As TROILUS is going out, enter, from the other side, Pandarus

PAN. But hear you, hear you!

TRO. Hence, broker-lackey! ignomy and shame Pursue thy life, and live aye with thy name!

[Exit.

PAN. A goodly medicine for my aching bones! O world! world! world! thus is the poor agent despised! O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a-work, and how ill requited! why should our endeavour be so loved and the performance so loathed? what verse for it? what instance for it? Let me see:

Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing,
Till he hath lost his honey and his sting;
And being once subdued in armed tail,

Sweet honey and sweet notes together fail.

Good traders in the flesh, set this in your painted cloths:

As many as be here of Pandar's hall,

Your eyes, half out, weep out at Pandar's fall;

almost seem too as if Pandarus' epilogue (lines 35–55), if it be retained at all, should be relegated, with the three lines preceding it (32-34, But hear you... with thy name!), to the end of Scene iii, supra. Those three lines are in the Folios inserted there and are repeated here. They are obviously not required in both places. They seem to be more appropriate in the earlier place.

33 broker-lackey] go-between.

ignomy] a common abbreviation of ignominy.

37 O traitors and bawds] W. J. Craig aptly suggested "O traders and bawds." At line 45 the speaker apostrophises "Good traders in the flesh,"

a phrase which supports this emendation.

45 painted cloths] tapestries or wall-hangings ornamented with pictorial designs and illustrative moral or scriptural maxims.

40

Or if you cannot weep, yet give some groans,
Though not for me, yet for your aching bones.
Brethren and sisters of the hold-door trade,
Some two months hence my will shall here be made:
It should be now, but that my fear is this,
Some galled goose of Winchester would hiss:
Till then I'll sweat and seek about for eases,
And at that time bequeath you my diseases.

[Exit.

53 Some galled goose of Winchester] Some sufferer from venereal disease, whom my words gall. The disease was colloquially called "Winchester goose," because the quarter in Southwark, the chief haunt of London prostitutes, was the property of the see of Winchester. 54 I'll sweat] Sweating-baths played a chief part in the treatment of sufferers from venereal disease.

50