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Home » Quotes » Troilus and Cressida » A goodly medicine for my aching bones!

A goodly medicine for my aching bones!

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 endeavor 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 armèd 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 panders' hall,
Your eyes, half out, weep out at Pandar's fall;
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 gallèd goose of Winchester would hiss.
Till then I'll sweat and seek about for eases,
And at that time bequeath you my diseases.

Source:
Act 5
Scene 11
Line 37

Source Type:
,

Spoken by: