Imatges de pàgina
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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, show thy

head!

Enter DIOMedes.

DIO. Troilus, I say! where's Troilus ?

AJAX.

DIO. I would correct him.

What would'st thou ?

AJAX. Were I the general, thou should'st 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 ?

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AJAX. I'll fight with him alone: stand, Diomed.
Dro. He is my prize, I will not look upon
TRO. Come both, you cogging Greeks 7; have at
you both.
[Exeunt, fighting.

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6 I will not LOOK UPON.] That is, (as we should now speak,) I will not be a looker-on. So, in King Henry VI. Part III. Act II. Sc. III. :

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Why stand we here— "Wailing our losses,

"And look upon, as if the tragedy

"Were play'd in jest by counterfeited actors?

These lines were written by Shakspeare. MALONE.

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you COGGING Greeks ;] This epithet has no particular

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.

ACHIL. I do disdain thy courtesy, proud Trojan. Be happy, that my arms are out of use: My rest and negligence befriend thee now, But thou anon shalt hear of me again; Till when, go seek thy fortune.

HECT.

[Exit.

Fare thee well :

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 ta'en too,

propriety in this place, but the author had heard of Græcia mendax. JOHNSON.

Surely the epithet had propriety, in respect of Diomedes at least, who had defrauded him of his mistress. Troilus bestows it on both, unius ob culpam. A fraudulent man, as I am told, is still called, in the North, a gainful Greek. Cicero bears witness to this character of the ancient Greeks: "Testimoniorum religionem et fidem nunquam ista natio coluit."

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Again: Græcorum ingenia ad fallendum parata sunt." STEEVENS.

8 by the flame of yonder glorious heaven,] So, in King John:

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by the light that shines above our heads." STEEVENS. carry him ;] i. e. prevail over him. So, in All's Well that Ends Well:

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The count he wooes your daughter, "Resolves to carry her." STEEVENS.

Or bring him off:-Fate, hear me what I say!
I reck not though I end my life to-day.

*

Enter one in sumptuous Armour.

[Exit.

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

No? wilt thou not ?-I like thy armour well 2;

2

* First folio, thou end.

I like thy armour well;] This circumstance is taken from Lydgate's poem, p. 196:

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Guido in his historie doth shew

"By worthy Hector's fall, who coveting

"To have the sumptuous armour of that king, &c.
"So greedy was thereof, that when he had

"The body up, and on his horse it bare,

"To have the spoil thereof such haste he made
"That he did hang his shield without all care
"Behind him at his back, the easier

"To pull the armour off at his desire,

"And by that means his breast clean open lay," &c. This furnished Shakspeare with the hint for the following line: "I am unarm'd; forego this vantage, Greek." STEEVENS.

I quote from the original, 1555:

❝ in this while a Grekish king he mette,
"Were it of hap or of adventure,

"The which in sothe on his cote armoure
"Embrouded had full many ryche stone,
"That gave a lyght, when the sonne shone,
"Full bryght and cleare, that joye was to sene,
"For perles white and emerawdes grene
"Full many one. were therein sette.-
"Of whose arraye when Hector taketh hede,
"Towardes him fast gan him drawe.
"And fyrst I fynde how he hath him slawe,
"And after that by force of his manheade
"He hent him up afore him on his stede,
"And fast gan wyth him for to ryde
"From the wardes a lytell out of syde,
"At good leyser playnly, if he maye,
"To spoyle him of his rych arraye.—
"On horse-backe out whan he him ladde,
"Recklessly the storye maketh mynde
"He caste his shelde at his backe behynde,
"To weld him selfe at more libertye,―

"So that his brest disarmed was and bare." MALONE.

I'll frush it, and unlock the rivets all,

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But I'll be master of it:-Wilt thou not, beast,

abide?

Why then, fly on, I'll hunt thee for thy hide.

[Exeunt.

3 I'll FRUSH it,] The word frush I never found elsewhere, nor understand it. Sir T. Hanmer explains it, to break or bruise. JOHNSON.

Mr. M. Mason observes, that "Hanmer's explanation appears to be right and the word frush, in this sense, to be derived from the verb froisser, to bruise, or break to pieces."

:

To frush a chicken, &c. is a term in carving, as ancient as Wynkyn de Worde's book on that subject, 1508; and was succeeded by another phrase, which we may suppose to have been synonymous, viz.-to "break up a capon;" words that occur in Love's

Labour's Lost.

Holinshed (as Mr. Tollet has observed) employs the verb-to frush, in his Description of Ireland, p. 29: "When they are sore frusht with sickness, or too farre withered with age."

The word seems to be sometimes used for any action of violence by which things are separated, disordered, or destroyed. So, in Hinde's Eliosto Libidinoso, 1606: “High cedars are frushed with tempests, when lower shrubs are not touched with the wind."

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Again, in Hans Beer-pot's Invisible Comedy, &c. 1618: And with mine arm to frush a sturdy lance." Again, in The History of Helyas Knight of the Swan, bl. 1. no date : smote him so courageously with his sworde, that he frushed all his helm, wherewith the erle fell backward," &c. Again, in Stanyhurst's translation of the first book of Virgil's Eneid, 1582:

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Again :

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All the frushe and leavings of Greeks, of wrathful Achilles."

- yf that knight Antheus haplye "Were frusht, or remanent," &c.

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Again, in Sir John Mandevile's account of the magical entertainments exhibited before the Grete Chan, p. 285: And then they make knyghts to jousten in armes full lustyly, &c.—and they fruschen togidere full fiercely."

Again, in Fairfax's Tasso;

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Rinaldo's armour frush'd and hack'd they had." STEEVENS. The meaning of the word is ascertained by the following passage in The Destruction of Troy, a book which Shakspeare certainly had before him when he wrote this play: "Saying these wordes, Hercules caught by the head poor Lychas,—and threw him against a

SCENE VII.

The Same.

Enter ACHILLES, with Myrmidons.

ACHIL. Come here about me, you my Myrmidons; Mark what I say.-Attend me where I wheel: Strike not a stroke, but keep yourselves in breath: And when I have the bloody Hector found, Empale him with your weapons round about; In fellest manner execute your arms1. Follow me, sirs, and my proceedings eye :It is decreed-Hector the great must die. [Exeunt.

SCENE VIII.

The Same.

Enter MENELAUS and PARIS, fighting: then
THERSITES.

THER. The cuckold, and the cuckold-maker are at it: Now, bull! now, dog! 'Loo, Paris, 'loo!

rocke so fiercely that hee to-frushed and all to-burst his bones, and so slew him." MALONE.

-

4 EXECUTE your arms.

.] To execute their arms is to employ them; to put them to use. A similar expression occurs in Othello, where lago says:

Witness that here lago doth give up

"The execution of his wit, hands, heart,

"To wrong'd Othello's service."

And in Love's Labour's Lost, Rosaline says to Biron : "Full of comparisons and wounding flouts,

"Which you on all estates will execute." M. MASON. A phrase nearly similar occurs in Froissart's Chronicle, vol. ii. cap. İxxviii. "Then the nexte daye Syr John Holande and Syr Raynolde Roy were armed and mounted on theyr horses and soo came to a fayre place redy sanded where they sholde doo theyr armes." Fo. lxxxx. STEEVENS.

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