dangers in. Hector is gone! Who shall tell Priam so, or Hecuba? Let him that will a screech-owl aye be called, Go into Troy, and say there" Hector's dead: There is a word will Priam turn to stone; Make wells and Niobes of the maids and wives; Cold statutes of the youth; and, in a word, Scare Troy out of itself. But march, away:

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 if 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.

[Exit.

In the "WINTER'S TALE," Florizel descants with equal 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;

Or Ethiopian's tooth; or the fanned snow
That's bolted by the northern blasts twice o'er."

"She's a fool to stay behind her father."-Act I., Scene 1. According to Shakspeare'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 had 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."-Act I., Scene 1. "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. Steevens observes, that Ilium, properly speaking, is the name of the city; Troy, that of the country.

"How now, prince Troilus? wherefore not afield?"- Act I., Scene 1. It appears from various lines in this play, that Shakspeare pronounced "Troilus" as a dissyllable. So also in his "RAPE OF LU

CRECE:

"Here manly Hector faints, here Troilus swounds."

Pope, in his translation of Homer, has made the same classical lapse (b. xxiv.):

"Mestor the brave, renowned in ranks of war;
And Troilus, dreadful on his rushing car."

"They say he is a very man per se."— Act I., Scene 2. In Henrysoun's "TESTAMENT OF CRESSEIDE," we find, "Of fair Cresseide, the flower and a per se Of Troy and Greece."

"To be baked with no date in the pie,- for then the man's date is out." Act I., Scene 2.

To account for this quibble, it should be remembered that dates were a common ingredient in ancient pastry: as, in "ROMEO AND JULIET:"

"They call for dates and quinces in the pastry."

"Bounding between the two moist elements,

Like Perseus' horse."- Act I., Scene 3.

Of the allegorical horse alluded to in the text, "THE DESTRUCTION OF TROY" gives the following account:-"Of the blood that issued out [from Medusa's head], there engendered Pegasus, or the flying horse. By the flying horse that was engendered of the blood issued from her head, is understood that, of her riches issuing of that realm, he [Perseus] founded and made a ship named Pegase; and this ship was likened unto an horse flying," &c. The only flying horse of antiquity was Pegasus, who was the property not of Perseus, but Bellerophon. If the poet intended to speak literally, he has fallen into

"Venerable Nestor, hatched in silver."—Act I., Scene 3. "Hatched in silver" is an allusion to Nestor's white hair and beard. To hatch is a term for a particular method of engraving. The phrase is not unfrequent in writings of the same period: as, in "LOVE IN A MAZE," 1632:

"Thy hair is fine as gold, thy chin is hatched
With silver."

To hatch in silver, was to inlay a design with lines of silver; a process often used for the hilts of swords, handles of daggers, and stocks of pistols.

"When that the general is not like the hive." Act I., Scene 3. 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, and this centre."
Act I., Scene 3.

By "this centre," Ulysses means the earth, which, according to the system of Ptolemy, is the centre round which the planets move. 88

"But when the planets,

In evil mixture to disorder wander.”—Act I., Scene 3.

Meaning, in astrological phrase, when the planets form malignant configurations; when their aspects are evil towards one another. A short extract from Spenser's "FAERY QUEEN" (b. v.) will, perhaps, more accurately, as well as more pleasingly, illustrate the passage in the text:

"For who so list into the heavens look,

And search the courses of the rolling spheres,

Shall find that from the point where they first took
Their setting forth, in these few thousand years
They all are wandered much; that plain appears.
For that same golden fleecy ram, which bore
Phrixus and Helle, from their stepdames' fears,
Hath now forgot where he was placed of yore,
And shouldered hath the Bull which fair Europa bore."

"Thou mongrel beef-witted lord !"—Act II., Scene 1.

So in "TWELFTH NIGHT," Sir Andrew Aguecheek says, "I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit." Thersites calls Ajax mongrel on account of his father being a Grecian, and his mother a Trojan.

"Thou stool for a witch!"-Act II., Scene 1.

In one way of trying a witch, they used to place her on a chair or stool, with her legs tied across, that all the weight of her body might rest upon her seat; and by that means, after some time, the circulation of the blood would be much stopped, and her sitting would be as painful as on the wooden horse.

"And, for an old aunt, whom the Greeks held captive."

Act II., Scene 2.

The aunt alluded to was IIesione, Priam's sister, whom Hercules, being enraged at Priam's breach of faith, gave to Telamon, who by her had Ajax.

"And do a deed that Fortune never did.”—Act II., Scene II.

This obscure passage is thus explained by Malone:-"Fortune was never so unjust and mutable as to rate a thing on one day above all price, and on the next to set no estimation whatsoever upon it. You are now going to do what Fortune never did."

"Not much

Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought

Unfit to hear moral philosophy."-Act II., Scene 2.

On this passage Steevens observes, "Let it be remembered, as often as Shakspeare's anachronisms occur, that errors in computing time were very frequent in those ancient romances which seem to have formed the greater part of his library. Even classic authors are not exempt from such mistakes. In the fifth book of Statius's 'THEBIAD,' Amphiarus talks of the fates of Nestor and Priam, neither of whom died till long after him."

"The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy."-Act II., Scene 3. That the elephant was incapable of bending the leg, was formerly a very prevalent error; as, in " ALL'S LOST BY LUST" (1633):

"Is she pliant?"

"Stubborn as an elephant's leg; no bending in her."

"Twixt his active and his mental parts,

Kingdomed Achilles in commotion rages."-Act II., Scene 3. This passage will be best explained by a similar one in "JULIUS CESAR:"

"The genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council; and the state of man,

Like to a little kingdom, suffers then

The nature of an insurrection."

"So, so; rub on, and kiss the mistress."-Act III., Scene 2. The allusion is to bowling. What is now termed the "jack," seems in Shakspeare's time to have been called the "mistress." A bowl that kisses the "jack," or "mistress," is in the most advantageous situation. "Rub on" is a term used in the same game; as, in "No WIT LIKE A WOMAN'S," a comedy by Middleton (1657)::

-"So, a fair riddance:

There's three rubs gone; I've a clear way to the mistress.” And in Decker's "SATIROMASTIX" (1602):-Since he hath hit the mistress so often in the fore-game, we 'll even play out the rubbers."

"The falcon as the tercel, for all the ducks the river."
Act III., Scene 2.

Pandarus probably means that he will match his niece against her lover. The "tercel" is the male hawk; by the "falcon," is gener ally understood the female.

"In witness whereof the parties interchangeably”

Act III., Scene 2.

-"Have set their hands and seals," would complete the sentence. So, afterwards:-"Go to, a bargain made: seal it, seal it." Shakspeare appears to have had here an idea in his thoughts that he has several times expressed; as, in "MEASURE FOR MEASURE:".

"But my kisses bring again;
Seals of love, but sealed in vain."

And in his "VENUS AND ADONIS:"

"Pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted, What bargains may I make, still to be sealing!"