Enter Diomedes and Servingman. DIOMEDES
Go, go, my servant, take thou Troilus’ 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. 5 MAN
I go, my lord. He exits. Enter Agamemnon. AGAMEMNON
Renew, renew! The fierce Polydamas
Hath beat down Menon; bastard Margareton
Hath Doreus prisoner,
And stands colossus-wise, waving his beam 10
Upon the pashèd corses of the kings
Epistrophus and Cedius. Polyxenes is slain,
Amphimachus and Thoas deadly hurt,
Patroclus ta’en or slain, and Palamedes
Sore hurt and bruised. The dreadful Sagittary 15
Appals our numbers. Haste we, Diomed,
To reinforcement, or we perish all. Enter Nestor, with Soldiers bearing the body of
Patroclus. NESTOR
Go, bear Patroclus’ body to Achilles,
And bid the snail-paced Ajax arm for shame.
Soldiers exit with Patroclus’s body.
There is a thousand Hectors in the field. 20
Now here he fights on Galathe his horse,
And here lacks work; anon he’s there afoot
And there they fly or die, like scalèd schools
Before the belching whale; then is he yonder,
And there the strawy Greeks, ripe for his edge, 25
Fall down before him like a 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 called impossibility. 30 Enter Ulysses. ULYSSES
O, courage, courage, princes! Great Achilles
Is arming, weeping, cursing, vowing vengeance.
Patroclus’ wounds have roused his drowsy blood,
Together with his mangled Myrmidons,
That noseless, handless, hacked and chipped, come 35
to him,
Crying on Hector. Ajax hath lost a friend
And foams at mouth, and he is armed and at it,
Roaring for Troilus, who hath done today
Mad and fantastic execution, 40
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! 45 He exits. DIOMEDES
Ay, there, there! He exits. 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. 50
Hector! Where’s Hector? I will none but Hector. He exits, with the others. | Diomedes sends his servant with a message to Cressida about how he just beat down her ex-boyfriend. He also sends along Troilus's horse as proof that he's now Cressida's "knight" in shining armor. Agamemnon appears and lists all the Greeks who have been killed, including Achilles' lover, Patroclus. He and Diomedes run off to get reinforcements while Nestor shows up to deliver the bad news about Patroclus. Then he tells us that Hector is running around the battlefield mowing down Greek warriors like a one-man army. Ulysses runs up and says that Achilles is "weeping, cursing" and "vowing vengeance" for Patroclus' death. We find out that Achilles and his gang of hooligan "Myrmidons" are out for Hector's blood. Ajax runs in looking to kill Troilus. |