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Ah, sir, there's many a Greek and Trojan dead,
Since first I saw yourself and Diomed
In Ilion, on your Greekish embassy.

Ulyss. Sir, I foretold you then what would ensue:
My prophecy is but half his journey yet;
For yonder walls, that pertly front your town,
Yon towers, whose wanton tops do buss the clouds,
Must kiss their own feet.

For I'll not kill thee there, nor there, nor there;
But, by the forge that stithied Mars his helm,
I'll kill thee everywhere, yea, o'er and o'er.—
You wisest Grecians, pardon me this brag,
His insolence draws folly from my lips;
But I'll endeavour deeds to match these words,
Or may I never-

Ajax.
Do not chafe thee, cousin:—
And you, Achilles, let these threats alone,
Till accident, or purpose, bring you to't:
You may have every day enough of Hector,
If you have stomach; the general state, I fear,
Can scarce entreat you to be odd with him.
Hect. I pray you, let us see you in the field;
We have had pelting wars, since you refus'd
The Grecians' cause.
Achil.
Dost thou entreat me, Hector!
To-morrow do I meet thee, fell as death;
thou!-To-night, all friends.

Hect.
I must not believe you:
There they stand yet; and modestly I think,
The fall of every Phrygian stone will cost
A drop of Grecian blood: The end crowns all;
And that old common arbitrator, Time,
Will one day end it.
Ulyss.
So to him we leave it.
Most gentle, and most valiant Hector, welcome:
After the general, I beseech you next
To feast with me, and see me at my tent.
Achil. I shall forestall thee, lord Ulysses,
Now, Hector, I have fed mine eyes on thee:
I have with exact view perus'd thee, Hector,
And quoted joint by joint.
Hect.

Achil. I am Achilles.

Is this Achilles?

Hect. Stand fair, I pray thee: let me look on thee.

Achil. Behold thy fill.
Hect.

Nay, I have done already. Achil. Thou art too brief; I will the second time, As I would buy thee, view thee limb by limb.

Hect. O, like a book of sport thou'lt read me o'er; But there's more in me than thou understand'st. Why dost thou so oppress me with thine eye?

Achil. Tell me, you heavens, in which part of his body

Shall I destroy him? whether there, or there, or
there?

That I may give the local wound a name;
And make distinct the very breach whereout
Hector's great spirit flew: Answer me, heavens!
Hect. It would discredit the bless'd gods, proud

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Hect.

Thy hand upon that match. Agam. First, all you peers of Greece, go to my

tent;

There in the full convive you: afterwards,
As Hector's leisure and your bounties shall
Concur together, severally entreat him.
Beat loud the tabourines, let the trumpets blow,
That this great soldier may his welcome know.

[Exeunt all but TROILUS, and ULYSSES. Tro. My lord Ulysses, tell me, I beseech you, In what place of the field doth Calchas keep?

Ulyss. At Menelaus' tent, most princely Troilus:
There Diomed doth feast with him to-night ;
Who neither looks on heaven, nor on earth,
But gives all gaze and bent of amorous view
On the fair Cressid.

Tro. Shall I, sweet lord, be bound to thee so
much,

After we part from Agamemnon's tent,
To bring me thither?

Ulyss.

You shall command me, sir.
As gentle tell me, of what honour was
This Cressida in Troy? Had she no lover there,
That wails her absence?

Tro. O, sir, to such as boasting show their

scars,

A mock is due. Will you walk on, my lord?
She was belov'd, she lov'd; she is, and doth:
But, still, sweet love is food for fortune's tooth.

[Exeunt.

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Achil. From whence, fragment?

Ther. Why, thou full dish of fool, from Troy. Patr. Who keeps the tent now?

Ther. The surgeon's box, or the patient's wound. Patr. Well said, Adversity! and what need these tricks?

Ther. Prithee be silent, boy; I profit not by thy talk: thou art thought to be Achilles' male varlet.

Patr. Male varlet, you rogue! what's that?

Ther. Why, his masculine whore. Now the rotten diseases of the south, guts-griping, ruptures, catarrhs, loads o' gravel i' the back, lethargies, cold palsies, raw eyes, dirt-rotten livers, wheezing lungs, bladders full of imposthume, sciaticas, lime-kilns i' the palm, incurable bone-ache, and the rivelled feesimple of the tetter, take and take again such preposterous discoveries!

Patr. Why, thou damnable box of envy, thou, what meanest thou to curse thus?

Ther. Do I curse thee?

Patr. Why, no, you ruinous butt; you whoreson indistinguishable cur, no.

Ther. No? why art thou then exasperate, thou idle immaterial skein of sley'd silk, thou green sarcenet flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal's

purse, thou? Ah, how the poor world is pester'd with such water-flies; diminutives of nature! Patr. Out, gall!

Ther. Finch egg!

Achil. My sweet Patroclus, I am thwarted quite From my great purpose in to-morrow's battle." Here is a letter from queen Hecuba;

A token from her daughter, my fair love;
Both taxing me, and gaging me to keep

An oath that I have sworn. I will not break it:
Fall, Greeks: fail, fame; honour, or go, or stay;
My major vow lies here, this I'll obey.
Come, come, Thersites, help to trim my tent;
This night in banqueting must all be spent.
Away, Patroclus. [Exeunt ACHIL. and PATR.

Ther. With too much blood and too little brain, these two may run mad; but if with too much brain and too little blood they do, I'll be a curer of madmen. Here's Agamemnon,-an honest fellow enough, and one that loves quails; but he has not so much brain as ear-wax: And the goodly transformation of Jupiter there, his brother, the bull,— the primitive statue and oblique memorial of cuckolds; a thrifty shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his brother's leg,-to what form, but that he is, should wit larded with malice, and malice forced with wit, turn him to? To an ass were nothing; he is both ass and ox: to an ox were nothing; he is both ox and ass. To be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a toad, a lizard, an owl, a puttock, or a herring without a roe, I would not care: but to be Menelaus, I would conspire against destiny. Ask me not what I would be if I were not Thersites; for I care not to be the louse of a lazar, so I were not Menelaus.-Hey-day! spirits and fires!

Enter HECTOR, TROILUS, AJAX, AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES, NESTOR, MENELAUS, and DIOMED, with lights.

Agam. We go wrong, we go wrong. Ajax. No, yonder 'tis ; There, where we see the lights.

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- break the parle"-i. e. Begin the parley; in the sense that we still say, "He breaks his mind"-to "break a matter to one."

"Was it well done of rash Virginius," etc.

Here is again one of those errors which a well-read scholar was not likely to fall into. Virginius did not slay his daughter because she was stained, etc., but to save her from pollution.

"Lucius, all hail, Rome's royal emperor," etc.

"This line, and the concluding line of Marcus's speech, are given to the people-Romans'-by the modern editors, against the authority of the original copies. Marcus is the tribune of the people, and speaks authoritatively what the common voice' has required.”— KNIGHT.

"give me AIM awhile"-To" cry aim," as has been elsewhere observed in this edition, was a popular phrase, introduced from the ancient universal practice of archery, and has become obsolete as that has gone out of use. It meant to encourage; so to "give aim" was to direct; neither of which senses seem in the least appropriate here. Unless there was some other colloquial use of the phrase, now forgotten, equivalent to " give me leave," "aim" may here be a typographical error for room; as Lucius says, in the next line but one, "stand all aloof."

"Her life was BEASTLIKE"-So in the folios; the quartos, beastly. The former is most in the quaint taste of the times.

Although TITUS ANDRONICUS is a play which, had it come down to us under the name of some secondary dramatist of the age of Elizabeth, would have taken its place quietly with the dramatic literature of that date, by the side of Peele, Middleton, etc., its extravagances all forgotten, and its beauties now and then selected or quoted; as it is, it is rarely mentioned by a critic, but in terms of unqualified disgust. But, great as its faults are, it certainly had once the merit of pleasing the public taste, even after Shakespeare had habituated it to nobler food. It is, therefore, at least worth transient inquiry, what the prevailing sentiment or feeling in it may be to which it owed its interest and power. We cannot, therefore, refrain from selecting a part of Franz Horn's imaginative and somewhat mystical criticism, which, if it "finds in Shakespeare more than Shakespeare meant," yet rightly indicates the real pervading feeling of the piece, and the effect it leaves on the mind. The reader will observe that Horn's argument rests upon the as

42

sumption that the piece is throughout the entire com position of the "youth Shakespeare."

The translation is from one of the contributors to the "Pictorial" SHAKESPEARE. The work from which it is extracted is Horn's" Shakespeare's Dramas Illustrated," (5 vols., Leipsic, 1831;)-a series of essays minutely analyzing the several characters, and summing up the governing characteristics of each play :

Its

"A mediocre, poor, and tame nature finds itself easily. It soon arrives, when it endeavours earnestly, at a knowledge of what it can accomplish, and what it cannot. poetical tones are single and gentle spring-breathings; with which we are well pleased, but which pass over us almost trackless. A very different combat has the higher and richer nature to maintain with itself; and the more splendid the peace, and the brighter the clearness, which it reaches through this combat, the more monstrous the fight which must have been incessantly maintained.

"Let us consider the richest and most powerful poetic nature that the world has ever yet seen; let us consider Shakespeare, as boy and youth, in his circumscribed external situation,-without one discriminating friend, without a patron, without a teacher,-without the pos session of ancient or modern languages,-in his loneliness at Stratford, following an uncongenial employment; and then, in the strange whirl of the so-called great world of London, contending for long years with unfavourable circumstances,-in wearisome intercourse with this great world, which is, however, often found to be little-but also with nature, with himself, and with God:-What materials for the deepest contemplation! This rich nature, thus circumstanced, desires to explain the enigma of the human being and the surrounding world. But it is not yet disclosed to himself. Ought he to wait for this ripe time before he ventures to dramatise? Let us not demand anything superhuman: for, through the expression of error in song, will he find what accelerates the truth; and well for him that he has no other sins to answer for than poetical ones, which later in life he has atoned for by the most glorious excellences!

"The elegiac tone of his juvenile poems allows us to imagine very deep passions in the youthful Shakespeare. But this single tone was not long sufficient for him. He soon desired, from that stage which signifies the world,' (an expression that Schiller might properly have invented for Shakespeare,) to speak aloud what the world seemed to him,-to him, the youth who was not yet able thoroughly to penetrate this seeming. Can there be here a want of colossal errors? Not merely single errors. No: we should have a whole drama which is diseased at its very root,-which rests upon one single monstrous error. Such a drama is this TITUS. The Poet had here nothing less in his mind than to give us a grand Doomsday-drama. But what, as a man, was possible to him in LEAR, the youth could not accomplish. He gives us a torn-to-pieces world, about which Fate wanders like a bloodthirsty lion,-or as a more refined and more cruel tiger, tearing mankind, good and evil alike, and blindly treading down every flower of joy. Nevertheless a better feeling reminds him that some repose must be given; but he is not sufficiently confident of this, and what he does in this regard is of little power. The personages of the piece are not merely heathens, but most of them embittered and blind in their heathenism; and only some single aspirations of something better can arise from a few of the best among them;-aspirations which are breathed so gently as scarcely to be heard amidst the cries of despe ration from the bloody waves that roar almost deafen ingly."

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Ay, that.

Dio. Cres. O, all you gods!-O pretty pretty pledge! Thy master now lies thinking in his bed Of thee, and me; and sighs, and takes my glove, And gives memorial dainty kisses to it,

As I kiss thee.-Nay, do not snatch it from me;
He that takes that doth take my heart withal.

Dio. I had your heart before, this follows it.
Tro. I did swear patience.

Cres. You shall not have it, Diomed; 'faith you shall not;

I'll give you something else.

Dio. I will have this: Whose was it?
Cres.

'Tis no matter.

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Why then, farewell;

Thou never shalt mock Diomed again.

Cres. You shall not go :-One cannot speak a word,

But it straight starts you.

I do not like this fooling.

Dio. Ther. Nor I, by Pluto: but that that likes not you pleases me best.

Dio. What, shall I come? the hour? Cres. Ay, come :-O Jove! Do come :-I shall be plagued.

Dio. Farewell till then. Cres. Good night. I prithee, come.— [Exit DIOMEDES. Troilus, farewell! one eye yet looks on thee; But with my heart the other eye doth see. Ah! poor our sex! this fault in us I find, The error of our eye directs our mind: What error leads must err; O then conclude, Mine sway'd by eyes are full of turpitude.

[Exit CRESSIDA.

Ther. A proof of strength she could not publish

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Ulyss. Nor mine, my lord: Cressid was here but now.

Tro. Let it not be believ'd for womanhood! Think, we had mothers; do not give advantage To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme, For depravation, to square the general sex By Cressid's rule: rather think this not Cressid. Ulyss. What hath she done, prince, that can soil our mothers?

Tro. Nothing at all, unless that this were she.
Ther. Will he swagger himself out on's own eyes?
Tro. This she? no, this is Diomed's Cressida :
If beauty have a soul, this is not she;
If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimony,
If sanctimony be the gods' delight,
If there be rule in unity itself,

This is not she. O madness of discourse,
That cause sets up with and against thyself!
Bi-fold authority! where reason can revolt
Without perdition, and loss assume all reason
Without revolt; this is, and is not, Cressid!
Within my soul there doth conduce a fight
Of this strange nature, that a thing inseparate
Divides more wider than the sky and earth;
And yet the spacious breadth of this division
Admits no orifice for a point, as subtle
As Ariachne's broken woof, to enter.
Instance, O instance! strong as Pluto's gates;
Cressid is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven:
Instance, O instance! strong as heaven itself;
The bonds of heaven are slipp'd, dissolv'd, and
loos'd;

And with another knot, five-finger-tied,
The fractions of her faith, orts of her love,
The fragments, scraps, the bits, and greasy reliques
Of her o'er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed.
Ulyss. May worthy Troilus be half attach'd
With that which here his passion doth express?

Tro. Ay, Greek; and that shall be divulged well
In characters as red as Mars his heart
Inflam'd with Venus: never did young man fancy
With so eternal and so fix'd a soul.

Hark, Greek: As much as I do Cressida love,
So much by weight hate I her Diomed:
That sleeve is mine that he'll bear in his helm;
Were it a casque compos'd by Vulcan's skill,
My sword should bite it: not the dreadful spout
Which shipmen do the hurricano call,
Constring'd in mass by the almighty sun,
Shall dizzy with more clamour Neptune's ear
In his descent, than shall my prompted sword
Falling on Diomed.

Ther. He'll tickle it for his concupy.

Tro. O Cressid! O false Cressid! false, false,
false!

Let all untruths stand by thy stained name,
And they'll seem glorious.

Ulyss.
O, contain yourself;
Your passion draws ears hither.

Enter ENEAS.

SCENE III.-Troy. Before PRIAM's Palace.

Enter HECTOR, and ANDROMACHE. And. When was my lord so much ungen temper'd,

To stop his ears against admonishment?
Unarm, unarm, and do not fight to-day.
Hect. You train me to offend you; get you gone”

Ene. I have been seeking you this hour, my By the everlasting gods, I'll go.

lord:

Hector, by this, is arming him in Troy;

Ajax, your guard, stays to conduct you home.

Tro. Have with you, prince :-My courteous
lord, adieu :-

Farewell, revolted fair!-and, Diomed,
Stand fast, and wear a castle on thy head!
Ulyss. I'll bring you to the gates.
Tro. Accept distracted thanks.

[Exeunt TROILUS, ENEAS, and ULYSSES. Ther. 'Would I could meet that rogue Diomed! I would croak like a raven; I would bode, I would bode. Patroclus will give me anything for the intelligence of this whore: the parrot will not do more for an almond than he for a commodious drab. Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery; nothing else holds fashion: A burning devil take them!

And. My dreams will, sure, prove ominous t the day.

Hect. No more, I say.

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[Exit.

Cas. The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows:

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