Today’s Totally Random
Lines
A valiant Greek, Aeneas,- take his hand,-
Witness the process of your speech,
wherein
You told how Diomed, a whole week by days,
Did haunt you in the field.
Paris
Troilus and Cressida Act IV, Scene i, Line 8
This line and scene are confusing. It takes place on a street in Troy. You’ve got the Trojans Paris and Deiphobus,
they’re brothers. You’ve got Aeneas and Antenor, they’re Trojan generals. And
you’ve got Diomedes, a Greek general. What the heck is a Greek general doing on
a street in Troy?
I wanted to
listen to this scene to see if that gave me some clarity, but this play is
missing from my hard drive, so I’ll have to fix that. I guess I could look a
the Play Shakespeare App summary. Okay, Paris has brought Diomedes into Troy
for the prisoner exchange. That, at least, explains what Diomedes is doing
in Troy.
So, without
getting into the details of who’s being exchanged for whom, Paris (the son of King
Priam of Troy) is talking to Aeneas (one of the Trojan generals), about Diomedes
(a Greek general). He’s bringing up the fact that Aeneas had said that Diomedes
had haunted him on the battlefield for a week. And that’s pretty much all of Today’s
Line.
I guess if we
were watching the play we would know at this point (the beginning of Act Four)
who’s who, and this dialogue would make easy sense to us. I guess. Although, I
remember watching a tv show the other night and some lady showed up in a scene
as though she were one of the regulars, and I had no idea who she was. Luckily
Patrice did, so that was pretty helpful. That saucy little wench can be pretty
indispensable at times, that’s for sure.
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