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PRI.

What noife? what shriek is this?

TRO. 'Tis our mad sister, I do know her voice.

Cas. [Within.] Cry, Trojans!

HECT. It is Cassandra.

Enter CASSANDRA, raving.

Cas. Cry, Trojans, cry! lend me ten thousand

eyes,

And I will fill them with prophetick tears.

HECT. Peace, sister, peace.

Cas. Virgins and boys, mid-age and wrinkled

elders,

Soft infancy, that nothing can'st but cry,
Add to my clamours! let us pay betimes
A moiety of that mass of moan to come.

Cry, Trojans, cry! practise your eyes with tears!

9 Enter Cassandra, raving.] This circumstance also is from the third book of Lydgate's Auncient Historie &c. 1555: " This was the noise and the pyteous crye

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"Of Caffandra that so dredefully

"She gan to make aboute in euery strete

"

Through ye towne" &c. STEEVENS.

- wrinkled elders,] So the quarto. Folio-wrinkled old.

MALONE.

Elders, the erroneous reading of the quarto, would feem to have been properly corrected in the copy whence the first folio was printed; but it is a rule with printers, whenever they meet with a strange word in a manufcript, to give the nearest word to it they are acquainted with; a liberty which has been not very sparingly exercised in all the old editions of our author's plays. There cannot be a question that he wrote:

mid-age and wrinkled eld.

So, in The Merry Wives of Windfor:
Again, in Measure for Measure:

"The superftitious idle-headed eld."

"Doth beg the alms of palfied eld." RITSON.

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Troy must not be, nor goodly Ilion stand; 3
Our fire-brand brother, Paris, burns us all.
Cry, Trojans, cry! a Helen, and a woe:
Cry, cry! Troy burns, or else let Helen go.

[Exit.

HECT. Now, youthful Troilus, do not these high

strains

Of divination in our fifter work

Some touches of remorse? or is your blood
So madly hot, that no difcourse of reafon,
Nor fear of bad fuccess in a bad caufe,

Can qualify the same?

TRO.

Why, brother Hector,

We may not think the justness of each act
Such and no other than event doth form it;
Nor once deject the courage of our minds,
Because Caffandra's mad; her brain-fick raptures
Cannot distastes the goodness of a quarrel,
Which hath our several honours all engag'd
To make it gracious. For my private part,
I am no more touch'd than all Priam's fons :

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3 Troy must not be, nor goodly Ilion ftand;) See p. 225, n. 6, and p. 231, n. 9. This line unavoidably reminds us of another in the fecond book of the Æneid:

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Trojaque nunc ftares, Priamique arx alta maneres."

STEEVENS.

4 Our firebrand brother,] Hecuba, when pregnant with Paris,

dreamed she should be delivered of a burning torch:

et face prægnans

Ciffeis regina Parin creat.

Æneid X. 705. STEEVENS.

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- distaste- Corrupt; change to a worse state.

JOHNSON.

6 To make it gracious.] i. e. to set it off; to show it to advantage.

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So, in Marston's Malcontent, 1604: - he is most exquifite &c.

in fleeking of skinnes, blushing of cheeks &c. that ever made an

ould lady gracious by torch-light." STEEVENS.

And Jove forbid, there should be done amongst us
Such things as might offend the weakest spleen
To fight for and maintain!

PAR. Else might the world convince of levity
As well my undertakings, as your counsels:
But I attest the gods, your full consent
Gave wings to my propenfion, and cut off
All fears attending on so dire a project.
For what, alas, can these my fingle arms?
What propugnation is in one man's valour,
To stand the push and enmity of those
This quarrel would excite? Yet, I protest,
Were I alone to pass the difficulties,
And had as ample power as I have will,
Paris should ne'er retract what he hath done,
Nor faint in the pursuit.

PRI.
Paris, you speak
Like one befotted on your sweet delights:
You have the honey still, but these the gall;
So to be valiant, is no praise at all.

PAR. Sir, I propose not merely to myself
The pleasures such a beauty brings with it;
But I would have the foil of her fair rape
Wip'd off, in honourable keeping her.
What treason were it to the ransack'd queen,

1 convince of levity-) This word, which our author frequently employs in the obfolete sense of to overpower, fubdue, seems in the present instance to fignify-convict, or subject to the charge of levity. STEEVENS.

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- your full consent - Your unanimous approbation. See p. 286, n. 4. MALONE.

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her fair rape-] Rape in our author's time commonly

ignified the carrying away of a female. MALONE.

It has always borne that, as one of its fignifications; raptus Helene (without any idea of perfonal violence) being conftantly rendered the rape of Helen. STEEVENS.

:

Disgrace to your great worths, and shame to me,
Now to deliver her possession up,
On terms of base compulfion? Can it be,
That so degenerate a strain as this,
Should once fet footing in your generous bofoms?
There's not the meanest spirit on our party,
Without a heart to dare, or sword to draw,
When Helen is defended; nor none fo noble,
Whose life were ill bestow'd, or death unfam'd,
Where Helen is the subject: then, I fay,
Well may we fight for her, whom, we know well,
The world's large spaces cannot parallel.

HECT. Paris, and Troilus, you have both faid

well;
And on the cause and question now in hand
Have gloz'd, but fuperficially; not much
Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought

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viii. 14:

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have gloz'd,] So, in Spenser's Faerie Queene, Book III.

"could well his glozing speeches frame." To gloze, in this instance, means to infinuate; but in Shakspeare, to comment. So, in King Henry V :

"Which Salique land the French unjustly gloze
"To be the realm of France." STEEVENS.

3-Aristotle) Let it be remembered as often as Shakspeare's anachronisms occur, that errors in computing time were very frequent in those ancient romances which seem to have formed the greater part of his library. I may add, that even classick authors are not exempt from such mistakes. In the fifth book of Statius's Thebaid, Amphiaraus talks of the fates of Neftor and Priam, neither of whom died till long after him. If on this occafion, fomewhat should be attributed to his augural profession, yet if he could fo freely mention, nay, even quote as examples to the whole army, things that would not happen till the next age, they must all have been prophets as well as himself, or they could not have understood him.

Hector's mention of Aristotle, however (during our ancient propenfity to quote the authorities of the learned on every occafion) is

Unfit to hear moral philofophy:
The reasons, you alledge, do more conduce
To the hot paffion of distemper'd blood,
Than to make up a free determination
'Twixt right and wrong; For pleasure, and revenge,
Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice
Of any true decifion. Nature craves,
All dues be render'd to their owners; Now
What nearer debt in all humanity,
Than wife is to the husband? if this law
Of nature be corrupted through affection;
And that great minds, of partial indulgences
To their benumbed wills, resist the fame;
There is a law1 in each well-order'd nation,
To curb those raging appetites that are
Most disobedient and refractory.
If Helen then be wife to Sparta's king,-
As it is known she is, these moral laws
Of nature, and of nations, speak aloud
To have her back return'd: Thus to perfift
In doing wrong, extenuates not wrong,
But makes it much more heavy. Hector's opinion
Is this, in way of truth: yet, ne'ertheless,

not more abfurd than the following circumstance in The Dialoges of Creatures Moralyfed, bl. 1. no date, (a book which Shakspeare might have seen,) where we find God Almighty quoting Cato. See Dial. IV. STEEVENS.

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STEEVENS.

more deaf than adders -) See Vol. X. p. 97, n. 4. - of partial indulgence-] i. e. through partial indulgence.

M. MASON.

benumbed wills,] That is, inflexible, immoveable, no longer obedient to fuperior direction. JOHNSON.

There is a law-) What the law does in every nation between individuals, justice ought to do between nations. JOHNSON.

8 Is this, in way of truth :) Though confidering truth and justice in this question, this is my opinion; yet as a question of honour, I think on it as you. JOHNSON.

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