I cannot come to Cressid, but by Pandar; Alarum. Enter ENEAS. ENE. How now, prince Troilus? wherefore not afield ? ? TRO. Because not there; This woman's answer sorts , 8 For womanish it is to be from thence. This prudent bishop followed the advice of the Oracle, and immediately joined the Greeks. MALONE. 5-Ilium,] Was the palace of Troy. JOHNSON. Ilium, properly speaking, is the name of the city; Troy, that of the country. STEEVENS. Our doubtful hope, our convoy, and our bark.] So, in The Merry Wives of Windsor: "This punk is one of Cupid's carriers; Clap on more sails," &c. MAlone. 7 How now, prince TROILUS? wherefore not afield?] Shakspeare, it appears from various lines in this play, pronounced Troilus improperly as a dissyllable; as every mere English reader does at this day. So also, in his Rape of Luerece: "Here manly Hector faints, here Troilus swounds." It was not so pronounced by Shakspeare alone, or his contemporaries, as Gascoigne : "And say, as Troylus said, since that I can no more-." But the same error is found in Pope's translation of Homer's Iliad b. xxiv. line 321-22: 8 "Mestor the brave, renown'd in ranks of war, "And Troilus dreadful on his rushing car." MALONE. sorts,] i. e. fits, suits, is congruous. So, in King Henry V.: "It sorts well with thy fierceness." STEEVENS. What news, Æneas, from the field to-day? ENE. That Paris is returned home, and hurt. TRO. By whom, Æneas? ENE. Troilus, by Menelaus. TRO. Let Paris bleed: 'tis but a scar to scorn; Paris is gor❜d with Menelaus' horn. [Alarum. ENE. Hark! what good sport is out of town today! TRO. Better at home, if would I might, were may. But, to the sport abroad;-Are you bound thither? ENE. In all swift haste. TRO. Come, go we then together. SCENE II. [Exeunt. The Same. A Street. Enter CRESSIDA and ALEXANDER. CRES. Who were those went by? Queen Hecuba, and Helen. Up to the eastern tower, CRES. And whither go they? Whose height commands as subject all the vale, Is, as a VIRTUE, fix'd,] Patience sure was a virtue, and therefore cannot, in propriety of expression, be said to be like one. We should read: "Is as the virtue fix'd —" i. e. his patience is as fixed as the goddess Patience itself. So we find Troilus a little before saying: "Patience herself, what goddess e'er she be, "Doth lesser blench at sufferance than I do." It is remarkable that Dryden when he altered this play, and found this false reading, altered it with judgment to He chid Andromache, and struck his armourer; Which he would not have done had he seen the right reading here given, where his thought is so much better and nobler expressed. WARBURTON. I think the present text may stand. Hector's patience was as a virtue, not variable and accidental, but fixed and constant. If I would alter it, it should be thus: Hector, whose patience Is all a virtue fix'd, All, in old English, is the intensive or enforcing particle. JOHNSON. I had once almost persuaded myself that Shakspeare wrote, 66 whose patience "Is, as a statue fix'd." So, in The Winter's Tale, sc. ult. : The statue is but newly fix'd." The same idea occurs also in the celebrated passage in TwelfthNight: 66 sat like patience on a monument." The old adage-Patience is a virtue, was perhaps uppermost in the compositor's mind, and he therefore inadvertently substituted the one word for the other. A virtue fixed may, however, mean the stationary image of a virtue. STEEVENS. 66 MALONE. husbandry in war,] So, in Macbeth : "There's husbandry in heaven." STEEVENS. Husbandry means economical prudence. Troilus alludes to Hector's early rising. So, in King Henry V.: our bad neighbours make us early stirrers, "Which is both healthful and good husbandry." 2 Before the sun rose, he was harness'd LIGHT,] "Does the poet mean (says Mr. Theobald) that Hector had put on light armour ?" Mean! what else could he mean? He goes to fight on foot; and was not that the armour for his purpose? So, Fairfax, in Tasso's Jerusalem: "The other princes put on harness light "As footmen use―." "Or Yet, as if this had been the highest absurdity, he goes on, does he mean that Hector was sprightly in his arms even before sunrise? or is a conundrum aimed at, in sun rose and harness'd Did, as a prophet, weep3 what it foresaw light?" Was any thing like it? But, to get out of this perplexity, he tells us, that "a very slight alteration makes all these constructions unnecessary," and so changes it to harness-dight. Yet indeed the very slightest alteration will, at any time, let the poet's sense though the critick's fingers and the Oxford editor very contentedly takes up what is left behind, and reads harnessdight too, in order, as Mr. Theobald well expresses it, “to make all construction unnecessary." WARBURTON. How does it appear that Hector was to fight on foot rather today than any other day? It is to be remembered, that the ancient heroes never fought on horseback; nor does their manner of fighting in chariots seem to require less activity than on foot. JOHNSON. It is true that the heroes of Homer never fought on horseback; yet such of them as make a second appearance in the Æneid, like their antagonists the Rutulians, had cavalry among their troops. Little can be inferred from the manner in which Ascanius and the young nobility of Troy are introduced at the conclusion of the funereal games; as Virgil very probably, at the expence of an anachronism, meant to pay a compliment to the military exercises instituted by Julius Cæsar, and improved by Augustus. It appears from different passages in this play, that Hector fights on horseback; and it should be remembered that Shakspeare was indebted for most of his materials to a book which enumerates Esdras and Pythagoras among the bastard children of King Priamus. Our author, however, might have been led into his mistake by the manner in which Chapman has translated several parts of the Iliad, where the heroes mount their chariots or descend from them. Thus, book vi. speaking of Glaucus and Diomed: 66 from horse then both descend." STEEVENS. If Dr. Warburton had looked into The Destruction of Troy, already quoted, he would have found, in every page, that the leaders on each side were alternately tumbled from their horses by the prowess of their adversaries. MALONE. I am afraid that the charge, whatever it may amount to, of neglecting the information to be found in the old Destruction of Troy, must fall rather upon Johnson than Warburton. BOSWELL. 3 —— where every FLOWER Did, as a prophet, WEEP-] So, in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, vol. v. p. 257: "And when she weeps, weeps every little flower, 66 Lamenting," &c. STEEVENS. CRES. What was his cause of anger? ALEX. The noise goes, this: There is among the Greeks A lord of Trojan blood, nephew to Hector; They call him, Ajax. CRES. Good; And what of him? ALEX. They say he is a very man per se1, And stands alone. CRES. So do all men; unless they are drunk, sick, or have no legs. ALEX. This man, lady, hath robbed many beasts of their particular additions; he is as valiant as the lion, churlish as the bear, slow as the elephant: a man into whom nature hath so crouded humours, that his valour is crushed into folly, his folly sauced with discretion: there is no man hath a virtue that he hath not a glimpse of; nor any man an attaint, but he carries some stain of it he is melancholy without cause, and merry against the hair: He hath the joints of every thing; but every per se,] So, in Chaucer's Testament of Cresseide: "Of Troi and Greece." Again, in the old comedy of Wily Beguiled: "In faith, my sweet honeycomb, I'll love thee a per se a." Again in Blurt Master Constable, 1602: "That is the a per se of all, the creame of all." STEEVENS. 5 their particular additions;] Their peculiar and characteristic qualities or denominations. The term in this sense is originally forensick. MALONE. So, in Macbeth: 6 66 - whereby he doth receive "Particular addition, from the bill "That writes them all alike." STEEVENS. that his valour is CRUSHED INTO FOLLY,] To be crushed into folly, is to be confused and mingled with folly, so as that they make one mass together. JOHNSON. So, in Cymbeline: |
