DIOMEDES
Go, go, my servant, take Troilus’ horse;
Present the fair steed to my lady Cressid.
Fellow, commend my service to her beauty;
Tell her I have chastis’d the amorous Trojan,
And am her knight by proof.
SERVANT
I go, my lord.
AGAMEMNON
Renew, renew! The fierce Polydamas
beat down Menon; bastard Margarelon
Doreus prisoner,
And stands colossus-wise, waving his beam,
Upon the pashed corses of the kings
Epistrophus and Cedius. Polixenes is slain;
Amphimacus and Thoas deadly hurt;
Patroclus ta’en, or slain; and Palamedes
Sore hurt and bruis’d. The dreadful Sagittary
Appals our numbers. Haste we, Diomed,
To reinforcement, or we perish all.
NESTOR
Go, bear Patroclus’ body to Achilles,
And bid the snail-pac’d Ajax arm for shame.
There is a thousand Hectors in the field;
Now here he fights on Galathe his horse,
And there lacks work; 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 call’d impossibility.
ULYSSES
O, courage, courage, courage, Princes! Great Achilles
Is arming, weeping, cursing, vowing vengeance.
Patroclus’ wounds have rous’d his drowsy blood,
Together with his mangled Myrmidons,
That noseless, handless, hack’d and chipp’d, come to him,
Crying on Hector. Ajax lost a friend
And foams at mouth, and he is arm’d and at it,
Roaring for Troilus; who done today
Mad and fantastic execution,
Engaging and redeeming of himself
With such a careless force and forceless care
As if that lust, in very spite of cunning,
Bade him win all.
AJAX
Troilus! coward Troilus!
DIOMEDES
Ay, there, there.
NESTOR
So, so, we draw together.
ACHILLES
Where is this Hector?
Come, come, boy-queller, show face;
Know what it is to meet Achilles angry.
Hector! where’s Hector? I will none but Hector.