in The Brazen Age (The Age of Brass) — Heywood, Thomas
Metadata
Play
The Brazen Age (The Age of Brass)
Author
Heywood, Thomas
Year (catalogued)
1613
First performance
1611
Decade
1610s
Genre
Classical Myth
Play type
Adult Professional
Company
Queen Anne's Men
Speech prefix(es)
Laom. | Lao. | Laomed.
Words
347
Characters
1928
Typicality
0.28 (cosine to cluster centroid)
TCP id
A03189
BritDrama no.
1653
Cluster
Cluster 6 — Battlefield messengers & soldiers
Important excerpts
Passages from this character's speech that contain the most distinguishing words for Cluster 6 (armies, fleece, pestle, wonted, pikes, thundering…). Matches are highlighted.
imminent death attends on your delay. Depart our walls, or we will fir your Argoe, Lying in our harbour, and prevent your purpose In the achievement of the golden fleece, Wilt hear me Hercules? Fly, fly into the City. Hercules we owe thee none, none will we tender thee, Thou hast wone thee honour, a reward sufficient For thy attempt:
Full speech
Priam it's too true, Till now Laomedon never knew his gilded, Or thought the Gods could punish. Now, now the time draws nigh, That my sweet child by Neptune's whale must die, Soft, what clamor's that? Thou hast ( Aeneas ) quickened me from death, And added to my date a second Age. Admit them. Thy name and courage warlike Hercules Assures her life, if thou wilt undertake This haughty quest: two milk white steeds, the best Asia ere bred, shall be thy valours prize, Stay, none presume to stir, we'll parley them First from the walls. Peace boy: Greeks away: For imminent death attends on your delay. Depart our walls, or we will fir your Argoe, Lying in our harbour, and prevent your purpose In the achievement of the golden fleece, Wilt hear me Hercules? Fly, fly into the City. Hercules we owe thee none, none will we tender thee, Thou hast wone thee honour, a reward sufficient For thy attempt: our gates are shut against thee, Nor shall you enter, you are Greekish spies, And come to pry but where our land is weak. We dread you not, we'll answer what is done. As well as stand against Neptune and the Sun. The Argonauts returned? And landed? Where? Could not those Colchian monsters in their bowels Bury the Greeks, but must they all survive To threat us with invasion. Speak Anchises, March they towards Troy? In vain, our forces are dispersed abroad, Nor have we order to withstand their fury: Best were we to immure our selves in Troy, And trust unto the virtue of our walls. Hesion, this is thy last on earth, Whose Fortune's we may mourn, though not prevent: Would Troy, whose walls I did attempt to rear, Had never grown higher then their ground-fils, or In their foundation buried been, and lost, Since their high structure must be thus maintained, With blood of our bright Ladies: O Hesion! Only remainder of these female dams Begotten by us, I must be queath thy body To be the food of Neptune's monstrous Whale.
Plot summary
Plot — The Brazen Age (The Age of Brass)
Hercules and the shape-changing Achelous fight for the hand of Dejanira; Achelous transforms himself into a series of monsters, but Hercules retains the upper hand, and Achelous concedes defeat after one of his bull’s horns is pulled off (later to become the cornucopia). Hercules takes Dejanira home, and en route they meet Nessus, the only survivor of Hercules’ massacre of the centaurs. Feigning friendship, the vindictive Nessus offers to carry Dejanira across the river on his back; but when he gets to the other side, he attempts to abduct her. Hercules shoots him and, dying, he tells Dejanira that his blood is a love-charm, which she should use on Hercules if he ever seems interested in another woman; in fact, it is poisonous. Hercules travels to Egypt, where King Busiris sacrifices foreigners, and kills him on his own altar, but refuses to accept his crown. During his absence, Diana, offended that King Oeneus has sacrificed to all the gods but her, sends a boar to ravage the Calydonian countryside. The lords of Greece gather to hunt the boar. One of them is Adonis, and Venus falls in love with him; he insists on hunting, the boar kills him, and she transforms him into a flower. Atalanta joins the hunt, and Meleager falls in love with her; when the boar is killed, he is awarded its head, but he offends his companions by presenting it to her. In the ensuing fight, Meleager kills his uncles. His mother Althea is torn between her duty to her brothers and to her son. Meleager’s life is in her power, for, when he was born, the Fates visited her, pointed out a brand in the fire, and foretold that the child would live until the brand was burnt up; she rescued it and has kept it safe ever since. Now she burns the brand, and he dies; in remorse, she kills herself with his sword. Hercules joins Jason and the Argonauts on their quest to retrieve the golden fleece from Colchis. On the way they stop off at Troy, where King Laomedon faces an unwelcome obligation to sacrifice his daughter Hesione: he accepted a loan from Neptune’s priests to finance building the city walls, but failed to repay it when the work was complete, and retribution came in the form of a sea monster who must be appeased with the monthly sacrifice of a young Trojan woman; this month the fatal lot has fallen on Hesione. Laomedon offers Hercules a reward for rescuing her, but reneges after Hercules does so. Jason insists they defer Hercules’ revenge until their return from Colchis. The golden…