Act 5, Scene 7

Another part of the plain

[Enter ACHILLES, with Myrmidons.]
Achilles
3289 Come here about me, you my Myrmidons;
3290 Mark what I say. Attend me where I wheel;
3291 Strike not a stroke, but keep yourselves in breath;
3292 And when I have the bloody Hector found,
3293 Empale him with your weapons round about;
3294 In fellest manner execute your aims.
3295 Follow me, sirs, and my proceedings eye.
3296 It is decreed Hector the great must die.
[Exeunt.]
[Enter MENELAUS and PARIS, fighting; then THERSITES.]
Thersites
3297 The cuckold and the cuckold-maker are at it. Now, bull!
3298 now, dog! 'Loo, Paris, 'loo! now my double-henned sparrow! 'loo,
3299 Paris, 'loo! The bull has the game. 'Ware horns, ho!
[Exeunt PARIS and MENELAUS.]
[Enter MARGARELON.]
Margarelon
3300 Turn, slave, and fight.
Thersites
3301 What art thou?
Margarelon
3302 A bastard son of Priam's.
Thersites
3303 I am a bastard too; I love bastards. I am a bastard
3304 begot, bastard instructed, bastard in mind, bastard in valour, in
3305 everything illegitimate. One bear will not bite another, and
3306 wherefore should one bastard? Take heed, the quarrel's most
3307 ominous to us: if the son of a whore fight for a whore, he tempts
3308 judgment. Farewell, bastard.
[Exit.]
Margarelon
3309 The devil take thee, coward!
[Exit.]

Reading mode

Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 3289classical allusion
“you my Myrmidons”
The Myrmidons were Achilles's personal warrior-band from Phthia in Thessaly — legendary fighters of fierce, almost inhuman loyalty. In Homer's Iliad they sit idle in their tents while Achilles sulks, then return to battle at his command (Iliad 16, 19). In this scene Achilles orders them not to fight until he finds Hector alone — using them as a human net to close around an unarmed man.
classical Achilles, Patroclus, and the wrath of Achilles
TLN 3294archaic vocab
“In fellest manner execute your aims”
'Fell' and 'fellest' are older English words for savage, cruel, or deadly — the same root as 'felon.' Achilles is ordering his Myrmidons to kill in the most merciless way possible. The word is still visible in 'fell swoop' ('at one fell swoop' — a phrase Shakespeare coined in Macbeth 4.3).
TLN 3297cultural context
“The cuckold and the cuckold-maker are at it”
A 'cuckold' was an Elizabethan term for a man whose wife has been unfaithful, traditionally mocked with the image of invisible horns growing from his forehead. Menelaus is the cuckold — Paris stole his wife Helen — and Paris is the 'cuckold-maker.' Thersites reduces the entire Trojan War to this one domestic humiliation, yelling encouragement as if at a dog-fight ('Now, bull! now, dog!').
historical The cuckold's horns
TLN 3303rhetorical device
“I am a bastard begot, bastard instructed, bastard in mind, bastard in valour”
Thersites answers Margarelon's challenge by piling the word 'bastard' onto every noun and quality he can name — birth, education, mind, courage, 'everything illegitimate.' This repetition-with-variation of a single word (polyptoton or conduplicatio) is comic self-degradation deployed as a shield: if he is illegitimate in every possible sense, why would any bastard fight another? His logic ('One bear will not bite another') is absurd but internally consistent.