ACT V - Scene V Troilus and Cressida


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Another part of the plains.

Enter Diomedes and a Servant.
Diomedes

Go, go, my servant, take thou Troilusโ€™ horse;
Present the fair steed to my lady Cressid:
Fellow, commend my service to her beauty;
Tell her I have chastised the amorous Trojan,
And am her knight by proof.

Servant I go, my lord. Exit.
Enter Agamemnon.
Agamemnon

Renew, renew! The fierce Polydamas
Hath beat down Menon: bastard Margarelon
Hath Doreus prisoner,
And stands colossus-wise, waving his beam,
Upon the pashed corses of the kings
Epistrophus and Cedius: Polyxenes is slain,
Amphimachus and Thoas deadly hurt,
Patroclus taโ€™en or slain, and Palamedes
Sore hurt and bruised: the dreadful Sagittary
Appals our numbers: haste we, Diomed,
To reinforcement, or we perish all.

Enter Nestor.
Nestor

Go, bear Patroclusโ€™ 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 Galathe his horse,
And there lacks work; anon heโ€™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 mowerโ€™s swath:
Here, there, and every where, he leaves and takes,
Dexterity so obeying appetite
That what he will he does, and does so much
That proof is callโ€™d impossibility.

Enter Ulysses.
Ulysses

O, courage, courage, princes! great Achilles
Is arming, weeping, cursing, vowing vengeance:
Patroclusโ€™ wounds have roused his drowsy blood,
Together with his mangled Myrmidons,
That noseless, handless, hackโ€™d and chippโ€™d, come to him,
Crying on Hector. Ajax hath lost a friend
And foams at mouth, and he is armโ€™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
As if that luck, in very spite of cunning,
Bade him win all.

Enter Ajax.
Ajax Troilus! thou coward Troilus! Exit.
Diomedes Ay, there, there.
Nestor So, so, we draw together.
Enter Achilles.
Achilles

Where is this Hector?
Come, come, thou boy-queller, show thy face;
Know what it is to meet Achilles angry:
Hector? whereโ€™s Hector? I will none but Hector. Exeunt.

 

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