{"collection":"sks","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/sks/tac/tac.htm","path":"sks/tac/tac.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/sks/tac/tac.htm","text":"TROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nDRAMATIS PERSONAE\nPRIAM king of Troy.\nHECTOR |\n|\nTROILUS |\n|\nPARIS | his sons.\n|\nDEIPHOBUS |\n|\nHELENUS |\nMARGARELON a bastard son of Priam.\nAENEAS |\n| Trojan commanders.\nANTENOR |\nCALCHAS a Trojan priest, taking part with the Greeks.\nPANDARUS uncle to Cressida.\nAGAMEMNON the Grecian general.\nMENELAUS his brother.\nACHILLES |\n|\nAJAX |\n|\nULYSSES |\n| Grecian princes.\nNESTOR |\n|\nDIOMEDES |\n|\nPATROCLUS |\nTHERSITES a deformed and scurrilous Grecian.\nALEXANDER servant to Cressida.\nServant to Troilus. (Boy:)\nServant to Paris.\nServant to Diomedes. (Servant:)\nHELEN wife to Menelaus.\nANDROMACHE wife to Hector.\nCASSANDRA daughter to Priam, a prophetess.\nCRESSIDA daughter to Calchas.\nTrojan and Greek Soldiers, and Attendants.\nSCENE Troy, and the Grecian camp before it.\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nPROLOGUE\nIn Troy, there lies the scene. From isles of Greece\nThe princes orgulous, their high blood chafed,\nHave to the port of Athens sent their ships,\nFraught with the ministers and instruments\nOf cruel war: sixty and nine, that wore\nTheir crownets regal, from the Athenian bay\nPut forth toward Phrygia; and their vow is made\nTo ransack Troy, within whose strong immures\nThe ravish'd Helen, Menelaus' queen,\nWith wanton Paris sleeps; and that's the quarrel.\nTo Tenedos they come;\nAnd the deep-drawing barks do there disgorge\nTheir warlike fraughtage: now on Dardan plains\nThe fresh and yet unbruised Greeks do pitch\nTheir brave pavilions: Priam's six-gated city,\nDardan, and Tymbria, Helias, Chetas, Troien,\nAnd Antenorides, with massy staples\nAnd corresponsive and fulfilling bolts,\nSperr up the sons of Troy.\nNow expectation, tickling skittish spirits,\nOn one and other side, Trojan and Greek,\nSets all on hazard: and hither am I come\nA prologue arm'd, but not in confidence\nOf author's pen or actor's voice, but suited\nIn like conditions as our argument,\nTo tell you, fair beholders, that our play\nLeaps o'er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils,\nBeginning in the middle, starting thence away\nTo what may be digested in a play.\nLike or find fault; do as your pleasures are:\nNow good or bad, 'tis but the chance of war.\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT I\nSCENE I Troy. Before Priam's palace.\n[Enter TROILUS armed, and PANDARUS]\nTROILUS Call here my varlet; I'll unarm again:\nWhy should I war without the walls of Troy,\nThat find such cruel battle here within?\nEach Trojan that is master of his heart,\nLet him to field; Troilus, alas! hath none.\nPANDARUS Will this gear ne'er be mended?\nTROILUS The Greeks are strong and skilful to their strength,\nFierce to their skill and to their fierceness valiant;\nBut I am weaker than a woman's tear,\nTamer than sleep, fonder than ignorance,\nLess valiant than the virgin in the night\nAnd skilless as unpractised infancy.\nPANDARUS Well, I have told you enough of this: for my part,\nI'll not meddle nor make no further. He that will\nhave a cake out of the wheat must needs tarry the grinding.\nTROILUS Have I not tarried?\nPANDARUS Ay, the grinding; but you must tarry\nthe bolting.\nTROILUS Have I not tarried?\nPANDARUS Ay, the bolting, but you must tarry the leavening.\nTROILUS Still have I tarried.\nPANDARUS Ay, to the leavening; but here's yet in the word\n'hereafter' the kneading, the making of the cake, the\nheating of the oven and the baking; nay, you must\nstay the cooling too, or you may chance to burn your lips.\nTROILUS Patience herself, what goddess e'er she be,\nDoth lesser blench at sufferance than I do.\nAt Priam's royal table do I sit;\nAnd when fair Cressid comes into my thoughts,--\nSo, traitor! 'When she comes!' When is she thence?\nPANDARUS Well, she looked yesternight fairer than ever I saw\nher look, or any woman else.\nTROILUS I was about to tell thee:--when my heart,\nAs wedged with a sigh, would rive in twain,\nLest Hector or my father should perceive me,\nI have, as when the sun doth light a storm,\nBuried this sigh in wrinkle of a smile:\nBut sorrow, that is couch'd in seeming gladness,\nIs like that mirth fate turns to sudden sadness.\nPANDARUS An her hair were not somewhat darker than Helen's--\nwell, go to--there were no more comparison between\nthe women: but, for my part, she is my kinswoman; I\nwould not, as they term it, praise her: but I would\nsomebody had heard her talk yesterday, as I did. I\nwill not dispraise your sister Cassandra's wit, but--\nTROILUS O Pandarus! I tell thee, Pandarus,--\nWhen I do tell thee, there my hopes lie drown'd,\nReply not in how many fathoms deep\nThey lie indrench'd. I tell thee I am mad\nIn Cressid's love: thou answer'st 'she is fair;'\nPour'st in the open ulcer of my heart\nHer eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice,\nHandlest in thy discourse, O, that her hand,\nIn whose comparison all whites are ink,\nWriting their own reproach, to whose soft seizure\nThe cygnet's down is harsh and spirit of sense\nHard as the palm of ploughman: this thou tell'st me,\nAs true thou tell'st me, when I say I love her;\nBut, saying thus, instead of oil and balm,\nThou lay'st in every gash that love hath given me\nThe knife that made it.\nPANDARUS I speak no more than truth.\nTROILUS Thou dost not speak so much.\nPANDARUS Faith, I'll not meddle in't. Let her be as she is:\nif she be fair, 'tis the better for her; an she be\nnot, she has the mends in her own hands.\nTROILUS Good Pandarus, how now, Pandarus!\nPANDARUS I have had my labour for my travail; ill-thought on of\nher and ill-thought on of you; gone between and\nbetween, but small thanks for my labour.\nTROILUS What, art thou angry, Pandarus? what, with me?\nPANDARUS Because she's kin to me, therefore she's not so fair\nas Helen: an she were not kin to me, she would be as\nfair on Friday as Helen is on Sunday. But what care\nI? I care not an she were a black-a-moor; 'tis all one to me.\nTROILUS Say I she is not fair?\nPANDARUS I do not care whether you do or no. She's a fool to\nstay behind her father; let her to the Greeks; and so\nI'll tell her the next time I see her: for my part,\nI'll meddle nor make no more i' the matter.\nTROILUS Pandarus,--\nPANDARUS Not I.\nTROILUS Sweet Pandarus,--\nPANDARUS Pray you, speak no more to me: I will leave all as I\nfound it, and there an end.\n[Exit PANDARUS. An alarum]\nTROILUS Peace, you ungracious clamours! peace, rude sounds!\nFools on both sides! Helen must needs be fair,\nWhen with your blood you daily paint her thus.\nI cannot fight upon this argument;\nIt is too starved a subject for my sword.\nBut Pandarus,--O gods, how do you plague me!\nI cannot come to Cressid but by Pandar;\nAnd he's as tetchy to be woo'd to woo.\nAs she is stubborn-chaste against all suit.\nTell me, Apollo, for thy Daphne's love,\nWhat Cressid is, what Pandar, and what we?\nHer bed is India; there she lies, a pearl:\nBetween our Ilium and where she resides,\nLet it be call'd the wild and wandering flood,\nOurself the merchant, and this sailing Pandar\nOur doubtful hope, our convoy and our bark.\n[Alarum. Enter AENEAS]\nAENEAS How now, Prince Troilus! wherefore not afield?\nTROILUS Because not there: this woman's answer sorts,\nFor womanish it is to be from thence.\nWhat news, AEneas, from the field to-day?\nAENEAS That Paris is returned home and hurt.\nTROILUS By whom, AEneas?\nAENEAS Troilus, by Menelaus.\nTROILUS Let Paris bleed; 'tis but a scar to scorn;\nParis is gored with Menelaus' horn.\n[Alarum]\nAENEAS Hark, what good sport is out of town to-day!\nTROILUS Better at home, if 'would I might' were 'may.'\nBut to the sport abroad: are you bound thither?\nAENEAS In all swift haste.\nTROILUS Come, go we then together.\n[Exeunt]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT I\nSCENE II The Same. A street.\n[Enter CRESSIDA and ALEXANDER]\nCRESSIDA Who were those went by?\nALEXANDER Queen Hecuba and Helen.\nCRESSIDA And whither go they?\nALEXANDER Up to the eastern tower,\nWhose height commands as subject all the vale,\nTo see the battle. Hector, whose patience\nIs, as a virtue, fix'd, to-day was moved:\nHe chid Andromache and struck his armourer,\nAnd, like as there were husbandry in war,\nBefore the sun rose he was harness'd light,\nAnd to the field goes he; where every flower\nDid, as a prophet, weep what it foresaw\nIn Hector's wrath.\nCRESSIDA What was his cause of anger?\nALEXANDER The noise goes, this: there is among the Greeks\nA lord of Trojan blood, nephew to Hector;\nThey call him Ajax.\nCRESSIDA Good; and what of him?\nALEXANDER They say he is a very man per se,\nAnd stands alone.\nCRESSIDA So do all men, unless they are drunk, sick, or have no legs.\nALEXANDER This man, lady, hath robbed many beasts of their\nparticular additions; he is as valiant as the lion,\nchurlish as the bear, slow as the elephant: a man\ninto whom nature hath so crowded humours that his\nvalour is crushed into folly, his folly sauced with\ndiscretion: there is no man hath a virtue that he\nhath not a glimpse of, nor any man an attaint but he\ncarries some stain of it: he is melancholy without\ncause, and merry against the hair: he hath the\njoints of every thing, but everything so out of joint\nthat he is a gouty Briareus, many hands and no use,\nor purblind Argus, all eyes and no sight.\nCRESSIDA But how should this man, that makes\nme smile, make Hector angry?\nALEXANDER They say he yesterday coped Hector in the battle and\nstruck him down, the disdain and shame whereof hath\never since kept Hector fasting and waking.\nCRESSIDA Who comes here?\nALEXANDER Madam, your uncle Pandarus.\n[Enter PANDARUS]\nCRESSIDA Hector's a gallant man.\nALEXANDER As may be in the world, lady.\nPANDARUS What's that? what's that?\nCRESSIDA Good morrow, uncle Pandarus.\nPANDARUS Good morrow, cousin Cressid: what do you talk of?\nGood morrow, Alexander. How do you, cousin? When\nwere you at Ilium?\nCRESSIDA This morning, uncle.\nPANDARUS What were you talking of when I came? Was Hector\narmed and gone ere ye came to Ilium? Helen was not\nup, was she?\nCRESSIDA Hector was gone, but Helen was not up.\nPANDARUS Even so: Hector was stirring early.\nCRESSIDA That were we talking of, and of his anger.\nPANDARUS Was he angry?\nCRESSIDA So he says here.\nPANDARUS True, he was so: I know the cause too: he'll lay\nabout him to-day, I can tell them that: and there's\nTroilus will not come far behind him: let them take\nheed of Troilus, I can tell them that too.\nCRESSIDA What, is he angry too?\nPANDARUS Who, Troilus? Troilus is the better man of the two.\nCRESSIDA O Jupiter! there's no comparison.\nPANDARUS What, not between Troilus and Hector? Do you know a\nman if you see him?\nCRESSIDA Ay, if I ever saw him before and knew him.\nPANDARUS Well, I say Troilus is Troilus.\nCRESSIDA Then you say as I say; for, I am sure, he is not Hector.\nPANDARUS No, nor Hector is not Troilus in some degrees.\nCRESSIDA 'Tis just to each of them; he is himself.\nPANDARUS Himself! Alas, poor Troilus! I would he were.\nCRESSIDA So he is.\nPANDARUS Condition, I had gone barefoot to India.\nCRESSIDA He is not Hector.\nPANDARUS Himself! no, he's not himself: would a' were\nhimself! Well, the gods are above; time must friend\nor end: well, Troilus, well: I would my heart were\nin her body. No, Hector is not a better man than Troilus.\nCRESSIDA Excuse me.\nPANDARUS He is elder.\nCRESSIDA Pardon me, pardon me.\nPANDARUS Th' other's not come to't; you shall tell me another\ntale, when th' other's come to't. Hector shall not\nhave his wit this year.\nCRESSIDA He shall not need it, if he have his own.\nPANDARUS Nor his qualities.\nCRESSIDA No matter.\nPANDARUS Nor his beauty.\nCRESSIDA 'Twould not become him; his own's better.\nPANDARUS You have no judgment, niece: Helen\nherself swore th' other day, that Troilus, for\na brown favour--for so 'tis, I must confess,--\nnot brown neither,--\nCRESSIDA No, but brown.\nPANDARUS 'Faith, to say truth, brown and not brown.\nCRESSIDA To say the truth, true and not true.\nPANDARUS She praised his complexion above Paris.\nCRESSIDA Why, Paris hath colour enough.\nPANDARUS So he has.\nCRESSIDA Then Troilus should have too much: if she praised\nhim above, his complexion is higher than his; he\nhaving colour enough, and the other higher, is too\nflaming a praise for a good complexion. I had as\nlief Helen's golden tongue had commended Troilus for\na copper nose.\nPANDARUS I swear to you. I think Helen loves him better than Paris.\nCRESSIDA Then she's a merry Greek indeed.\nPANDARUS Nay, I am sure she does. She came to him th' other\nday into the compassed window,--and, you know, he\nhas not past three or four hairs on his chin,--\nCRESSIDA Indeed, a tapster's arithmetic may soon bring his\nparticulars therein to a total.\nPANDARUS Why, he is very young: and yet will he, within\nthree pound, lift as much as his brother Hector.\nCRESSIDA Is he so young a man and so old a lifter?\nPANDARUS But to prove to you that Helen loves him: she came\nand puts me her white hand to his cloven chin--\nCRESSIDA Juno have mercy! how came it cloven?\nPANDARUS Why, you know 'tis dimpled: I think his smiling\nbecomes him better than any man in all Phrygia.\nCRESSIDA O, he smiles valiantly.\nPANDARUS Does he not?\nCRESSIDA O yes, an 'twere a cloud in autumn.\nPANDARUS Why, go to, then: but to prove to you that Helen\nloves Troilus,--\nCRESSIDA Troilus will stand to the proof, if you'll\nprove it so.\nPANDARUS Troilus! why, he esteems her no more than I esteem\nan addle egg.\nCRESSIDA If you love an addle egg as well as you love an idle\nhead, you would eat chickens i' the shell.\nPANDARUS I cannot choose but laugh, to think how she tickled\nhis chin: indeed, she has a marvellous white hand, I\nmust needs confess,--\nCRESSIDA Without the rack.\nPANDARUS And she takes upon her to spy a white hair on his chin.\nCRESSIDA Alas, poor chin! many a wart is richer.\nPANDARUS But there was such laughing! Queen Hecuba laughed\nthat her eyes ran o'er.\nCRESSIDA With mill-stones.\nPANDARUS And Cassandra laughed.\nCRESSIDA But there was more temperate fire under the pot of\nher eyes: did her eyes run o'er too?\nPANDARUS And Hector laughed.\nCRESSIDA At what was all this laughing?\nPANDARUS Marry, at the white hair that Helen spied on Troilus' chin.\nCRESSIDA An't had been a green hair, I should have laughed\ntoo.\nPANDARUS They laughed not so much at the hair as at his pretty answer.\nCRESSIDA What was his answer?\nPANDARUS Quoth she, 'Here's but two and fifty hairs on your\nchin, and one of them is white.\nCRESSIDA This is her question.\nPANDARUS That's true; make no question of that. 'Two and\nfifty hairs' quoth he, 'and one white: that white\nhair is my father, and all the rest are his sons.'\n'Jupiter!' quoth she, 'which of these hairs is Paris,\nmy husband? 'The forked one,' quoth he, 'pluck't\nout, and give it him.' But there was such laughing!\nand Helen so blushed, an Paris so chafed, and all the\nrest so laughed, that it passed.\nCRESSIDA So let it now; for it has been while going by.\nPANDARUS Well, cousin. I told you a thing yesterday; think on't.\nCRESSIDA So I do.\nPANDARUS I'll be sworn 'tis true; he will weep you, an 'twere\na man born in April.\nCRESSIDA And I'll spring up in his tears, an 'twere a nettle\nagainst May.\n[A retreat sounded]\nPANDARUS Hark! they are coming from the field: shall we\nstand up here, and see them as they pass toward\nIlium? good niece, do, sweet niece Cressida.\nCRESSIDA At your pleasure.\nPANDARUS Here, here, here's an excellent place; here we may\nsee most bravely: I'll tell you them all by their\nnames as they pass by; but mark Troilus above the rest.\nCRESSIDA Speak not so loud.\n[AENEAS passes]\nPANDARUS That's AEneas: is not that a brave man? he's one of\nthe flowers of Troy, I can tell you: but mark\nTroilus; you shall see anon.\n[ANTENOR passes]\nCRESSIDA Who's that?\nPANDARUS That's Antenor: he has a shrewd wit, I can tell you;\nand he's a man good enough, he's one o' the soundest\njudgments in whosoever, and a proper man of person.\nWhen comes Troilus? I'll show you Troilus anon: if\nhe see me, you shall see him nod at me.\nCRESSIDA Will he give you the nod?\nPANDARUS You shall see.\nCRESSIDA If he do, the rich shall have more.\n[HECTOR passes]\nPANDARUS That's Hector, that, that, look you, that; there's a\nfellow! Go thy way, Hector! There's a brave man,\nniece. O brave Hector! Look how he looks! there's\na countenance! is't not a brave man?\nCRESSIDA O, a brave man!\nPANDARUS Is a' not? it does a man's heart good. Look you\nwhat hacks are on his helmet! look you yonder, do\nyou see? look you there: there's no jesting;\nthere's laying on, take't off who will, as they say:\nthere be hacks!\nCRESSIDA Be those with swords?\nPANDARUS Swords! any thing, he cares not; an the devil come\nto him, it's all one: by God's lid, it does one's\nheart good. Yonder comes Paris, yonder comes Paris.\n[PARIS passes]\nLook ye yonder, niece; is't not a gallant man too,\nis't not? Why, this is brave now. Who said he came\nhurt home to-day? he's not hurt: why, this will do\nHelen's heart good now, ha! Would I could see\nTroilus now! You shall see Troilus anon.\n[HELENUS passes]\nCRESSIDA Who's that?\nPANDARUS That's Helenus. I marvel where Troilus is. That's\nHelenus. I think he went not forth to-day. That's Helenus.\nCRESSIDA Can Helenus fight, uncle?\nPANDARUS Helenus? no. Yes, he'll fight indifferent well. I\nmarvel where Troilus is. Hark! do you not hear the\npeople cry 'Troilus'? Helenus is a priest.\nCRESSIDA What sneaking fellow comes yonder?\n[TROILUS passes]\nPANDARUS Where? yonder? that's Deiphobus. 'Tis Troilus!\nthere's a man, niece! Hem! Brave Troilus! the\nprince of chivalry!\nCRESSIDA Peace, for shame, peace!\nPANDARUS Mark him; note him. O brave Troilus! Look well upon\nhim, niece: look you how his sword is bloodied, and\nhis helm more hacked than Hector's, and how he looks,\nand how he goes! O admirable youth! he ne'er saw\nthree and twenty. Go thy way, Troilus, go thy way!\nHad I a sister were a grace, or a daughter a goddess,\nhe should take his choice. O admirable man! Paris?\nParis is dirt to him; and, I warrant, Helen, to\nchange, would give an eye to boot.\nCRESSIDA Here come more.\n[Forces pass]\nPANDARUS Asses, fools, dolts! chaff and bran, chaff and bran!\nporridge after meat! I could live and die i' the\neyes of Troilus. Ne'er look, ne'er look: the eagles\nare gone: crows and daws, crows and daws! I had\nrather be such a man as Troilus than Agamemnon and\nall Greece.\nCRESSIDA There is among the Greeks Achilles, a better man than Troilus.\nPANDARUS Achilles! a drayman, a porter, a very camel.\nCRESSIDA Well, well.\nPANDARUS 'Well, well!' why, have you any discretion? have\nyou any eyes? Do you know what a man is? Is not\nbirth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood,\nlearning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality,\nand such like, the spice and salt that season a man?\nCRESSIDA Ay, a minced man: and then to be baked with no date\nin the pie, for then the man's date's out.\nPANDARUS You are such a woman! one knows not at what ward you\nlie.\nCRESSIDA Upon my back, to defend my belly; upon my wit, to\ndefend my wiles; upon my secrecy, to defend mine\nhonesty; my mask, to defend my beauty; and you, to\ndefend all these: and at all these wards I lie, at a\nthousand watches.\nPANDARUS Say one of your watches.\nCRESSIDA Nay, I'll watch you for that; and that's one of the\nchiefest of them too: if I cannot ward what I would\nnot have hit, I can watch you for telling how I took\nthe blow; unless it swell past hiding, and then it's\npast watching.\nPANDARUS You are such another!\n[Enter Troilus's Boy]\nBoy Sir, my lord would instantly speak with you.\nPANDARUS Where?\nBoy At your own house; there he unarms him.\nPANDARUS Good boy, tell him I come.\n[Exit boy]\nI doubt he be hurt. Fare ye well, good niece.\nCRESSIDA Adieu, uncle.\nPANDARUS I'll be with you, niece, by and by.\nCRESSIDA To bring, uncle?\nPANDARUS Ay, a token from Troilus.\nCRESSIDA By the same token, you are a bawd.\n[Exit PANDARUS]\nWords, vows, gifts, tears, and love's full sacrifice,\nHe offers in another's enterprise;\nBut more in Troilus thousand fold I see\nThan in the glass of Pandar's praise may be;\nYet hold I off. Women are angels, wooing:\nThings won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing.\nThat she beloved knows nought that knows not this:\nMen prize the thing ungain'd more than it is:\nThat she was never yet that ever knew\nLove got so sweet as when desire did sue.\nTherefore this maxim out of love I teach:\nAchievement is command; ungain'd, beseech:\nThen though my heart's content firm love doth bear,\nNothing of that shall from mine eyes appear.\n[Exeunt]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT I\nSCENE III The Grecian camp. Before Agamemnon's tent.\n[Sennet. Enter AGAMEMNON, NESTOR, ULYSSES,\nMENELAUS, and others]\nAGAMEMNON Princes,\nWhat grief hath set the jaundice on your cheeks?\nThe ample proposition that hope makes\nIn all designs begun on earth below\nFails in the promised largeness: cheques and disasters\nGrow in the veins of actions highest rear'd,\nAs knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,\nInfect the sound pine and divert his grain\nTortive and errant from his course of growth.\nNor, princes, is it matter new to us\nThat we come short of our suppose so far\nThat after seven years' siege yet Troy walls stand;\nSith every action that hath gone before,\nWhereof we have record, trial did draw\nBias and thwart, not answering the aim,\nAnd that unbodied figure of the thought\nThat gave't surmised shape. Why then, you princes,\nDo you with cheeks abash'd behold our works,\nAnd call them shames? which are indeed nought else\nBut the protractive trials of great Jove\nTo find persistive constancy in men:\nThe fineness of which metal is not found\nIn fortune's love; for then the bold and coward,\nThe wise and fool, the artist and unread,\nThe hard and soft seem all affined and kin:\nBut, in the wind and tempest of her frown,\nDistinction, with a broad and powerful fan,\nPuffing at all, winnows the light away;\nAnd what hath mass or matter, by itself\nLies rich in virtue and unmingled.\nNESTOR With due observance of thy godlike seat,\nGreat Agamemnon, Nestor shall apply\nThy latest words. In the reproof of chance\nLies the true proof of men: the sea being smooth,\nHow many shallow bauble boats dare sail\nUpon her patient breast, making their way\nWith those of nobler bulk!\nBut let the ruffian Boreas once enrage\nThe gentle Thetis, and anon behold\nThe strong-ribb'd bark through liquid mountains cut,\nBounding between the two moist elements,\nLike Perseus' horse: where's then the saucy boat\nWhose weak untimber'd sides but even now\nCo-rivall'd greatness? Either to harbour fled,\nOr made a toast for Neptune. Even so\nDoth valour's show and valour's worth divide\nIn storms of fortune; for in her ray and brightness\nThe herd hath more annoyance by the breeze\nThan by the tiger; but when the splitting wind\nMakes flexible the knees of knotted oaks,\nAnd flies fled under shade, why, then the thing of courage\nAs roused with rage with rage doth sympathize,\nAnd with an accent tuned in selfsame key\nRetorts to chiding fortune.\nULYSSES Agamemnon,\nThou great commander, nerve and bone of Greece,\nHeart of our numbers, soul and only spirit.\nIn whom the tempers and the minds of all\nShould be shut up, hear what Ulysses speaks.\nBesides the applause and approbation To which,\n[To AGAMEMNON]\nmost mighty for thy place and sway,\n[To NESTOR]\nAnd thou most reverend for thy stretch'd-out life\nI give to both your speeches, which were such\nAs Agamemnon and the hand of Greece\nShould hold up high in brass, and such again\nAs venerable Nestor, hatch'd in silver,\nShould with a bond of air, strong as the axle-tree\nOn which heaven rides, knit all the Greekish ears\nTo his experienced tongue, yet let it please both,\nThou great, and wise, to hear Ulysses speak.\nAGAMEMNON Speak, prince of Ithaca; and be't of less expect\nThat matter needless, of importless burden,\nDivide thy lips, than we are confident,\nWhen rank Thersites opes his mastic jaws,\nWe shall hear music, wit and oracle.\nULYSSES Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down,\nAnd the great Hector's sword had lack'd a master,\nBut for these instances.\nThe specialty of rule hath been neglected:\nAnd, look, how many Grecian tents do stand\nHollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions.\nWhen that the general is not like the hive\nTo whom the foragers shall all repair,\nWhat honey is expected? Degree being vizarded,\nThe unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.\nThe heavens themselves, the planets and this centre\nObserve degree, priority and place,\nInsisture, course, proportion, season, form,\nOffice and custom, in all line of order;\nAnd therefore is the glorious planet Sol\nIn noble eminence enthroned and sphered\nAmidst the other; whose medicinable eye\nCorrects the ill aspects of planets evil,\nAnd posts, like the commandment of a king,\nSans cheque to good and bad: but when the planets\nIn evil mixture to disorder wander,\nWhat plagues and what portents! what mutiny!\nWhat raging of the sea! shaking of earth!\nCommotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors,\nDivert and crack, rend and deracinate\nThe unity and married calm of states\nQuite from their fixure! O, when degree is shaked,\nWhich is the ladder to all high designs,\nThen enterprise is sick! How could communities,\nDegrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities,\nPeaceful commerce from dividable shores,\nThe primogenitive and due of birth,\nPrerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,\nBut by degree, stand in authentic place?\nTake but degree away, untune that string,\nAnd, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets\nIn mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters\nShould lift their bosoms higher than the shores\nAnd make a sop of all this solid globe:\nStrength should be lord of imbecility,\nAnd the rude son should strike his father dead:\nForce should be right; or rather, right and wrong,\nBetween whose endless jar justice resides,\nShould lose their names, and so should justice too.\nThen every thing includes itself in power,\nPower into will, will into appetite;\nAnd appetite, an universal wolf,\nSo doubly seconded with will and power,\nMust make perforce an universal prey,\nAnd last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,\nThis chaos, when degree is suffocate,\nFollows the choking.\nAnd this neglection of degree it is\nThat by a pace goes backward, with a purpose\nIt hath to climb. The general's disdain'd\nBy him one step below, he by the next,\nThat next by him beneath; so every step,\nExampled by the first pace that is sick\nOf his superior, grows to an envious fever\nOf pale and bloodless emulation:\nAnd 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,\nNot her own sinews. To end a tale of length,\nTroy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.\nNESTOR Most wisely hath Ulysses here discover'd\nThe fever whereof all our power is sick.\nAGAMEMNON The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses,\nWhat is the remedy?\nULYSSES The great Achilles, whom opinion crowns\nThe sinew and the forehand of our host,\nHaving his ear full of his airy fame,\nGrows dainty of his worth, and in his tent\nLies mocking our designs: with him Patroclus\nUpon a lazy bed the livelong day\nBreaks scurril jests;\nAnd with ridiculous and awkward action,\nWhich, slanderer, he imitation calls,\nHe pageants us. Sometime, great Agamemnon,\nThy topless deputation he puts on,\nAnd, like a strutting player, whose conceit\nLies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich\nTo hear the wooden dialogue and sound\n'Twixt his stretch'd footing and the scaffoldage,--\nSuch to-be-pitied and o'er-wrested seeming\nHe acts thy greatness in: and when he speaks,\n'Tis like a chime a-mending; with terms unsquared,\nWhich, from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropp'd\nWould seem hyperboles. At this fusty stuff\nThe large Achilles, on his press'd bed lolling,\nFrom his deep chest laughs out a loud applause;\nCries 'Excellent! 'tis Agamemnon just.\nNow play me Nestor; hem, and stroke thy beard,\nAs he being drest to some oration.'\nThat's done, as near as the extremest ends\nOf parallels, as like as Vulcan and his wife:\nYet god Achilles still cries 'Excellent!\n'Tis Nestor right. Now play him me, Patroclus,\nArming to answer in a night alarm.'\nAnd then, forsooth, the faint defects of age\nMust be the scene of mirth; to cough and spit,\nAnd, with a palsy-fumbling on his gorget,\nShake in and out the rivet: and at this sport\nSir Valour dies; cries 'O, enough, Patroclus;\nOr give me ribs of steel! I shall split all\nIn pleasure of my spleen.' And in this fashion,\nAll our abilities, gifts, natures, shapes,\nSeverals and generals of grace exact,\nAchievements, plots, orders, preventions,\nExcitements to the field, or speech for truce,\nSuccess or loss, what is or is not, serves\nAs stuff for these two to make paradoxes.\nNESTOR And in the imitation of these twain--\nWho, as Ulysses says, opinion crowns\nWith an imperial voice--many are infect.\nAjax is grown self-will'd, and bears his head\nIn such a rein, in full as proud a place\nAs broad Achilles; keeps his tent like him;\nMakes factious feasts; rails on our state of war,\nBold as an oracle, and sets Thersites,\nA slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint,\nTo match us in comparisons with dirt,\nTo weaken and discredit our exposure,\nHow rank soever rounded in with danger.\nULYSSES They tax our policy, and call it cowardice,\nCount wisdom as no member of the war,\nForestall prescience, and esteem no act\nBut that of hand: the still and mental parts,\nThat do contrive how many hands shall strike,\nWhen fitness calls them on, and know by measure\nOf their observant toil the enemies' weight,--\nWhy, this hath not a finger's dignity:\nThey call this bed-work, mappery, closet-war;\nSo that the ram that batters down the wall,\nFor the great swing and rudeness of his poise,\nThey place before his hand that made the engine,\nOr those that with the fineness of their souls\nBy reason guide his execution.\nNESTOR Let this be granted, and Achilles' horse\nMakes many Thetis' sons.\n[A tucket]\nAGAMEMNON What trumpet? look, Menelaus.\nMENELAUS From Troy.\n[Enter AENEAS]\nAGAMEMNON What would you 'fore our tent?\nAENEAS Is this great Agamemnon's tent, I pray you?\nAGAMEMNON Even this.\nAENEAS May one, that is a herald and a prince,\nDo a fair message to his kingly ears?\nAGAMEMNON With surety stronger than Achilles' arm\n'Fore all the Greekish heads, which with one voice\nCall Agamemnon head and general.\nAENEAS Fair leave and large security. How may\nA stranger to those most imperial looks\nKnow them from eyes of other mortals?\nAGAMEMNON How!\nAENEAS Ay;\nI ask, that I might waken reverence,\nAnd bid the cheek be ready with a blush\nModest as morning when she coldly eyes\nThe youthful Phoebus:\nWhich is that god in office, guiding men?\nWhich is the high and mighty Agamemnon?\nAGAMEMNON This Trojan scorns us; or the men of Troy\nAre ceremonious courtiers.\nAENEAS Courtiers as free, as debonair, unarm'd,\nAs bending angels; that's their fame in peace:\nBut when they would seem soldiers, they have galls,\nGood arms, strong joints, true swords; and,\nJove's accord,\nNothing so full of heart. But peace, AEneas,\nPeace, Trojan; lay thy finger on thy lips!\nThe worthiness of praise distains his worth,\nIf that the praised himself bring the praise forth:\nBut what the repining enemy commends,\nThat breath fame blows; that praise, sole sure,\ntranscends.\nAGAMEMNON Sir, you of Troy, call you yourself AEneas?\nAENEAS Ay, Greek, that is my name.\nAGAMEMNON What's your affair I pray you?\nAENEAS Sir, pardon; 'tis for Agamemnon's ears.\nAGAMEMNON He hears naught privately that comes from Troy.\nAENEAS Nor I from Troy come not to whisper him:\nI bring a trumpet to awake his ear,\nTo set his sense on the attentive bent,\nAnd then to speak.\nAGAMEMNON Speak frankly as the wind;\nIt is not Agamemnon's sleeping hour:\nThat thou shalt know. Trojan, he is awake,\nHe tells thee so himself.\nAENEAS Trumpet, blow loud,\nSend thy brass voice through all these lazy tents;\nAnd every Greek of mettle, let him know,\nWhat Troy means fairly shall be spoke aloud.\n[Trumpet sounds]\nWe have, great Agamemnon, here in Troy\nA prince call'd Hector,--Priam is his father,--\nWho in this dull and long-continued truce\nIs rusty grown: he bade me take a trumpet,\nAnd to this purpose speak. Kings, princes, lords!\nIf there be one among the fair'st of Greece\nThat holds his honour higher than his ease,\nThat seeks his praise more than he fears his peril,\nThat knows his valour, and knows not his fear,\nThat loves his mistress more than in confession,\nWith truant vows to her own lips he loves,\nAnd dare avow her beauty and her worth\nIn other arms than hers,--to him this challenge.\nHector, in view of Trojans and of Greeks,\nShall make it good, or do his best to do it,\nHe hath a lady, wiser, fairer, truer,\nThan ever Greek did compass in his arms,\nAnd will to-morrow with his trumpet call\nMidway between your tents and walls of Troy,\nTo rouse a Grecian that is true in love:\nIf any come, Hector shall honour him;\nIf none, he'll say in Troy when he retires,\nThe Grecian dames are sunburnt and not worth\nThe splinter of a lance. Even so much.\nAGAMEMNON This shall be told our lovers, Lord AEneas;\nIf none of them have soul in such a kind,\nWe left them all at home: but we are soldiers;\nAnd may that soldier a mere recreant prove,\nThat means not, hath not, or is not in love!\nIf then one is, or hath, or means to be,\nThat one meets Hector; if none else, I am he.\nNESTOR Tell him of Nestor, one that was a man\nWhen Hector's grandsire suck'd: he is old now;\nBut if there be not in our Grecian host\nOne noble man that hath one spark of fire,\nTo answer for his love, tell him from me\nI'll hide my silver beard in a gold beaver\nAnd in my vantbrace put this wither'd brawn,\nAnd meeting him will tell him that my lady\nWas fairer than his grandam and as chaste\nAs may be in the world: his youth in flood,\nI'll prove this truth with my three drops of blood.\nAENEAS Now heavens forbid such scarcity of youth!\nULYSSES Amen.\nAGAMEMNON Fair Lord AEneas, let me touch your hand;\nTo our pavilion shall I lead you, sir.\nAchilles shall have word of this intent;\nSo shall each lord of Greece, from tent to tent:\nYourself shall feast with us before you go\nAnd find the welcome of a noble foe.\n[Exeunt all but ULYSSES and NESTOR]\nULYSSES Nestor!\nNESTOR What says Ulysses?\nULYSSES I have a young conception in my brain;\nBe you my time to bring it to some shape.\nNESTOR What is't?\nULYSSES This 'tis:\nBlunt wedges rive hard knots: the seeded pride\nThat hath to this maturity blown up\nIn rank Achilles must or now be cropp'd,\nOr, shedding, breed a nursery of like evil,\nTo overbulk us all.\nNESTOR Well, and how?\nULYSSES This challenge that the gallant Hector sends,\nHowever it is spread in general name,\nRelates in purpose only to Achilles.\nNESTOR The purpose is perspicuous even as substance,\nWhose grossness little characters sum up:\nAnd, in the publication, make no strain,\nBut that Achilles, were his brain as barren\nAs banks of Libya,--though, Apollo knows,\n'Tis dry enough,--will, with great speed of judgment,\nAy, with celerity, find Hector's purpose\nPointing on him.\nULYSSES And wake him to the answer, think you?\nNESTOR Yes, 'tis most meet: whom may you else oppose,\nThat can from Hector bring his honour off,\nIf not Achilles? Though't be a sportful combat,\nYet in the trial much opinion dwells;\nFor here the Trojans taste our dear'st repute\nWith their finest palate: and trust to me, Ulysses,\nOur imputation shall be oddly poised\nIn this wild action; for the success,\nAlthough particular, shall give a scantling\nOf good or bad unto the general;\nAnd in such indexes, although small pricks\nTo their subsequent volumes, there is seen\nThe baby figure of the giant mass\nOf things to come at large. It is supposed\nHe that meets Hector issues from our choice\nAnd choice, being mutual act of all our souls,\nMakes merit her election, and doth boil,\nAs 'twere from us all, a man distill'd\nOut of our virtues; who miscarrying,\nWhat heart receives from hence the conquering part,\nTo steel a strong opinion to themselves?\nWhich entertain'd, limbs are his instruments,\nIn no less working than are swords and bows\nDirective by the limbs.\nULYSSES Give pardon to my speech:\nTherefore 'tis meet Achilles meet not Hector.\nLet us, like merchants, show our foulest wares,\nAnd think, perchance, they'll sell; if not,\nThe lustre of the better yet to show,\nShall show the better. Do not consent\nThat ever Hector and Achilles meet;\nFor both our honour and our shame in this\nAre dogg'd with two strange followers.\nNESTOR I see them not with my old eyes: what are they?\nULYSSES What glory our Achilles shares from Hector,\nWere he not proud, we all should share with him:\nBut he already is too insolent;\nAnd we were better parch in Afric sun\nThan in the pride and salt scorn of his eyes,\nShould he 'scape Hector fair: if he were foil'd,\nWhy then, we did our main opinion crush\nIn taint of our best man. No, make a lottery;\nAnd, by device, let blockish Ajax draw\nThe sort to fight with Hector: among ourselves\nGive him allowance for the better man;\nFor that will physic the great Myrmidon\nWho broils in loud applause, and make him fall\nHis crest that prouder than blue Iris bends.\nIf the dull brainless Ajax come safe off,\nWe'll dress him up in voices: if he fail,\nYet go we under our opinion still\nThat we have better men. But, hit or miss,\nOur project's life this shape of sense assumes:\nAjax employ'd plucks down Achilles' plumes.\nNESTOR Ulysses,\nNow I begin to relish thy advice;\nAnd I will give a taste of it forthwith\nTo Agamemnon: go we to him straight.\nTwo curs shall tame each other: pride alone\nMust tarre the mastiffs on, as 'twere their bone.\n[Exeunt]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT II\nSCENE I A part of the Grecian camp.\n[Enter AJAX and THERSITES]\nAJAX Thersites!\nTHERSITES Agamemnon, how if he had boils? full, all over,\ngenerally?\nAJAX Thersites!\nTHERSITES And those boils did run? say so: did not the\ngeneral run then? were not that a botchy core?\nAJAX Dog!\nTHERSITES Then would come some matter from him; I see none now.\nAJAX Thou bitch-wolf's son, canst thou not hear?\n[Beating him]\nFeel, then.\nTHERSITES The plague of Greece upon thee, thou mongrel\nbeef-witted lord!\nAJAX Speak then, thou vinewedst leaven, speak: I will\nbeat thee into handsomeness.\nTHERSITES I shall sooner rail thee into wit and holiness: but,\nI think, thy horse will sooner con an oration than\nthou learn a prayer without book. Thou canst strike,\ncanst thou? a red murrain o' thy jade's tricks!\nAJAX Toadstool, learn me the proclamation.\nTHERSITES Dost thou think I have no sense, thou strikest me thus?\nAJAX The proclamation!\nTHERSITES Thou art proclaimed a fool, I think.\nAJAX Do not, porpentine, do not: my fingers itch.\nTHERSITES I would thou didst itch from head to foot and I had\nthe scratching of thee; I would make thee the\nloathsomest scab in Greece. When thou art forth in\nthe incursions, thou strikest as slow as another.\nAJAX I say, the proclamation!\nTHERSITES Thou grumblest and railest every hour on Achilles,\nand thou art as full of envy at his greatness as\nCerberus is at Proserpine's beauty, ay, that thou\nbarkest at him.\nAJAX Mistress Thersites!\nTHERSITES Thou shouldest strike him.\nAJAX Cobloaf!\nTHERSITES He would pun thee into shivers with his fist, as a\nsailor breaks a biscuit.\nAJAX [Beating him] You whoreson cur!\nTHERSITES Do, do.\nAJAX Thou stool for a witch!\nTHERSITES Ay, do, do; thou sodden-witted lord! thou hast no\nmore brain than I have in mine elbows; an assinego\nmay tutor thee: thou scurvy-valiant ass! thou art\nhere but to thrash Trojans; and thou art bought and\nsold among those of any wit, like a barbarian slave.\nIf thou use to beat me, I will begin at thy heel, and\ntell what thou art by inches, thou thing of no\nbowels, thou!\nAJAX You dog!\nTHERSITES You scurvy lord!\nAJAX [Beating him] You cur!\nTHERSITES Mars his idiot! do, rudeness; do, camel; do, do.\n[Enter ACHILLES and PATROCLUS]\nACHILLES Why, how now, Ajax! wherefore do you thus? How now,\nThersites! what's the matter, man?\nTHERSITES You see him there, do you?\nACHILLES Ay; what's the matter?\nTHERSITES Nay, look upon him.\nACHILLES So I do: what's the matter?\nTHERSITES Nay, but regard him well.\nACHILLES 'Well!' why, I do so.\nTHERSITES But yet you look not well upon him; for whosoever you\ntake him to be, he is Ajax.\nACHILLES I know that, fool.\nTHERSITES Ay, but that fool knows not himself.\nAJAX Therefore I beat thee.\nTHERSITES Lo, lo, lo, lo, what modicums of wit he utters! his\nevasions have ears thus long. I have bobbed his\nbrain more than he has beat my bones: I will buy\nnine sparrows for a penny, and his pia mater is not\nworth the nineth part of a sparrow. This lord,\nAchilles, Ajax, who wears his wit in his belly and\nhis guts in his head, I'll tell you what I say of\nhim.\nACHILLES What?\nTHERSITES I say, this Ajax--\n[Ajax offers to beat him]\nACHILLES Nay, good Ajax.\nTHERSITES Has not so much wit--\nACHILLES Nay, I must hold you.\nTHERSITES As will stop the eye of Helen's needle, for whom he\ncomes to fight.\nACHILLES Peace, fool!\nTHERSITES I would have peace and quietness, but the fool will\nnot: he there: that he: look you there.\nAJAX O thou damned cur! I shall--\nACHILLES Will you set your wit to a fool's?\nTHERSITES No, I warrant you; for a fools will shame it.\nPATROCLUS Good words, Thersites.\nACHILLES What's the quarrel?\nAJAX I bade the vile owl go learn me the tenor of the\nproclamation, and he rails upon me.\nTHERSITES I serve thee not.\nAJAX Well, go to, go to.\nTHERSITES I serve here voluntarily.\nACHILLES Your last service was sufferance, 'twas not\nvoluntary: no man is beaten voluntary: Ajax was\nhere the voluntary, and you as under an impress.\nTHERSITES E'en so; a great deal of your wit, too, lies in your\nsinews, or else there be liars. Hector have a great\ncatch, if he knock out either of your brains: a'\nwere as good crack a fusty nut with no kernel.\nACHILLES What, with me too, Thersites?\nTHERSITES There's Ulysses and old Nestor, whose wit was mouldy\nere your grandsires had nails on their toes, yoke you\nlike draught-oxen and make you plough up the wars.\nACHILLES What, what?\nTHERSITES Yes, good sooth: to, Achilles! to, Ajax! to!\nAJAX I shall cut out your tongue.\nTHERSITES 'Tis no matter! I shall speak as much as thou\nafterwards.\nPATROCLUS No more words, Thersites; peace!\nTHERSITES I will hold my peace when Achilles' brach bids me, shall I?\nACHILLES There's for you, Patroclus.\nTHERSITES I will see you hanged, like clotpoles, ere I come\nany more to your tents: I will keep where there is\nwit stirring and leave the faction of fools.\n[Exit]\nPATROCLUS A good riddance.\nACHILLES Marry, this, sir, is proclaim'd through all our host:\nThat Hector, by the fifth hour of the sun,\nWill with a trumpet 'twixt our tents and Troy\nTo-morrow morning call some knight to arms\nThat hath a stomach; and such a one that dare\nMaintain--I know not what: 'tis trash. Farewell.\nAJAX Farewell. Who shall answer him?\nACHILLES I know not: 'tis put to lottery; otherwise\nHe knew his man.\nAJAX O, meaning you. I will go learn more of it.\n[Exeunt]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT II\nSCENE II Troy. A room in Priam's palace.\n[Enter PRIAM, HECTOR, TROILUS, PARIS, and HELENUS]\nPRIAM After so many hours, lives, speeches spent,\nThus once again says Nestor from the Greeks:\n'Deliver Helen, and all damage else--\nAs honour, loss of time, travail, expense,\nWounds, friends, and what else dear that is consumed\nIn hot digestion of this cormorant war--\nShall be struck off.' Hector, what say you to't?\nHECTOR Though no man lesser fears the Greeks than I\nAs far as toucheth my particular,\nYet, dread Priam,\nThere is no lady of more softer bowels,\nMore spongy to suck in the sense of fear,\nMore ready to cry out 'Who knows what follows?'\nThan Hector is: the wound of peace is surety,\nSurety secure; but modest doubt is call'd\nThe beacon of the wise, the tent that searches\nTo the bottom of the worst. Let Helen go:\nSince the first sword was drawn about this question,\nEvery tithe soul, 'mongst many thousand dismes,\nHath been as dear as Helen; I mean, of ours:\nIf we have lost so many tenths of ours,\nTo guard a thing not ours nor worth to us,\nHad it our name, the value of one ten,\nWhat merit's in that reason which denies\nThe yielding of her up?\nTROILUS Fie, fie, my brother!\nWeigh you the worth and honour of a king\nSo great as our dread father in a scale\nOf common ounces? will you with counters sum\nThe past proportion of his infinite?\nAnd buckle in a waist most fathomless\nWith spans and inches so diminutive\nAs fears and reasons? fie, for godly shame!\nHELENUS No marvel, though you bite so sharp at reasons,\nYou are so empty of them. Should not our father\nBear the great sway of his affairs with reasons,\nBecause your speech hath none that tells him so?\nTROILUS You are for dreams and slumbers, brother priest;\nYou fur your gloves with reason. Here are\nyour reasons:\nYou know an enemy intends you harm;\nYou know a sword employ'd is perilous,\nAnd reason flies the object of all harm:\nWho marvels then, when Helenus beholds\nA Grecian and his sword, if he do set\nThe very wings of reason to his heels\nAnd fly like chidden Mercury from Jove,\nOr like a star disorb'd? Nay, if we talk of reason,\nLet's shut our gates and sleep: manhood and honour\nShould have hare-hearts, would they but fat\ntheir thoughts\nWith this cramm'd reason: reason and respect\nMake livers pale and lustihood deject.\nHECTOR Brother, she is not worth what she doth cost\nThe holding.\nTROILUS What is aught, but as 'tis valued?\nHECTOR But value dwells not in particular will;\nIt holds his estimate and dignity\nAs well wherein 'tis precious of itself\nAs in the prizer: 'tis mad idolatry\nTo make the service greater than the god\nAnd the will dotes that is attributive\nTo what infectiously itself affects,\nWithout some image of the affected merit.\nTROILUS I take to-day a wife, and my election\nIs led on in the conduct of my will;\nMy will enkindled by mine eyes and ears,\nTwo traded pilots 'twixt the dangerous shores\nOf will and judgment: how may I avoid,\nAlthough my will distaste what it elected,\nThe wife I chose? there can be no evasion\nTo blench from this and to stand firm by honour:\nWe turn not back the silks upon the merchant,\nWhen we have soil'd them, nor the remainder viands\nWe do not throw in unrespective sieve,\nBecause we now are full. It was thought meet\nParis should do some vengeance on the Greeks:\nYour breath of full consent bellied his sails;\nThe seas and winds, old wranglers, took a truce\nAnd did him service: he touch'd the ports desired,\nAnd for an old aunt whom the Greeks held captive,\nHe brought a Grecian queen, whose youth and freshness\nWrinkles Apollo's, and makes stale the morning.\nWhy keep we her? the Grecians keep our aunt:\nIs she worth keeping? why, she is a pearl,\nWhose price hath launch'd above a thousand ships,\nAnd turn'd crown'd kings to merchants.\nIf you'll avouch 'twas wisdom Paris went--\nAs you must needs, for you all cried 'Go, go,'--\nIf you'll confess he brought home noble prize--\nAs you must needs, for you all clapp'd your hands\nAnd cried 'Inestimable!'--why do you now\nThe issue of your proper wisdoms rate,\nAnd do a deed that fortune never did,\nBeggar the estimation which you prized\nRicher than sea and land? O, theft most base,\nThat we have stol'n what we do fear to keep!\nBut, thieves, unworthy of a thing so stol'n,\nThat in their country did them that disgrace,\nWe fear to warrant in our native place!\nCASSANDRA [Within] Cry, Trojans, cry!\nPRIAM What noise? what shriek is this?\nTROILUS 'Tis our mad sister, I do know her voice.\nCASSANDRA [Within] Cry, Trojans!\nHECTOR It is Cassandra.\n[Enter CASSANDRA, raving]\nCASSANDRA Cry, Trojans, cry! lend me ten thousand eyes,\nAnd I will fill them with prophetic tears.\nHECTOR Peace, sister, peace!\nCASSANDRA Virgins and boys, mid-age and wrinkled eld,\nSoft infancy, that nothing canst but cry,\nAdd to my clamours! let us pay betimes\nA moiety of that mass of moan to come.\nCry, Trojans, cry! practise your eyes with tears!\nTroy must not be, nor goodly Ilion stand;\nOur firebrand brother, Paris, burns us all.\nCry, Trojans, cry! a Helen and a woe:\nCry, cry! Troy burns, or else let Helen go.\n[Exit]\nHECTOR Now, youthful Troilus, do not these high strains\nOf divination in our sister work\nSome touches of remorse? or is your blood\nSo madly hot that no discourse of reason,\nNor fear of bad success in a bad cause,\nCan qualify the same?\nTROILUS Why, brother Hector,\nWe may not think the justness of each act\nSuch and no other than event doth form it,\nNor once deject the courage of our minds,\nBecause Cassandra's mad: her brain-sick raptures\nCannot distaste the goodness of a quarrel\nWhich hath our several honours all engaged\nTo make it gracious. For my private part,\nI am no more touch'd than all Priam's sons:\nAnd Jove forbid there should be done amongst us\nSuch things as might offend the weakest spleen\nTo fight for and maintain!\nPARIS Else might the world convince of levity\nAs well my undertakings as your counsels:\nBut I attest the gods, your full consent\nGave wings to my propension and cut off\nAll fears attending on so dire a project.\nFor what, alas, can these my single arms?\nWhat Propugnation is in one man's valour,\nTo stand the push and enmity of those\nThis quarrel would excite? Yet, I protest,\nWere I alone to pass the difficulties\nAnd had as ample power as I have will,\nParis should ne'er retract what he hath done,\nNor faint in the pursuit.\nPRIAM Paris, you speak\nLike one besotted on your sweet delights:\nYou have the honey still, but these the gall;\nSo to be valiant is no praise at all.\nPARIS Sir, I propose not merely to myself\nThe pleasures such a beauty brings with it;\nBut I would have the soil of her fair rape\nWiped off, in honourable keeping her.\nWhat treason were it to the ransack'd queen,\nDisgrace to your great worths and shame to me,\nNow to deliver her possession up\nOn terms of base compulsion! Can it be\nThat so degenerate a strain as this\nShould once set footing in your generous bosoms?\nThere's not the meanest spirit on our party\nWithout a heart to dare or sword to draw\nWhen Helen is defended, nor none so noble\nWhose life were ill bestow'd or death unfamed\nWhere Helen is the subject; then, I say,\nWell may we fight for her whom, we know well,\nThe world's large spaces cannot parallel.\nHECTOR Paris and Troilus, you have both said well,\nAnd on the cause and question now in hand\nHave glozed, but superficially: not much\nUnlike young men, whom Aristotle thought\nUnfit to hear moral philosophy:\nThe reasons you allege do more conduce\nTo the hot passion of distemper'd blood\nThan to make up a free determination\n'Twixt right and wrong, for pleasure and revenge\nHave ears more deaf than adders to the voice\nOf any true decision. Nature craves\nAll dues be render'd to their owners: now,\nWhat nearer debt in all humanity\nThan wife is to the husband? If this law\nOf nature be corrupted through affection,\nAnd that great minds, of partial indulgence\nTo their benumbed wills, resist the same,\nThere is a law in each well-order'd nation\nTo curb those raging appetites that are\nMost disobedient and refractory.\nIf Helen then be wife to Sparta's king,\nAs it is known she is, these moral laws\nOf nature and of nations speak aloud\nTo have her back return'd: thus to persist\nIn doing wrong extenuates not wrong,\nBut makes it much more heavy. Hector's opinion\nIs this in way of truth; yet ne'ertheless,\nMy spritely brethren, I propend to you\nIn resolution to keep Helen still,\nFor 'tis a cause that hath no mean dependance\nUpon our joint and several dignities.\nTROILUS Why, there you touch'd the life of our design:\nWere it not glory that we more affected\nThan the performance of our heaving spleens,\nI would not wish a drop of Trojan blood\nSpent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector,\nShe is a theme of honour and renown,\nA spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds,\nWhose present courage may beat down our foes,\nAnd fame in time to come canonize us;\nFor, I presume, brave Hector would not lose\nSo rich advantage of a promised glory\nAs smiles upon the forehead of this action\nFor the wide world's revenue.\nHECTOR I am yours,\nYou valiant offspring of great Priamus.\nI have a roisting challenge sent amongst\nThe dun and factious nobles of the Greeks\nWill strike amazement to their drowsy spirits:\nI was advertised their great general slept,\nWhilst emulation in the army crept:\nThis, I presume, will wake him.\n[Exeunt]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT II\nSCENE III The Grecian camp. Before Achilles' tent.\n[Enter THERSITES, solus]\nTHERSITES How now, Thersites! what lost in the labyrinth of\nthy fury! Shall the elephant Ajax carry it thus? He\nbeats me, and I rail at him: O, worthy satisfaction!\nwould it were otherwise; that I could beat him,\nwhilst he railed at me. 'Sfoot, I'll learn to\nconjure and raise devils, but I'll see some issue of\nmy spiteful execrations. Then there's Achilles, a\nrare enginer! If Troy be not taken till these two\nundermine it, the walls will stand till they fall of\nthemselves. O thou great thunder-darter of Olympus,\nforget that thou art Jove, the king of gods and,\nMercury, lose all the serpentine craft of thy\ncaduceus, if ye take not that little, little less\nthan little wit from them that they have! which\nshort-armed ignorance itself knows is so abundant\nscarce, it will not in circumvention deliver a fly\nfrom a spider, without drawing their massy irons and\ncutting the web. After this, the vengeance on the\nwhole camp! or rather, the bone-ache! for that,\nmethinks, is the curse dependent on those that war\nfor a placket. I have said my prayers and devil Envy\nsay Amen. What ho! my Lord Achilles!\n[Enter PATROCLUS]\nPATROCLUS Who's there? Thersites! Good Thersites, come in and rail.\nTHERSITES If I could have remembered a gilt counterfeit, thou\nwouldst not have slipped out of my contemplation: but\nit is no matter; thyself upon thyself! The common\ncurse of mankind, folly and ignorance, be thine in\ngreat revenue! heaven bless thee from a tutor, and\ndiscipline come not near thee! Let thy blood be thy\ndirection till thy death! then if she that lays thee\nout says thou art a fair corse, I'll be sworn and\nsworn upon't she never shrouded any but lazars.\nAmen. Where's Achilles?\nPATROCLUS What, art thou devout? wast thou in prayer?\nTHERSITES Ay: the heavens hear me!\n[Enter ACHILLES]\nACHILLES Who's there?\nPATROCLUS Thersites, my lord.\nACHILLES Where, where? Art thou come? why, my cheese, my\ndigestion, why hast thou not served thyself in to\nmy table so many meals? Come, what's Agamemnon?\nTHERSITES Thy commander, Achilles. Then tell me, Patroclus,\nwhat's Achilles?\nPATROCLUS Thy lord, Thersites: then tell me, I pray thee,\nwhat's thyself?\nTHERSITES Thy knower, Patroclus: then tell me, Patroclus,\nwhat art thou?\nPATROCLUS Thou mayst tell that knowest.\nACHILLES O, tell, tell.\nTHERSITES I'll decline the whole question. Agamemnon commands\nAchilles; Achilles is my lord; I am Patroclus'\nknower, and Patroclus is a fool.\nPATROCLUS You rascal!\nTHERSITES Peace, fool! I have not done.\nACHILLES He is a privileged man. Proceed, Thersites.\nTHERSITES Agamemnon is a fool; Achilles is a fool; Thersites\nis a fool, and, as aforesaid, Patroclus is a fool.\nACHILLES Derive this; come.\nTHERSITES Agamemnon is a fool to offer to command Achilles;\nAchilles is a fool to be commanded of Agamemnon;\nThersites is a fool to serve such a fool, and\nPatroclus is a fool positive.\nPATROCLUS Why am I a fool?\nTHERSITES Make that demand of the prover. It suffices me thou\nart. Look you, who comes here?\nACHILLES Patroclus, I'll speak with nobody.\nCome in with me, Thersites.\n[Exit]\nTHERSITES Here is such patchery, such juggling and such\nknavery! all the argument is a cuckold and a\nwhore; a good quarrel to draw emulous factions\nand bleed to death upon. Now, the dry serpigo on\nthe subject! and war and lechery confound all!\n[Exit]\n[Enter AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES, NESTOR, DIOMEDES, and AJAX]\nAGAMEMNON Where is Achilles?\nPATROCLUS Within his tent; but ill disposed, my lord.\nAGAMEMNON Let it be known to him that we are here.\nHe shent our messengers; and we lay by\nOur appertainments, visiting of him:\nLet him be told so; lest perchance he think\nWe dare not move the question of our place,\nOr know not what we are.\nPATROCLUS I shall say so to him.\n[Exit]\nULYSSES We saw him at the opening of his tent:\nHe is not sick.\nAJAX Yes, lion-sick, sick of proud heart: you may call it\nmelancholy, if you will favour the man; but, by my\nhead, 'tis pride: but why, why? let him show us the\ncause. A word, my lord.\n[Takes AGAMEMNON aside]\nNESTOR What moves Ajax thus to bay at him?\nULYSSES Achilles hath inveigled his fool from him.\nNESTOR Who, Thersites?\nULYSSES He.\nNESTOR Then will Ajax lack matter, if he have lost his argument.\nULYSSES No, you see, he is his argument that has his\nargument, Achilles.\nNESTOR All the better; their fraction is more our wish than\ntheir faction: but it was a strong composure a fool\ncould disunite.\nULYSSES The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily\nuntie. Here comes Patroclus.\n[Re-enter PATROCLUS]\nNESTOR No Achilles with him.\nULYSSES The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy:\nhis legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure.\nPATROCLUS Achilles bids me say, he is much sorry,\nIf any thing more than your sport and pleasure\nDid move your greatness and this noble state\nTo call upon him; he hopes it is no other\nBut for your health and your digestion sake,\nAnd after-dinner's breath.\nAGAMEMNON Hear you, Patroclus:\nWe are too well acquainted with these answers:\nBut his evasion, wing'd thus swift with scorn,\nCannot outfly our apprehensions.\nMuch attribute he hath, and much the reason\nWhy we ascribe it to him; yet all his virtues,\nNot virtuously on his own part beheld,\nDo in our eyes begin to lose their gloss,\nYea, like fair fruit in an unwholesome dish,\nAre like to rot untasted. Go and tell him,\nWe come to speak with him; and you shall not sin,\nIf you do say we think him over-proud\nAnd under-honest, in self-assumption greater\nThan in the note of judgment; and worthier\nthan himself\nHere tend the savage strangeness he puts on,\nDisguise the holy strength of their command,\nAnd underwrite in an observing kind\nHis humorous predominance; yea, watch\nHis pettish lunes, his ebbs, his flows, as if\nThe passage and whole carriage of this action\nRode on his tide. Go tell him this, and add,\nThat if he overhold his price so much,\nWe'll none of him; but let him, like an engine\nNot portable, lie under this report:\n'Bring action hither, this cannot go to war:\nA stirring dwarf we do allowance give\nBefore a sleeping giant.' Tell him so.\nPATROCLUS I shall; and bring his answer presently.\n[Exit]\nAGAMEMNON In second voice we'll not be satisfied;\nWe come to speak with him. Ulysses, enter you.\n[Exit ULYSSES]\nAJAX What is he more than another?\nAGAMEMNON No more than what he thinks he is.\nAJAX Is he so much? Do you not think he thinks himself a\nbetter man than I am?\nAGAMEMNON No question.\nAJAX Will you subscribe his thought, and say he is?\nAGAMEMNON No, noble Ajax; you are as strong, as valiant, as\nwise, no less noble, much more gentle, and altogether\nmore tractable.\nAJAX Why should a man be proud? How doth pride grow? I\nknow not what pride is.\nAGAMEMNON Your mind is the clearer, Ajax, and your virtues the\nfairer. He that is proud eats up himself: pride is\nhis own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle;\nand whatever praises itself but in the deed, devours\nthe deed in the praise.\nAJAX I do hate a proud man, as I hate the engendering of toads.\nNESTOR Yet he loves himself: is't not strange?\n[Aside]\n[Re-enter ULYSSES]\nULYSSES Achilles will not to the field to-morrow.\nAGAMEMNON What's his excuse?\nULYSSES He doth rely on none,\nBut carries on the stream of his dispose\nWithout observance or respect of any,\nIn will peculiar and in self-admission.\nAGAMEMNON Why will he not upon our fair request\nUntent his person and share the air with us?\nULYSSES Things small as nothing, for request's sake only,\nHe makes important: possess'd he is with greatness,\nAnd speaks not to himself but with a pride\nThat quarrels at self-breath: imagined worth\nHolds in his blood such swoln and hot discourse\nThat 'twixt his mental and his active parts\nKingdom'd Achilles in commotion rages\nAnd batters down himself: what should I say?\nHe is so plaguy proud that the death-tokens of it\nCry 'No recovery.'\nAGAMEMNON Let Ajax go to him.\nDear lord, go you and greet him in his tent:\n'Tis said he holds you well, and will be led\nAt your request a little from himself.\nULYSSES O Agamemnon, let it not be so!\nWe'll consecrate the steps that Ajax makes\nWhen they go from Achilles: shall the proud lord\nThat bastes his arrogance with his own seam\nAnd never suffers matter of the world\nEnter his thoughts, save such as do revolve\nAnd ruminate himself, shall he be worshipp'd\nOf that we hold an idol more than he?\nNo, this thrice worthy and right valiant lord\nMust not so stale his palm, nobly acquired;\nNor, by my will, assubjugate his merit,\nAs amply titled as Achilles is,\nBy going to Achilles:\nThat were to enlard his fat already pride\nAnd add more coals to Cancer when he burns\nWith entertaining great Hyperion.\nThis lord go to him! Jupiter forbid,\nAnd say in thunder 'Achilles go to him.'\nNESTOR [Aside to DIOMEDES] O, this is well; he rubs the\nvein of him.\nDIOMEDES [Aside to NESTOR] And how his silence drinks up\nthis applause!\nAJAX If I go to him, with my armed fist I'll pash him o'er the face.\nAGAMEMNON O, no, you shall not go.\nAJAX An a' be proud with me, I'll pheeze his pride:\nLet me go to him.\nULYSSES Not for the worth that hangs upon our quarrel.\nAJAX A paltry, insolent fellow!\nNESTOR How he describes himself!\nAJAX Can he not be sociable?\nULYSSES The raven chides blackness.\nAJAX I'll let his humours blood.\nAGAMEMNON He will be the physician that should be the patient.\nAJAX An all men were o' my mind,--\nULYSSES Wit would be out of fashion.\nAJAX A' should not bear it so, a' should eat swords first:\nshall pride carry it?\nNESTOR An 'twould, you'ld carry half.\nULYSSES A' would have ten shares.\nAJAX I will knead him; I'll make him supple.\nNESTOR He's not yet through warm: force him with praises:\npour in, pour in; his ambition is dry.\nULYSSES [To AGAMEMNON] My lord, you feed too much on this dislike.\nNESTOR Our noble general, do not do so.\nDIOMEDES You must prepare to fight without Achilles.\nULYSSES Why, 'tis this naming of him does him harm.\nHere is a man--but 'tis before his face;\nI will be silent.\nNESTOR Wherefore should you so?\nHe is not emulous, as Achilles is.\nULYSSES Know the whole world, he is as valiant.\nAJAX A whoreson dog, that shall pelter thus with us!\nWould he were a Trojan!\nNESTOR What a vice were it in Ajax now,--\nULYSSES If he were proud,--\nDIOMEDES Or covetous of praise,--\nULYSSES Ay, or surly borne,--\nDIOMEDES Or strange, or self-affected!\nULYSSES Thank the heavens, lord, thou art of sweet composure;\nPraise him that got thee, she that gave thee suck:\nFamed be thy tutor, and thy parts of nature\nThrice famed, beyond all erudition:\nBut he that disciplined thy arms to fight,\nLet Mars divide eternity in twain,\nAnd give him half: and, for thy vigour,\nBull-bearing Milo his addition yield\nTo sinewy Ajax. I will not praise thy wisdom,\nWhich, like a bourn, a pale, a shore, confines\nThy spacious and dilated parts: here's Nestor;\nInstructed by the antiquary times,\nHe must, he is, he cannot but be wise:\nPut pardon, father Nestor, were your days\nAs green as Ajax' and your brain so temper'd,\nYou should not have the eminence of him,\nBut be as Ajax.\nAJAX Shall I call you father?\nNESTOR Ay, my good son.\nDIOMEDES Be ruled by him, Lord Ajax.\nULYSSES There is no tarrying here; the hart Achilles\nKeeps thicket. Please it our great general\nTo call together all his state of war;\nFresh kings are come to Troy: to-morrow\nWe must with all our main of power stand fast:\nAnd here's a lord,--come knights from east to west,\nAnd cull their flower, Ajax shall cope the best.\nAGAMEMNON Go we to council. Let Achilles sleep:\nLight boats sail swift, though greater hulks draw deep.\n[Exeunt]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT III\nSCENE I Troy. Priam's palace.\n[Enter a Servant and PANDARUS]\nPANDARUS Friend, you! pray you, a word: do not you follow\nthe young Lord Paris?\nServant Ay, sir, when he goes before me.\nPANDARUS You depend upon him, I mean?\nServant Sir, I do depend upon the lord.\nPANDARUS You depend upon a noble gentleman; I must needs\npraise him.\nServant The lord be praised!\nPANDARUS You know me, do you not?\nServant Faith, sir, superficially.\nPANDARUS Friend, know me better; I am the Lord Pandarus.\nServant I hope I shall know your honour better.\nPANDARUS I do desire it.\nServant You are in the state of grace.\nPANDARUS Grace! not so, friend: honour and lordship are my titles.\n[Music within]\nWhat music is this?\nServant I do but partly know, sir: it is music in parts.\nPANDARUS Know you the musicians?\nServant Wholly, sir.\nPANDARUS Who play they to?\nServant To the hearers, sir.\nPANDARUS At whose pleasure, friend\nServant At mine, sir, and theirs that love music.\nPANDARUS Command, I mean, friend.\nServant Who shall I command, sir?\nPANDARUS Friend, we understand not one another: I am too\ncourtly and thou art too cunning. At whose request\ndo these men play?\nServant That's to 't indeed, sir: marry, sir, at the request\nof Paris my lord, who's there in person; with him,\nthe mortal Venus, the heart-blood of beauty, love's\ninvisible soul,--\nPANDARUS Who, my cousin Cressida?\nServant No, sir, Helen: could you not find out that by her\nattributes?\nPANDARUS It should seem, fellow, that thou hast not seen the\nLady Cressida. I come to speak with Paris from the\nPrince Troilus: I will make a complimental assault\nupon him, for my business seethes.\nServant Sodden business! there's a stewed phrase indeed!\n[Enter PARIS and HELEN, attended]\nPANDARUS Fair be to you, my lord, and to all this fair\ncompany! fair desires, in all fair measure,\nfairly guide them! especially to you, fair queen!\nfair thoughts be your fair pillow!\nHELEN Dear lord, you are full of fair words.\nPANDARUS You speak your fair pleasure, sweet queen. Fair\nprince, here is good broken music.\nPARIS You have broke it, cousin: and, by my life, you\nshall make it whole again; you shall piece it out\nwith a piece of your performance. Nell, he is full\nof harmony.\nPANDARUS Truly, lady, no.\nHELEN O, sir,--\nPANDARUS Rude, in sooth; in good sooth, very rude.\nPARIS Well said, my lord! well, you say so in fits.\nPANDARUS I have business to my lord, dear queen. My lord,\nwill you vouchsafe me a word?\nHELEN Nay, this shall not hedge us out: we'll hear you\nsing, certainly.\nPANDARUS Well, sweet queen. you are pleasant with me. But,\nmarry, thus, my lord: my dear lord and most esteemed\nfriend, your brother Troilus,--\nHELEN My Lord Pandarus; honey-sweet lord,--\nPANDARUS Go to, sweet queen, to go:--commends himself most\naffectionately to you,--\nHELEN You shall not bob us out of our melody: if you do,\nour melancholy upon your head!\nPANDARUS Sweet queen, sweet queen! that's a sweet queen, i' faith.\nHELEN And to make a sweet lady sad is a sour offence.\nPANDARUS Nay, that shall not serve your turn; that shall not,\nin truth, la. Nay, I care not for such words; no,\nno. And, my lord, he desires you, that if the king\ncall for him at supper, you will make his excuse.\nHELEN My Lord Pandarus,--\nPANDARUS What says my sweet queen, my very very sweet queen?\nPARIS What exploit's in hand? where sups he to-night?\nHELEN Nay, but, my lord,--\nPANDARUS What says my sweet queen? My cousin will fall out\nwith you. You must not know where he sups.\nPARIS I'll lay my life, with my disposer Cressida.\nPANDARUS No, no, no such matter; you are wide: come, your\ndisposer is sick.\nPARIS Well, I'll make excuse.\nPANDARUS Ay, good my lord. Why should you say Cressida? no,\nyour poor disposer's sick.\nPARIS I spy.\nPANDARUS You spy! what do you spy? Come, give me an\ninstrument. Now, sweet queen.\nHELEN Why, this is kindly done.\nPANDARUS My niece is horribly in love with a thing you have,\nsweet queen.\nHELEN She shall have it, my lord, if it be not my lord Paris.\nPANDARUS He! no, she'll none of him; they two are twain.\nHELEN Falling in, after falling out, may make them three.\nPANDARUS Come, come, I'll hear no more of this; I'll sing\nyou a song now.\nHELEN Ay, ay, prithee now. By my troth, sweet lord, thou\nhast a fine forehead.\nPANDARUS Ay, you may, you may.\nHELEN Let thy song be love: this love will undo us all.\nO Cupid, Cupid, Cupid!\nPANDARUS Love! ay, that it shall, i' faith.\nPARIS Ay, good now, love, love, nothing but love.\nPANDARUS In good troth, it begins so.\n[Sings]\nLove, love, nothing but love, still more!\nFor, O, love's bow\nShoots buck and doe:\nThe shaft confounds,\nNot that it wounds,\nBut tickles still the sore.\nThese lovers cry Oh! oh! they die!\nYet that which seems the wound to kill,\nDoth turn oh! oh! to ha! ha! he!\nSo dying love lives still:\nOh! oh! a while, but ha! ha! ha!\nOh! oh! groans out for ha! ha! ha!\nHeigh-ho!\nHELEN In love, i' faith, to the very tip of the nose.\nPARIS He eats nothing but doves, love, and that breeds hot\nblood, and hot blood begets hot thoughts, and hot\nthoughts beget hot deeds, and hot deeds is love.\nPANDARUS Is this the generation of love? hot blood, hot\nthoughts, and hot deeds? Why, they are vipers:\nis love a generation of vipers? Sweet lord, who's\na-field to-day?\nPARIS Hector, Deiphobus, Helenus, Antenor, and all the\ngallantry of Troy: I would fain have armed to-day,\nbut my Nell would not have it so. How chance my\nbrother Troilus went not?\nHELEN He hangs the lip at something: you know all, Lord Pandarus.\nPANDARUS Not I, honey-sweet queen. I long to hear how they\nsped to-day. You'll remember your brother's excuse?\nPARIS To a hair.\nPANDARUS Farewell, sweet queen.\nHELEN Commend me to your niece.\nPANDARUS I will, sweet queen.\n[Exit]\n[A retreat sounded]\nPARIS They're come from field: let us to Priam's hall,\nTo greet the warriors. Sweet Helen, I must woo you\nTo help unarm our Hector: his stubborn buckles,\nWith these your white enchanting fingers touch'd,\nShall more obey than to the edge of steel\nOr force of Greekish sinews; you shall do more\nThan all the island kings,--disarm great Hector.\nHELEN 'Twill make us proud to be his servant, Paris;\nYea, what he shall receive of us in duty\nGives us more palm in beauty than we have,\nYea, overshines ourself.\nPARIS Sweet, above thought I love thee.\n[Exeunt]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT III\nSCENE II The same. Pandarus' orchard.\n[Enter PANDARUS and Troilus's Boy, meeting]\nPANDARUS How now! where's thy master? at my cousin\nCressida's?\nBoy No, sir; he stays for you to conduct him thither.\nPANDARUS O, here he comes.\n[Enter TROILUS]\nHow now, how now!\nTROILUS Sirrah, walk off.\n[Exit Boy]\nPANDARUS Have you seen my cousin?\nTROILUS No, Pandarus: I stalk about her door,\nLike a strange soul upon the Stygian banks\nStaying for waftage. O, be thou my Charon,\nAnd give me swift transportance to those fields\nWhere I may wallow in the lily-beds\nProposed for the deserver! O gentle Pandarus,\nFrom Cupid's shoulder pluck his painted wings\nAnd fly with me to Cressid!\nPANDARUS Walk here i' the orchard, I'll bring her straight.\n[Exit]\nTROILUS I am giddy; expectation whirls me round.\nThe imaginary relish is so sweet\nThat it enchants my sense: what will it be,\nWhen that the watery palate tastes indeed\nLove's thrice repured nectar? death, I fear me,\nSwooning destruction, or some joy too fine,\nToo subtle-potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness,\nFor the capacity of my ruder powers:\nI fear it much; and I do fear besides,\nThat I shall lose distinction in my joys;\nAs doth a battle, when they charge on heaps\nThe enemy flying.\n[Re-enter PANDARUS]\nPANDARUS She's making her ready, she'll come straight: you\nmust be witty now. She does so blush, and fetches\nher wind so short, as if she were frayed with a\nsprite: I'll fetch her. It is the prettiest\nvillain: she fetches her breath as short as a\nnew-ta'en sparrow.\n[Exit]\nTROILUS Even such a passion doth embrace my bosom:\nMy heart beats thicker than a feverous pulse;\nAnd all my powers do their bestowing lose,\nLike vassalage at unawares encountering\nThe eye of majesty.\n[Re-enter PANDARUS with CRESSIDA]\nPANDARUS Come, come, what need you blush? shame's a baby.\nHere she is now: swear the oaths now to her that\nyou have sworn to me. What, are you gone again?\nyou must be watched ere you be made tame, must you?\nCome your ways, come your ways; an you draw backward,\nwe'll put you i' the fills. Why do you not speak to\nher? Come, draw this curtain, and let's see your\npicture. Alas the day, how loath you are to offend\ndaylight! an 'twere dark, you'ld close sooner.\nSo, so; rub on, and kiss the mistress. How now!\na kiss in fee-farm! build there, carpenter; the air\nis sweet. Nay, you shall fight your hearts out ere\nI part you. The falcon as the tercel, for all the\nducks i' the river: go to, go to.\nTROILUS You have bereft me of all words, lady.\nPANDARUS Words pay no debts, give her deeds: but she'll\nbereave you o' the deeds too, if she call your\nactivity in question. What, billing again? Here's\n'In witness whereof the parties interchangeably'--\nCome in, come in: I'll go get a fire.\n[Exit]\nCRESSIDA Will you walk in, my lord?\nTROILUS O Cressida, how often have I wished me thus!\nCRESSIDA Wished, my lord! The gods grant,--O my lord!\nTROILUS What should they grant? what makes this pretty\nabruption? What too curious dreg espies my sweet\nlady in the fountain of our love?\nCRESSIDA More dregs than water, if my fears have eyes.\nTROILUS Fears make devils of cherubims; they never see truly.\nCRESSIDA Blind fear, that seeing reason leads, finds safer\nfooting than blind reason stumbling without fear: to\nfear the worst oft cures the worse.\nTROILUS O, let my lady apprehend no fear: in all Cupid's\npageant there is presented no monster.\nCRESSIDA Nor nothing monstrous neither?\nTROILUS Nothing, but our undertakings; when we vow to weep\nseas, live in fire, eat rocks, tame tigers; thinking\nit harder for our mistress to devise imposition\nenough than for us to undergo any difficulty imposed.\nThis is the monstruosity in love, lady, that the will\nis infinite and the execution confined, that the\ndesire is boundless and the act a slave to limit.\nCRESSIDA They say all lovers swear more performance than they\nare able and yet reserve an ability that they never\nperform, vowing more than the perfection of ten and\ndischarging less than the tenth part of one. They\nthat have the voice of lions and the act of hares,\nare they not monsters?\nTROILUS Are there such? such are not we: praise us as we\nare tasted, allow us as we prove; our head shall go\nbare till merit crown it: no perfection in reversion\nshall have a praise in present: we will not name\ndesert before his birth, and, being born, his addition\nshall be humble. Few words to fair faith: Troilus\nshall be such to Cressid as what envy can say worst\nshall be a mock for his truth, and what truth can\nspeak truest not truer than Troilus.\nCRESSIDA Will you walk in, my lord?\n[Re-enter PANDARUS]\nPANDARUS What, blushing still? have you not done talking yet?\nCRESSIDA Well, uncle, what folly I commit, I dedicate to you.\nPANDARUS I thank you for that: if my lord get a boy of you,\nyou'll give him me. Be true to my lord: if he\nflinch, chide me for it.\nTROILUS You know now your hostages; your uncle's word and my\nfirm faith.\nPANDARUS Nay, I'll give my word for her too: our kindred,\nthough they be long ere they are wooed, they are\nconstant being won: they are burs, I can tell you;\nthey'll stick where they are thrown.\nCRESSIDA Boldness comes to me now, and brings me heart.\nPrince Troilus, I have loved you night and day\nFor many weary months.\nTROILUS Why was my Cressid then so hard to win?\nCRESSIDA Hard to seem won: but I was won, my lord,\nWith the first glance that ever--pardon me--\nIf I confess much, you will play the tyrant.\nI love you now; but not, till now, so much\nBut I might master it: in faith, I lie;\nMy thoughts were like unbridled children, grown\nToo headstrong for their mother. See, we fools!\nWhy have I blabb'd? who shall be true to us,\nWhen we are so unsecret to ourselves?\nBut, though I loved you well, I woo'd you not;\nAnd yet, good faith, I wish'd myself a man,\nOr that we women had men's privilege\nOf speaking first. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue,\nFor in this rapture I shall surely speak\nThe thing I shall repent. See, see, your silence,\nCunning in dumbness, from my weakness draws\nMy very soul of counsel! stop my mouth.\nTROILUS And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence.\nPANDARUS Pretty, i' faith.\nCRESSIDA My lord, I do beseech you, pardon me;\n'Twas not my purpose, thus to beg a kiss:\nI am ashamed. O heavens! what have I done?\nFor this time will I take my leave, my lord.\nTROILUS Your leave, sweet Cressid!\nPANDARUS Leave! an you take leave till to-morrow morning,--\nCRESSIDA Pray you, content you.\nTROILUS What offends you, lady?\nCRESSIDA Sir, mine own company.\nTROILUS You cannot shun Yourself.\nCRESSIDA Let me go and try:\nI have a kind of self resides with you;\nBut an unkind self, that itself will leave,\nTo be another's fool. I would be gone:\nWhere is my wit? I know not what I speak.\nTROILUS Well know they what they speak that speak so wisely.\nCRESSIDA Perchance, my lord, I show more craft than love;\nAnd fell so roundly to a large confession,\nTo angle for your thoughts: but you are wise,\nOr else you love not, for to be wise and love\nExceeds man's might; that dwells with gods above.\nTROILUS O that I thought it could be in a woman--\nAs, if it can, I will presume in you--\nTo feed for aye her ramp and flames of love;\nTo keep her constancy in plight and youth,\nOutliving beauty's outward, with a mind\nThat doth renew swifter than blood decays!\nOr that persuasion could but thus convince me,\nThat my integrity and truth to you\nMight be affronted with the match and weight\nOf such a winnow'd purity in love;\nHow were I then uplifted! but, alas!\nI am as true as truth's simplicity\nAnd simpler than the infancy of truth.\nCRESSIDA In that I'll war with you.\nTROILUS O virtuous fight,\nWhen right with right wars who shall be most right!\nTrue swains in love shall in the world to come\nApprove their truths by Troilus: when their rhymes,\nFull of protest, of oath and big compare,\nWant similes, truth tired with iteration,\nAs true as steel, as plantage to the moon,\nAs sun to day, as turtle to her mate,\nAs iron to adamant, as earth to the centre,\nYet, after all comparisons of truth,\nAs truth's authentic author to be cited,\n'As true as Troilus' shall crown up the verse,\nAnd sanctify the numbers.\nCRESSIDA Prophet may you be!\nIf I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,\nWhen time is old and hath forgot itself,\nWhen waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,\nAnd blind oblivion swallow'd cities up,\nAnd mighty states characterless are grated\nTo dusty nothing, yet let memory,\nFrom false to false, among false maids in love,\nUpbraid my falsehood! when they've said 'as false\nAs air, as water, wind, or sandy earth,\nAs fox to lamb, as wolf to heifer's calf,\nPard to the hind, or stepdame to her son,'\n'Yea,' let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood,\n'As false as Cressid.'\nPANDARUS Go to, a bargain made: seal it, seal it; I'll be the\nwitness. Here I hold your hand, here my cousin's.\nIf ever you prove false one to another, since I have\ntaken such pains to bring you together, let all\npitiful goers-between be called to the world's end\nafter my name; call them all Pandars; let all\nconstant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids,\nand all brokers-between Pandars! say, amen.\nTROILUS Amen.\nCRESSIDA Amen.\nPANDARUS Amen. Whereupon I will show you a chamber with a\nbed; which bed, because it shall not speak of your\npretty encounters, press it to death: away!\nAnd Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here\nBed, chamber, Pandar to provide this gear!\n[Exeunt]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT III\nSCENE III The Grecian camp. Before Achilles' tent.\n[Enter AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES, DIOMEDES, NESTOR, AJAX,\nMENELAUS, and CALCHAS]\nCALCHAS Now, princes, for the service I have done you,\nThe advantage of the time prompts me aloud\nTo call for recompense. Appear it to your mind\nThat, through the sight I bear in things to love,\nI have abandon'd Troy, left my possession,\nIncurr'd a traitor's name; exposed myself,\nFrom certain and possess'd conveniences,\nTo doubtful fortunes; sequestering from me all\nThat time, acquaintance, custom and condition\nMade tame and most familiar to my nature,\nAnd here, to do you service, am become\nAs new into the world, strange, unacquainted:\nI do beseech you, as in way of taste,\nTo give me now a little benefit,\nOut of those many register'd in promise,\nWhich, you say, live to come in my behalf.\nAGAMEMNON What wouldst thou of us, Trojan? make demand.\nCALCHAS You have a Trojan prisoner, call'd Antenor,\nYesterday took: Troy holds him very dear.\nOft have you--often have you thanks therefore--\nDesired my Cressid in right great exchange,\nWhom Troy hath still denied: but this Antenor,\nI know, is such a wrest in their affairs\nThat their negotiations all must slack,\nWanting his manage; and they will almost\nGive us a prince of blood, a son of Priam,\nIn change of him: let him be sent, great princes,\nAnd he shall buy my daughter; and her presence\nShall quite strike off all service I have done,\nIn most accepted pain.\nAGAMEMNON Let Diomedes bear him,\nAnd bring us Cressid hither: Calchas shall have\nWhat he requests of us. Good Diomed,\nFurnish you fairly for this interchange:\nWithal bring word if Hector will to-morrow\nBe answer'd in his challenge: Ajax is ready.\nDIOMEDES This shall I undertake; and 'tis a burden\nWhich I am proud to bear.\n[Exeunt DIOMEDES and CALCHAS]\n[Enter ACHILLES and PATROCLUS, before their tent]\nULYSSES Achilles stands i' the entrance of his tent:\nPlease it our general to pass strangely by him,\nAs if he were forgot; and, princes all,\nLay negligent and loose regard upon him:\nI will come last. 'Tis like he'll question me\nWhy such unplausive eyes are bent on him:\nIf so, I have derision medicinable,\nTo use between your strangeness and his pride,\nWhich his own will shall have desire to drink:\nIt may be good: pride hath no other glass\nTo show itself but pride, for supple knees\nFeed arrogance and are the proud man's fees.\nAGAMEMNON We'll execute your purpose, and put on\nA form of strangeness as we pass along:\nSo do each lord, and either greet him not,\nOr else disdainfully, which shall shake him more\nThan if not look'd on. I will lead the way.\nACHILLES What, comes the general to speak with me?\nYou know my mind, I'll fight no more 'gainst Troy.\nAGAMEMNON What says Achilles? would he aught with us?\nNESTOR Would you, my lord, aught with the general?\nACHILLES No.\nNESTOR Nothing, my lord.\nAGAMEMNON The better.\n[Exeunt AGAMEMNON and NESTOR]\nACHILLES Good day, good day.\nMENELAUS How do you? how do you?\n[Exit]\nACHILLES What, does the cuckold scorn me?\nAJAX How now, Patroclus!\nACHILLES Good morrow, Ajax.\nAJAX Ha?\nACHILLES Good morrow.\nAJAX Ay, and good next day too.\n[Exit]\nACHILLES What mean these fellows? Know they not Achilles?\nPATROCLUS They pass by strangely: they were used to bend\nTo send their smiles before them to Achilles;\nTo come as humbly as they used to creep\nTo holy altars.\nACHILLES What, am I poor of late?\n'Tis certain, greatness, once fall'n out with fortune,\nMust fall out with men too: what the declined is\nHe shall as soon read in the eyes of others\nAs feel in his own fall; for men, like butterflies,\nShow not their mealy wings but to the summer,\nAnd not a man, for being simply man,\nHath any honour, but honour for those honours\nThat are without him, as place, riches, favour,\nPrizes of accident as oft as merit:\nWhich when they fall, as being slippery standers,\nThe love that lean'd on them as slippery too,\nDo one pluck down another and together\nDie in the fall. But 'tis not so with me:\nFortune and I are friends: I do enjoy\nAt ample point all that I did possess,\nSave these men's looks; who do, methinks, find out\nSomething not worth in me such rich beholding\nAs they have often given. Here is Ulysses;\nI'll interrupt his reading.\nHow now Ulysses!\nULYSSES Now, great Thetis' son!\nACHILLES What are you reading?\nULYSSES A strange fellow here\nWrites me: 'That man, how dearly ever parted,\nHow much in having, or without or in,\nCannot make boast to have that which he hath,\nNor feels not what he owes, but by reflection;\nAs when his virtues shining upon others\nHeat them and they retort that heat again\nTo the first giver.'\nACHILLES This is not strange, Ulysses.\nThe beauty that is borne here in the face\nThe bearer knows not, but commends itself\nTo others' eyes; nor doth the eye itself,\nThat most pure spirit of sense, behold itself,\nNot going from itself; but eye to eye opposed\nSalutes each other with each other's form;\nFor speculation turns not to itself,\nTill it hath travell'd and is mirror'd there\nWhere it may see itself. This is not strange at all.\nULYSSES I do not strain at the position,--\nIt is familiar,--but at the author's drift;\nWho, in his circumstance, expressly proves\nThat no man is the lord of any thing,\nThough in and of him there be much consisting,\nTill he communicate his parts to others:\nNor doth he of himself know them for aught\nTill he behold them form'd in the applause\nWhere they're extended; who, like an arch,\nreverberates\nThe voice again, or, like a gate of steel\nFronting the sun, receives and renders back\nHis figure and his heat. I was much wrapt in this;\nAnd apprehended here immediately\nThe unknown Ajax.\nHeavens, what a man is there! a very horse,\nThat has he knows not what. Nature, what things there are\nMost abject in regard and dear in use!\nWhat things again most dear in the esteem\nAnd poor in worth! Now shall we see to-morrow--\nAn act that very chance doth throw upon him--\nAjax renown'd. O heavens, what some men do,\nWhile some men leave to do!\nHow some men creep in skittish fortune's hall,\nWhiles others play the idiots in her eyes!\nHow one man eats into another's pride,\nWhile pride is fasting in his wantonness!\nTo see these Grecian lords!--why, even already\nThey clap the lubber Ajax on the shoulder,\nAs if his foot were on brave Hector's breast\nAnd great Troy shrieking.\nACHILLES I do believe it; for they pass'd by me\nAs misers do by beggars, neither gave to me\nGood word nor look: what, are my deeds forgot?\nULYSSES Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,\nWherein he puts alms for oblivion,\nA great-sized monster of ingratitudes:\nThose scraps are good deeds past; which are devour'd\nAs fast as they are made, forgot as soon\nAs done: perseverance, dear my lord,\nKeeps honour bright: to have done is to hang\nQuite out of fashion, like a rusty mail\nIn monumental mockery. Take the instant way;\nFor honour travels in a strait so narrow,\nWhere one but goes abreast: keep then the path;\nFor emulation hath a thousand sons\nThat one by one pursue: if you give way,\nOr hedge aside from the direct forthright,\nLike to an enter'd tide, they all rush by\nAnd leave you hindmost;\nOr like a gallant horse fall'n in first rank,\nLie there for pavement to the abject rear,\nO'er-run and trampled on: then what they do in present,\nThough less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours;\nFor time is like a fashionable host\nThat slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,\nAnd with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly,\nGrasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles,\nAnd farewell goes out sighing. O, let not\nvirtue seek\nRemuneration for the thing it was;\nFor beauty, wit,\nHigh birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,\nLove, friendship, charity, are subjects all\nTo envious and calumniating time.\nOne touch of nature makes the whole world kin,\nThat all with one consent praise new-born gawds,\nThough they are made and moulded of things past,\nAnd give to dust that is a little gilt\nMore laud than gilt o'er-dusted.\nThe present eye praises the present object.\nThen marvel not, thou great and complete man,\nThat all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax;\nSince things in motion sooner catch the eye\nThan what not stirs. The cry went once on thee,\nAnd still it might, and yet it may again,\nIf thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive\nAnd case thy reputation in thy tent;\nWhose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late,\nMade emulous missions 'mongst the gods themselves\nAnd drave great Mars to faction.\nACHILLES Of this my privacy\nI have strong reasons.\nULYSSES But 'gainst your privacy\nThe reasons are more potent and heroical:\n'Tis known, Achilles, that you are in love\nWith one of Priam's daughters.\nACHILLES Ha! known!\nULYSSES Is that a wonder?\nThe providence that's in a watchful state\nKnows almost every grain of Plutus' gold,\nFinds bottom in the uncomprehensive deeps,\nKeeps place with thought and almost, like the gods,\nDoes thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles.\nThere is a mystery--with whom relation\nDurst never meddle--in the soul of state;\nWhich hath an operation more divine\nThan breath or pen can give expressure to:\nAll the commerce that you have had with Troy\nAs perfectly is ours as yours, my lord;\nAnd better would it fit Achilles much\nTo throw down Hector than Polyxena:\nBut it must grieve young Pyrrhus now at home,\nWhen fame shall in our islands sound her trump,\nAnd all the Greekish girls shall tripping sing,\n'Great Hector's sister did Achilles win,\nBut our great Ajax bravely beat down him.'\nFarewell, my lord: I as your lover speak;\nThe fool slides o'er the ice that you should break.\n[Exit]\nPATROCLUS To this effect, Achilles, have I moved you:\nA woman impudent and mannish grown\nIs not more loathed than an effeminate man\nIn time of action. I stand condemn'd for this;\nThey think my little stomach to the war\nAnd your great love to me restrains you thus:\nSweet, rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid\nShall from your neck unloose his amorous fold,\nAnd, like a dew-drop from the lion's mane,\nBe shook to air.\nACHILLES Shall Ajax fight with Hector?\nPATROCLUS Ay, and perhaps receive much honour by him.\nACHILLES I see my reputation is at stake\nMy fame is shrewdly gored.\nPATROCLUS O, then, beware;\nThose wounds heal ill that men do give themselves:\nOmission to do what is necessary\nSeals a commission to a blank of danger;\nAnd danger, like an ague, subtly taints\nEven then when we sit idly in the sun.\nACHILLES Go call Thersites hither, sweet Patroclus:\nI'll send the fool to Ajax and desire him\nTo invite the Trojan lords after the combat\nTo see us here unarm'd: I have a woman's longing,\nAn appetite that I am sick withal,\nTo see great Hector in his weeds of peace,\nTo talk with him and to behold his visage,\nEven to my full of view.\n[Enter THERSITES]\nA labour saved!\nTHERSITES A wonder!\nACHILLES What?\nTHERSITES Ajax goes up and down the field, asking for himself.\nACHILLES How so?\nTHERSITES He must fight singly to-morrow with Hector, and is so\nprophetically proud of an heroical cudgelling that he\nraves in saying nothing.\nACHILLES How can that be?\nTHERSITES Why, he stalks up and down like a peacock,--a stride\nand a stand: ruminates like an hostess that hath no\narithmetic but her brain to set down her reckoning:\nbites his lip with a politic regard, as who should\nsay 'There were wit in this head, an 'twould out;'\nand so there is, but it lies as coldly in him as fire\nin a flint, which will not show without knocking.\nThe man's undone forever; for if Hector break not his\nneck i' the combat, he'll break 't himself in\nvain-glory. He knows not me: I said 'Good morrow,\nAjax;' and he replies 'Thanks, Agamemnon.' What think\nyou of this man that takes me for the general? He's\ngrown a very land-fish, language-less, a monster.\nA plague of opinion! a man may wear it on both\nsides, like a leather jerkin.\nACHILLES Thou must be my ambassador to him, Thersites.\nTHERSITES Who, I? why, he'll answer nobody; he professes not\nanswering: speaking is for beggars; he wears his\ntongue in's arms. I will put on his presence: let\nPatroclus make demands to me, you shall see the\npageant of Ajax.\nACHILLES To him, Patroclus; tell him I humbly desire the\nvaliant Ajax to invite the most valorous Hector\nto come unarmed to my tent, and to procure\nsafe-conduct for his person of the magnanimous\nand most illustrious six-or-seven-times-honoured\ncaptain-general of the Grecian army, Agamemnon,\net cetera. Do this.\nPATROCLUS Jove bless great Ajax!\nTHERSITES Hum!\nPATROCLUS I come from the worthy Achilles,--\nTHERSITES Ha!\nPATROCLUS Who most humbly desires you to invite Hector to his tent,--\nTHERSITES Hum!\nPATROCLUS And to procure safe-conduct from Agamemnon.\nTHERSITES Agamemnon!\nPATROCLUS Ay, my lord.\nTHERSITES Ha!\nPATROCLUS What say you to't?\nTHERSITES God b' wi' you, with all my heart.\nPATROCLUS Your answer, sir.\nTHERSITES If to-morrow be a fair day, by eleven o'clock it will\ngo one way or other: howsoever, he shall pay for me\nere he has me.\nPATROCLUS Your answer, sir.\nTHERSITES Fare you well, with all my heart.\nACHILLES Why, but he is not in this tune, is he?\nTHERSITES No, but he's out o' tune thus. What music will be in\nhim when Hector has knocked out his brains, I know\nnot; but, I am sure, none, unless the fiddler Apollo\nget his sinews to make catlings on.\nACHILLES Come, thou shalt bear a letter to him straight.\nTHERSITES Let me bear another to his horse; for that's the more\ncapable creature.\nACHILLES My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr'd;\nAnd I myself see not the bottom of it.\n[Exeunt ACHILLES and PATROCLUS]\nTHERSITES Would the fountain of your mind were clear again,\nthat I might water an ass at it! I had rather be a\ntick in a sheep than such a valiant ignorance.\n[Exit]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT IV\nSCENE I Troy. A street.\n[Enter, from one side, AENEAS, and Servant with a\ntorch; from the other, PARIS, DEIPHOBUS, ANTENOR,\nDIOMEDES, and others, with torches]\nPARIS See, ho! who is that there?\nDEIPHOBUS It is the Lord AEneas.\nAENEAS Is the prince there in person?\nHad I so good occasion to lie long\nAs you, prince Paris, nothing but heavenly business\nShould rob my bed-mate of my company.\nDIOMEDES That's my mind too. Good morrow, Lord AEneas.\nPARIS A valiant Greek, AEneas,--take his hand,--\nWitness the process of your speech, wherein\nYou told how Diomed, a whole week by days,\nDid haunt you in the field.\nAENEAS Health to you, valiant sir,\nDuring all question of the gentle truce;\nBut when I meet you arm'd, as black defiance\nAs heart can think or courage execute.\nDIOMEDES The one and other Diomed embraces.\nOur bloods are now in calm; and, so long, health!\nBut when contention and occasion meet,\nBy Jove, I'll play the hunter for thy life\nWith all my force, pursuit and policy.\nAENEAS And thou shalt hunt a lion, that will fly\nWith his face backward. In humane gentleness,\nWelcome to Troy! now, by Anchises' life,\nWelcome, indeed! By Venus' hand I swear,\nNo man alive can love in such a sort\nThe thing he means to kill more excellently.\nDIOMEDES We sympathize: Jove, let AEneas live,\nIf to my sword his fate be not the glory,\nA thousand complete courses of the sun!\nBut, in mine emulous honour, let him die,\nWith every joint a wound, and that to-morrow!\nAENEAS We know each other well.\nDIOMEDES We do; and long to know each other worse.\nPARIS This is the most despiteful gentle greeting,\nThe noblest hateful love, that e'er I heard of.\nWhat business, lord, so early?\nAENEAS I was sent for to the king; but why, I know not.\nPARIS His purpose meets you: 'twas to bring this Greek\nTo Calchas' house, and there to render him,\nFor the enfreed Antenor, the fair Cressid:\nLet's have your company, or, if you please,\nHaste there before us: I constantly do think--\nOr rather, call my thought a certain knowledge--\nMy brother Troilus lodges there to-night:\nRouse him and give him note of our approach.\nWith the whole quality wherefore: I fear\nWe shall be much unwelcome.\nAENEAS That I assure you:\nTroilus had rather Troy were borne to Greece\nThan Cressid borne from Troy.\nPARIS There is no help;\nThe bitter disposition of the time\nWill have it so. On, lord; we'll follow you.\nAENEAS Good morrow, all.\n[Exit with Servant]\nPARIS And tell me, noble Diomed, faith, tell me true,\nEven in the soul of sound good-fellowship,\nWho, in your thoughts, merits fair Helen best,\nMyself or Menelaus?\nDIOMEDES Both alike:\nHe merits well to have her, that doth seek her,\nNot making any scruple of her soilure,\nWith such a hell of pain and world of charge,\nAnd you as well to keep her, that defend her,\nNot palating the taste of her dishonour,\nWith such a costly loss of wealth and friends:\nHe, like a puling cuckold, would drink up\nThe lees and dregs of a flat tamed piece;\nYou, like a lecher, out of whorish loins\nAre pleased to breed out your inheritors:\nBoth merits poised, each weighs nor less nor more;\nBut he as he, the heavier for a whore.\nPARIS You are too bitter to your countrywoman.\nDIOMEDES She's bitter to her country: hear me, Paris:\nFor every false drop in her bawdy veins\nA Grecian's life hath sunk; for every scruple\nOf her contaminated carrion weight,\nA Trojan hath been slain: since she could speak,\nShe hath not given so many good words breath\nAs for her Greeks and Trojans suffer'd death.\nPARIS Fair Diomed, you do as chapmen do,\nDispraise the thing that you desire to buy:\nBut we in silence hold this virtue well,\nWe'll but commend what we intend to sell.\nHere lies our way.\n[Exeunt]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT IV\nSCENE II The same. Court of Pandarus' house.\n[Enter TROILUS and CRESSIDA]\nTROILUS Dear, trouble not yourself: the morn is cold.\nCRESSIDA Then, sweet my lord, I'll call mine uncle down;\nHe shall unbolt the gates.\nTROILUS Trouble him not;\nTo bed, to bed: sleep kill those pretty eyes,\nAnd give as soft attachment to thy senses\nAs infants' empty of all thought!\nCRESSIDA Good morrow, then.\nTROILUS I prithee now, to bed.\nCRESSIDA Are you a-weary of me?\nTROILUS O Cressida! but that the busy day,\nWaked by the lark, hath roused the ribald crows,\nAnd dreaming night will hide our joys no longer,\nI would not from thee.\nCRESSIDA Night hath been too brief.\nTROILUS Beshrew the witch! with venomous wights she stays\nAs tediously as hell, but flies the grasps of love\nWith wings more momentary-swift than thought.\nYou will catch cold, and curse me.\nCRESSIDA Prithee, tarry:\nYou men will never tarry.\nO foolish Cressid! I might have still held off,\nAnd then you would have tarried. Hark!\nthere's one up.\nPANDARUS [Within] What, 's all the doors open here?\nTROILUS It is your uncle.\nCRESSIDA A pestilence on him! now will he be mocking:\nI shall have such a life!\n[Enter PANDARUS]\nPANDARUS How now, how now! how go maidenheads? Here, you\nmaid! where's my cousin Cressid?\nCRESSIDA Go hang yourself, you naughty mocking uncle!\nYou bring me to do, and then you flout me too.\nPANDARUS To do what? to do what? let her say\nwhat: what have I brought you to do?\nCRESSIDA Come, come, beshrew your heart! you'll ne'er be good,\nNor suffer others.\nPANDARUS Ha! ha! Alas, poor wretch! ah, poor capocchia!\nhast not slept to-night? would he not, a naughty\nman, let it sleep? a bugbear take him!\nCRESSIDA Did not I tell you? Would he were knock'd i' the head!\n[Knocking within]\nWho's that at door? good uncle, go and see.\nMy lord, come you again into my chamber:\nYou smile and mock me, as if I meant naughtily.\nTROILUS Ha, ha!\nCRESSIDA Come, you are deceived, I think of no such thing.\n[Knocking within]\nHow earnestly they knock! Pray you, come in:\nI would not for half Troy have you seen here.\n[Exeunt TROILUS and CRESSIDA]\nPANDARUS Who's there? what's the matter? will you beat\ndown the door? How now! what's the matter?\n[Enter AENEAS]\nAENEAS Good morrow, lord, good morrow.\nPANDARUS Who's there? my Lord AEneas! By my troth,\nI knew you not: what news with you so early?\nAENEAS Is not Prince Troilus here?\nPANDARUS Here! what should he do here?\nAENEAS Come, he is here, my lord; do not deny him:\nIt doth import him much to speak with me.\nPANDARUS Is he here, say you? 'tis more than I know, I'll\nbe sworn: for my own part, I came in late. What\nshould he do here?\nAENEAS Who!--nay, then: come, come, you'll do him wrong\nere you're ware: you'll be so true to him, to be\nfalse to him: do not you know of him, but yet go\nfetch him hither; go.\n[Re-enter TROILUS]\nTROILUS How now! what's the matter?\nAENEAS My lord, I scarce have leisure to salute you,\nMy matter is so rash: there is at hand\nParis your brother, and Deiphobus,\nThe Grecian Diomed, and our Antenor\nDeliver'd to us; and for him forthwith,\nEre the first sacrifice, within this hour,\nWe must give up to Diomedes' hand\nThe Lady Cressida.\nTROILUS Is it so concluded?\nAENEAS By Priam and the general state of Troy:\nThey are at hand and ready to effect it.\nTROILUS How my achievements mock me!\nI will go meet them: and, my Lord AEneas,\nWe met by chance; you did not find me here.\nAENEAS Good, good, my lord; the secrets of nature\nHave not more gift in taciturnity.\n[Exeunt TROILUS and AENEAS]\nPANDARUS Is't possible? no sooner got but lost? The devil\ntake Antenor! the young prince will go mad: a\nplague upon Antenor! I would they had broke 's neck!\n[Re-enter CRESSIDA]\nCRESSIDA How now! what's the matter? who was here?\nPANDARUS Ah, ah!\nCRESSIDA Why sigh you so profoundly? where's my lord? gone!\nTell me, sweet uncle, what's the matter?\nPANDARUS Would I were as deep under the earth as I am above!\nCRESSIDA O the gods! what's the matter?\nPANDARUS Prithee, get thee in: would thou hadst ne'er been\nborn! I knew thou wouldst be his death. O, poor\ngentleman! A plague upon Antenor!\nCRESSIDA Good uncle, I beseech you, on my knees! beseech you,\nwhat's the matter?\nPANDARUS Thou must be gone, wench, thou must be gone; thou\nart changed for Antenor: thou must to thy father,\nand be gone from Troilus: 'twill be his death;\n'twill be his bane; he cannot bear it.\nCRESSIDA O you immortal gods! I will not go.\nPANDARUS Thou must.\nCRESSIDA I will not, uncle: I have forgot my father;\nI know no touch of consanguinity;\nNo kin no love, no blood, no soul so near me\nAs the sweet Troilus. O you gods divine!\nMake Cressid's name the very crown of falsehood,\nIf ever she leave Troilus! Time, force, and death,\nDo to this body what extremes you can;\nBut the strong base and building of my love\nIs as the very centre of the earth,\nDrawing all things to it. I'll go in and weep,--\nPANDARUS Do, do.\nCRESSIDA Tear my bright hair and scratch my praised cheeks,\nCrack my clear voice with sobs and break my heart\nWith sounding Troilus. I will not go from Troy.\n[Exeunt]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT IV\nSCENE III The same. Street before Pandarus' house.\n[Enter PARIS, TROILUS, AENEAS, DEIPHOBUS, ANTENOR,\nand DIOMEDES]\nPARIS It is great morning, and the hour prefix'd\nOf her delivery to this valiant Greek\nComes fast upon. Good my brother Troilus,\nTell you the lady what she is to do,\nAnd haste her to the purpose.\nTROILUS Walk into her house;\nI'll bring her to the Grecian presently:\nAnd to his hand when I deliver her,\nThink it an altar, and thy brother Troilus\nA priest there offering to it his own heart.\n[Exit]\nPARIS I know what 'tis to love;\nAnd would, as I shall pity, I could help!\nPlease you walk in, my lords.\n[Exeunt]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT IV\nSCENE IV The same. Pandarus' house.\n[Enter PANDARUS and CRESSIDA]\nPANDARUS Be moderate, be moderate.\nCRESSIDA Why tell you me of moderation?\nThe grief is fine, full, perfect, that I taste,\nAnd violenteth in a sense as strong\nAs that which causeth it: how can I moderate it?\nIf I could temporize with my affection,\nOr brew it to a weak and colder palate,\nThe like allayment could I give my grief.\nMy love admits no qualifying dross;\nNo more my grief, in such a precious loss.\nPANDARUS Here, here, here he comes.\n[Enter TROILUS]\nAh, sweet ducks!\nCRESSIDA O Troilus! Troilus!\n[Embracing him]\nPANDARUS What a pair of spectacles is here!\nLet me embrace too. 'O heart,' as the goodly saying is,\n'--O heart, heavy heart,\nWhy sigh'st thou without breaking?\nwhere he answers again,\n'Because thou canst not ease thy smart\nBy friendship nor by speaking.'\nThere was never a truer rhyme. Let us cast away\nnothing, for we may live to have need of such a\nverse: we see it, we see it. How now, lambs?\nTROILUS Cressid, I love thee in so strain'd a purity,\nThat the bless'd gods, as angry with my fancy,\nMore bright in zeal than the devotion which\nCold lips blow to their deities, take thee from me.\nCRESSIDA Have the gods envy?\nPANDARUS Ay, ay, ay, ay; 'tis too plain a case.\nCRESSIDA And is it true that I must go from Troy?\nTROILUS A hateful truth.\nCRESSIDA What, and from Troilus too?\nTROILUS From Troy and Troilus.\nCRESSIDA Is it possible?\nTROILUS And suddenly; where injury of chance\nPuts back leave-taking, justles roughly by\nAll time of pause, rudely beguiles our lips\nOf all rejoindure, forcibly prevents\nOur lock'd embrasures, strangles our dear vows\nEven in the birth of our own labouring breath:\nWe two, that with so many thousand sighs\nDid buy each other, must poorly sell ourselves\nWith the rude brevity and discharge of one.\nInjurious time now with a robber's haste\nCrams his rich thievery up, he knows not how:\nAs many farewells as be stars in heaven,\nWith distinct breath and consign'd kisses to them,\nHe fumbles up into a lose adieu,\nAnd scants us with a single famish'd kiss,\nDistasted with the salt of broken tears.\nAENEAS [Within] My lord, is the lady ready?\nTROILUS Hark! you are call'd: some say the Genius so\nCries 'come' to him that instantly must die.\nBid them have patience; she shall come anon.\nPANDARUS Where are my tears? rain, to lay this wind, or\nmy heart will be blown up by the root.\n[Exit]\nCRESSIDA I must then to the Grecians?\nTROILUS No remedy.\nCRESSIDA A woful Cressid 'mongst the merry Greeks!\nWhen shall we see again?\nTROILUS Hear me, my love: be thou but true of heart,--\nCRESSIDA I true! how now! what wicked deem is this?\nTROILUS Nay, we must use expostulation kindly,\nFor it is parting from us:\nI speak not 'be thou true,' as fearing thee,\nFor I will throw my glove to Death himself,\nThat there's no maculation in thy heart:\nBut 'be thou true,' say I, to fashion in\nMy sequent protestation; be thou true,\nAnd I will see thee.\nCRESSIDA O, you shall be exposed, my lord, to dangers\nAs infinite as imminent! but I'll be true.\nTROILUS And I'll grow friend with danger. Wear this sleeve.\nCRESSIDA And you this glove. When shall I see you?\nTROILUS I will corrupt the Grecian sentinels,\nTo give thee nightly visitation.\nBut yet be true.\nCRESSIDA O heavens! 'be true' again!\nTROILUS Hear while I speak it, love:\nThe Grecian youths are full of quality;\nThey're loving, well composed with gifts of nature,\nFlowing and swelling o'er with arts and exercise:\nHow novelty may move, and parts with person,\nAlas, a kind of godly jealousy--\nWhich, I beseech you, call a virtuous sin--\nMakes me afeard.\nCRESSIDA O heavens! you love me not.\nTROILUS Die I a villain, then!\nIn this I do not call your faith in question\nSo mainly as my merit: I cannot sing,\nNor heel the high lavolt, nor sweeten talk,\nNor play at subtle games; fair virtues all,\nTo which the Grecians are most prompt and pregnant:\nBut I can tell that in each grace of these\nThere lurks a still and dumb-discoursive devil\nThat tempts most cunningly: but be not tempted.\nCRESSIDA Do you think I will?\nTROILUS No.\nBut something may be done that we will not:\nAnd sometimes we are devils to ourselves,\nWhen we will tempt the frailty of our powers,\nPresuming on their changeful potency.\nAENEAS [Within] Nay, good my lord,--\nTROILUS Come, kiss; and let us part.\nPARIS [Within] Brother Troilus!\nTROILUS Good brother, come you hither;\nAnd bring AEneas and the Grecian with you.\nCRESSIDA My lord, will you be true?\nTROILUS Who, I? alas, it is my vice, my fault:\nWhiles others fish with craft for great opinion,\nI with great truth catch mere simplicity;\nWhilst some with cunning gild their copper crowns,\nWith truth and plainness I do wear mine bare.\nFear not my truth: the moral of my wit\nIs 'plain and true;' there's all the reach of it.\n[Enter AENEAS, PARIS, ANTENOR, DEIPHOBUS,\nand DIOMEDES]\nWelcome, Sir Diomed! here is the lady\nWhich for Antenor we deliver you:\nAt the port, lord, I'll give her to thy hand,\nAnd by the way possess thee what she is.\nEntreat her fair; and, by my soul, fair Greek,\nIf e'er thou stand at mercy of my sword,\nName Cressida and thy life shall be as safe\nAs Priam is in Ilion.\nDIOMEDES Fair Lady Cressid,\nSo please you, save the thanks this prince expects:\nThe lustre in your eye, heaven in your cheek,\nPleads your fair usage; and to Diomed\nYou shall be mistress, and command him wholly.\nTROILUS Grecian, thou dost not use me courteously,\nTo shame the zeal of my petition to thee\nIn praising her: I tell thee, lord of Greece,\nShe is as far high-soaring o'er thy praises\nAs thou unworthy to be call'd her servant.\nI charge thee use her well, even for my charge;\nFor, by the dreadful Pluto, if thou dost not,\nThough the great bulk Achilles be thy guard,\nI'll cut thy throat.\nDIOMEDES O, be not moved, Prince Troilus:\nLet me be privileged by my place and message,\nTo be a speaker free; when I am hence\nI'll answer to my lust: and know you, lord,\nI'll nothing do on charge: to her own worth\nShe shall be prized; but that you say 'be't so,'\nI'll speak it in my spirit and honour, 'no.'\nTROILUS Come, to the port. I'll tell thee, Diomed,\nThis brave shall oft make thee to hide thy head.\nLady, give me your hand, and, as we walk,\nTo our own selves bend we our needful talk.\n[Exeunt TROILUS, CRESSIDA, and DIOMEDES]\n[Trumpet within]\nPARIS Hark! Hector's trumpet.\nAENEAS How have we spent this morning!\nThe prince must think me tardy and remiss,\nThat sore to ride before him to the field.\nPARIS 'Tis Troilus' fault: come, come, to field with him.\nDEIPHOBUS Let us make ready straight.\nAENEAS Yea, with a bridegroom's fresh alacrity,\nLet us address to tend on Hector's heels:\nThe glory of our Troy doth this day lie\nOn his fair worth and single chivalry.\n[Exeunt]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT IV\nSCENE V The Grecian camp. Lists set out.\n[Enter AJAX, armed; AGAMEMNON, ACHILLES, PATROCLUS,\nMENELAUS, ULYSSES, NESTOR, and others]\nAGAMEMNON Here art thou in appointment fresh and fair,\nAnticipating time with starting courage.\nGive with thy trumpet a loud note to Troy,\nThou dreadful Ajax; that the appalled air\nMay pierce the head of the great combatant\nAnd hale him hither.\nAJAX Thou, trumpet, there's my purse.\nNow crack thy lungs, and split thy brazen pipe:\nBlow, villain, till thy sphered bias cheek\nOutswell the colic of puff'd Aquilon:\nCome, stretch thy chest and let thy eyes spout blood;\nThou blow'st for Hector.\n[Trumpet sounds]\nULYSSES No trumpet answers.\nACHILLES 'Tis but early days.\nAGAMEMNON Is not yond Diomed, with Calchas' daughter?\nULYSSES 'Tis he, I ken the manner of his gait;\nHe rises on the toe: that spirit of his\nIn aspiration lifts him from the earth.\n[Enter DIOMEDES, with CRESSIDA]\nAGAMEMNON Is this the Lady Cressid?\nDIOMEDES Even she.\nAGAMEMNON Most dearly welcome to the Greeks, sweet lady.\nNESTOR Our general doth salute you with a kiss.\nULYSSES Yet is the kindness but particular;\n'Twere better she were kiss'd in general.\nNESTOR And very courtly counsel: I'll begin.\nSo much for Nestor.\nACHILLES I'll take what winter from your lips, fair lady:\nAchilles bids you welcome.\nMENELAUS I had good argument for kissing once.\nPATROCLUS But that's no argument for kissing now;\nFor this popp'd Paris in his hardiment,\nAnd parted thus you and your argument.\nULYSSES O deadly gall, and theme of all our scorns!\nFor which we lose our heads to gild his horns.\nPATROCLUS The first was Menelaus' kiss; this, mine:\nPatroclus kisses you.\nMENELAUS O, this is trim!\nPATROCLUS Paris and I kiss evermore for him.\nMENELAUS I'll have my kiss, sir. Lady, by your leave.\nCRESSIDA In kissing, do you render or receive?\nPATROCLUS Both take and give.\nCRESSIDA I'll make my match to live,\nThe kiss you take is better than you give;\nTherefore no kiss.\nMENELAUS I'll give you boot, I'll give you three for one.\nCRESSIDA You're an odd man; give even or give none.\nMENELAUS An odd man, lady! every man is odd.\nCRESSIDA No, Paris is not; for you know 'tis true,\nThat you are odd, and he is even with you.\nMENELAUS You fillip me o' the head.\nCRESSIDA No, I'll be sworn.\nULYSSES It were no match, your nail against his horn.\nMay I, sweet lady, beg a kiss of you?\nCRESSIDA You may.\nULYSSES I do desire it.\nCRESSIDA Why, beg, then.\nULYSSES Why then for Venus' sake, give me a kiss,\nWhen Helen is a maid again, and his.\nCRESSIDA I am your debtor, claim it when 'tis due.\nULYSSES Never's my day, and then a kiss of you.\nDIOMEDES Lady, a word: I'll bring you to your father.\n[Exit with CRESSIDA]\nNESTOR A woman of quick sense.\nULYSSES Fie, fie upon her!\nThere's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,\nNay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out\nAt every joint and motive of her body.\nO, these encounterers, so glib of tongue,\nThat give accosting welcome ere it comes,\nAnd wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts\nTo every ticklish reader! set them down\nFor sluttish spoils of opportunity\nAnd daughters of the game.\n[Trumpet within]\nALL The Trojans' trumpet.\nAGAMEMNON Yonder comes the troop.\n[Enter HECTOR, armed; AENEAS, TROILUS, and other\nTrojans, with Attendants]\nAENEAS Hail, all you state of Greece! what shall be done\nTo him that victory commands? or do you purpose\nA victor shall be known? will you the knights\nShall to the edge of all extremity\nPursue each other, or shall be divided\nBy any voice or order of the field?\nHector bade ask.\nAGAMEMNON Which way would Hector have it?\nAENEAS He cares not; he'll obey conditions.\nACHILLES 'Tis done like Hector; but securely done,\nA little proudly, and great deal misprizing\nThe knight opposed.\nAENEAS If not Achilles, sir,\nWhat is your name?\nACHILLES If not Achilles, nothing.\nAENEAS Therefore Achilles: but, whate'er, know this:\nIn the extremity of great and little,\nValour and pride excel themselves in Hector;\nThe one almost as infinite as all,\nThe other blank as nothing. Weigh him well,\nAnd that which looks like pride is courtesy.\nThis Ajax is half made of Hector's blood:\nIn love whereof, half Hector stays at home;\nHalf heart, half hand, half Hector comes to seek\nThis blended knight, half Trojan and half Greek.\nACHILLES A maiden battle, then? O, I perceive you.\n[Re-enter DIOMEDES]\nAGAMEMNON Here is Sir Diomed. Go, gentle knight,\nStand by our Ajax: as you and Lord AEneas\nConsent upon the order of their fight,\nSo be it; either to the uttermost,\nOr else a breath: the combatants being kin\nHalf stints their strife before their strokes begin.\n[AJAX and HECTOR enter the lists]\nULYSSES They are opposed already.\nAGAMEMNON What Trojan is that same that looks so heavy?\nULYSSES The youngest son of Priam, a true knight,\nNot yet mature, yet matchless, firm of word,\nSpeaking in deeds and deedless in his tongue;\nNot soon provoked nor being provoked soon calm'd:\nHis heart and hand both open and both free;\nFor what he has he gives, what thinks he shows;\nYet gives he not till judgment guide his bounty,\nNor dignifies an impure thought with breath;\nManly as Hector, but more dangerous;\nFor Hector in his blaze of wrath subscribes\nTo tender objects, but he in heat of action\nIs more vindicative than jealous love:\nThey call him Troilus, and on him erect\nA second hope, as fairly built as Hector.\nThus says AEneas; one that knows the youth\nEven to his inches, and with private soul\nDid in great Ilion thus translate him to me.\n[Alarum. Hector and Ajax fight]\nAGAMEMNON They are in action.\nNESTOR Now, Ajax, hold thine own!\nTROILUS Hector, thou sleep'st;\nAwake thee!\nAGAMEMNON His blows are well disposed: there, Ajax!\nDIOMEDES You must no more.\n[Trumpets cease]\nAENEAS Princes, enough, so please you.\nAJAX I am not warm yet; let us fight again.\nDIOMEDES As Hector pleases.\nHECTOR Why, then will I no more:\nThou art, great lord, my father's sister's son,\nA cousin-german to great Priam's seed;\nThe obligation of our blood forbids\nA gory emulation 'twixt us twain:\nWere thy commixtion Greek and Trojan so\nThat thou couldst say 'This hand is Grecian all,\nAnd this is Trojan; the sinews of this leg\nAll Greek, and this all Troy; my mother's blood\nRuns on the dexter cheek, and this sinister\nBounds in my father's;' by Jove multipotent,\nThou shouldst not bear from me a Greekish member\nWherein my sword had not impressure made\nOf our rank feud: but the just gods gainsay\nThat any drop thou borrow'dst from thy mother,\nMy sacred aunt, should by my mortal sword\nBe drain'd! Let me embrace thee, Ajax:\nBy him that thunders, thou hast lusty arms;\nHector would have them fall upon him thus:\nCousin, all honour to thee!\nAJAX I thank thee, Hector\nThou art too gentle and too free a man:\nI came to kill thee, cousin, and bear hence\nA great addition earned in thy death.\nHECTOR Not Neoptolemus so mirable,\nOn whose bright crest Fame with her loud'st Oyes\nCries 'This is he,' could promise to himself\nA thought of added honour torn from Hector.\nAENEAS There is expectance here from both the sides,\nWhat further you will do.\nHECTOR We'll answer it;\nThe issue is embracement: Ajax, farewell.\nAJAX If I might in entreaties find success--\nAs seld I have the chance--I would desire\nMy famous cousin to our Grecian tents.\nDIOMEDES 'Tis Agamemnon's wish, and great Achilles\nDoth long to see unarm'd the valiant Hector.\nHECTOR AEneas, call my brother Troilus to me,\nAnd signify this loving interview\nTo the expecters of our Trojan part;\nDesire them home. Give me thy hand, my cousin;\nI will go eat with thee and see your knights.\nAJAX Great Agamemnon comes to meet us here.\nHECTOR The worthiest of them tell me name by name;\nBut for Achilles, mine own searching eyes\nShall find him by his large and portly size.\nAGAMEMNON Worthy of arms! as welcome as to one\nThat would be rid of such an enemy;\nBut that's no welcome: understand more clear,\nWhat's past and what's to come is strew'd with husks\nAnd formless ruin of oblivion;\nBut in this extant moment, faith and troth,\nStrain'd purely from all hollow bias-drawing,\nBids thee, with most divine integrity,\nFrom heart of very heart, great Hector, welcome.\nHECTOR I thank thee, most imperious Agamemnon.\nAGAMEMNON [To TROILUS] My well-famed lord of Troy, no\nless to you.\nMENELAUS Let me confirm my princely brother's greeting:\nYou brace of warlike brothers, welcome hither.\nHECTOR Who must we answer?\nAENEAS The noble Menelaus.\nHECTOR O, you, my lord? by Mars his gauntlet, thanks!\nMock not, that I affect the untraded oath;\nYour quondam wife swears still by Venus' glove:\nShe's well, but bade me not commend her to you.\nMENELAUS Name her not now, sir; she's a deadly theme.\nHECTOR O, pardon; I offend.\nNESTOR I have, thou gallant Trojan, seen thee oft\nLabouring for destiny make cruel way\nThrough ranks of Greekish youth, and I have seen thee,\nAs hot as Perseus, spur thy Phrygian steed,\nDespising many forfeits and subduements,\nWhen thou hast hung thy advanced sword i' the air,\nNot letting it decline on the declined,\nThat I have said to some my standers by\n'Lo, Jupiter is yonder, dealing life!'\nAnd I have seen thee pause and take thy breath,\nWhen that a ring of Greeks have hemm'd thee in,\nLike an Olympian wrestling: this have I seen;\nBut this thy countenance, still lock'd in steel,\nI never saw till now. I knew thy grandsire,\nAnd once fought with him: he was a soldier good;\nBut, by great Mars, the captain of us all,\nNever saw like thee. Let an old man embrace thee;\nAnd, worthy warrior, welcome to our tents.\nAENEAS 'Tis the old Nestor.\nHECTOR Let me embrace thee, good old chronicle,\nThat hast so long walk'd hand in hand with time:\nMost reverend Nestor, I am glad to clasp thee.\nNESTOR I would my arms could match thee in contention,\nAs they contend with thee in courtesy.\nHECTOR I would they could.\nNESTOR Ha!\nBy this white beard, I'ld fight with thee to-morrow.\nWell, welcome, welcome! I have seen the time.\nULYSSES I wonder now how yonder city stands\nWhen we have here her base and pillar by us.\nHECTOR I know your favour, Lord Ulysses, well.\nAh, sir, there's many a Greek and Trojan dead,\nSince first I saw yourself and Diomed\nIn Ilion, on your Greekish embassy.\nULYSSES Sir, I foretold you then what would ensue:\nMy prophecy is but half his journey yet;\nFor yonder walls, that pertly front your town,\nYond towers, whose wanton tops do buss the clouds,\nMust kiss their own feet.\nHECTOR I must not believe you:\nThere they stand yet, and modestly I think,\nThe fall of every Phrygian stone will cost\nA drop of Grecian blood: the end crowns all,\nAnd that old common arbitrator, Time,\nWill one day end it.\nULYSSES So to him we leave it.\nMost gentle and most valiant Hector, welcome:\nAfter the general, I beseech you next\nTo feast with me and see me at my tent.\nACHILLES I shall forestall thee, Lord Ulysses, thou!\nNow, Hector, I have fed mine eyes on thee;\nI have with exact view perused thee, Hector,\nAnd quoted joint by joint.\nHECTOR Is this Achilles?\nACHILLES I am Achilles.\nHECTOR Stand fair, I pray thee: let me look on thee.\nACHILLES Behold thy fill.\nHECTOR Nay, I have done already.\nACHILLES Thou art too brief: I will the second time,\nAs I would buy thee, view thee limb by limb.\nHECTOR O, like a book of sport thou'lt read me o'er;\nBut there's more in me than thou understand'st.\nWhy dost thou so oppress me with thine eye?\nACHILLES Tell me, you heavens, in which part of his body\nShall I destroy him? whether there, or there, or there?\nThat I may give the local wound a name\nAnd make distinct the very breach whereout\nHector's great spirit flew: answer me, heavens!\nHECTOR It would discredit the blest gods, proud man,\nTo answer such a question: stand again:\nThink'st thou to catch my life so pleasantly\nAs to prenominate in nice conjecture\nWhere thou wilt hit me dead?\nACHILLES I tell thee, yea.\nHECTOR Wert thou an oracle to tell me so,\nI'd not believe thee. Henceforth guard thee well;\nFor I'll not kill thee there, nor there, nor there;\nBut, by the forge that stithied Mars his helm,\nI'll kill thee every where, yea, o'er and o'er.\nYou wisest Grecians, pardon me this brag;\nHis insolence draws folly from my lips;\nBut I'll endeavour deeds to match these words,\nOr may I never--\nAJAX Do not chafe thee, cousin:\nAnd you, Achilles, let these threats alone,\nTill accident or purpose bring you to't:\nYou may have every day enough of Hector\nIf you have stomach; the general state, I fear,\nCan scarce entreat you to be odd with him.\nHECTOR I pray you, let us see you in the field:\nWe have had pelting wars, since you refused\nThe Grecians' cause.\nACHILLES Dost thou entreat me, Hector?\nTo-morrow do I meet thee, fell as death;\nTo-night all friends.\nHECTOR Thy hand upon that match.\nAGAMEMNON First, all you peers of Greece, go to my tent;\nThere in the full convive we: afterwards,\nAs Hector's leisure and your bounties shall\nConcur together, severally entreat him.\nBeat loud the tabourines, let the trumpets blow,\nThat this great soldier may his welcome know.\n[Exeunt all except TROILUS and ULYSSES]\nTROILUS My Lord Ulysses, tell me, I beseech you,\nIn what place of the field doth Calchas keep?\nULYSSES At Menelaus' tent, most princely Troilus:\nThere Diomed doth feast with him to-night;\nWho neither looks upon the heaven nor earth,\nBut gives all gaze and bent of amorous view\nOn the fair Cressid.\nTROILUS Shall sweet lord, be bound to you so much,\nAfter we part from Agamemnon's tent,\nTo bring me thither?\nULYSSES You shall command me, sir.\nAs gentle tell me, of what honour was\nThis Cressida in Troy? Had she no lover there\nThat wails her absence?\nTROILUS O, sir, to such as boasting show their scars\nA mock is due. Will you walk on, my lord?\nShe was beloved, she loved; she is, and doth:\nBut still sweet love is food for fortune's tooth.\n[Exeunt]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT V\nSCENE I The Grecian camp. Before Achilles' tent.\n[Enter ACHILLES and PATROCLUS]\nACHILLES I'll heat his blood with Greekish wine to-night,\nWhich with my scimitar I'll cool to-morrow.\nPatroclus, let us feast him to the height.\nPATROCLUS Here comes Thersites.\n[Enter THERSITES]\nACHILLES How now, thou core of envy!\nThou crusty batch of nature, what's the news?\nTHERSITES Why, thou picture of what thou seemest, and idol\nof idiot worshippers, here's a letter for thee.\nACHILLES From whence, fragment?\nTHERSITES Why, thou full dish of fool, from Troy.\nPATROCLUS Who keeps the tent now?\nTHERSITES The surgeon's box, or the patient's wound.\nPATROCLUS Well said, adversity! and what need these tricks?\nTHERSITES Prithee, be silent, boy; I profit not by thy talk:\nthou art thought to be Achilles' male varlet.\nPATROCLUS Male varlet, you rogue! what's that?\nTHERSITES Why, his masculine whore. Now, the rotten diseases\nof the south, the guts-griping, ruptures, catarrhs,\nloads o' gravel i' the back, lethargies, cold\npalsies, raw eyes, dirt-rotten livers, wheezing\nlungs, bladders full of imposthume, sciaticas,\nlimekilns i' the palm, incurable bone-ache, and the\nrivelled fee-simple of the tetter, take and take\nagain such preposterous discoveries!\nPATROCLUS Why thou damnable box of envy, thou, what meanest\nthou to curse thus?\nTHERSITES Do I curse thee?\nPATROCLUS Why no, you ruinous butt, you whoreson\nindistinguishable cur, no.\nTHERSITES No! why art thou then exasperate, thou idle\nimmaterial skein of sleave-silk, thou green sarcenet\nflap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal's\npurse, thou? Ah, how the poor world is pestered\nwith such waterflies, diminutives of nature!\nPATROCLUS Out, gall!\nTHERSITES Finch-egg!\nACHILLES My sweet Patroclus, I am thwarted quite\nFrom my great purpose in to-morrow's battle.\nHere is a letter from Queen Hecuba,\nA token from her daughter, my fair love,\nBoth taxing me and gaging me to keep\nAn oath that I have sworn. I will not break it:\nFall Greeks; fail fame; honour or go or stay;\nMy major vow lies here, this I'll obey.\nCome, come, Thersites, help to trim my tent:\nThis night in banqueting must all be spent.\nAway, Patroclus!\n[Exeunt ACHILLES and PATROCLUS]\nTHERSITES With too much blood and too little brain, these two\nmay run mad; but, if with too much brain and too\nlittle blood they do, I'll be a curer of madmen.\nHere's Agamemnon, an honest fellow enough and one\nthat loves quails; but he has not so much brain as\nearwax: and the goodly transformation of Jupiter\nthere, his brother, the bull,--the primitive statue,\nand oblique memorial of cuckolds; a thrifty\nshoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his brother's\nleg,--to what form but that he is, should wit larded\nwith malice and malice forced with wit turn him to?\nTo an ass, were nothing; he is both ass and ox: to\nan ox, were nothing; he is both ox and ass. To be a\ndog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a toad, a lizard, an\nowl, a puttock, or a herring without a roe, I would\nnot care; but to be Menelaus, I would conspire\nagainst destiny. Ask me not, what I would be, if I\nwere not Thersites; for I care not to be the louse\nof a lazar, so I were not Menelaus! Hey-day!\nspirits and fires!\n[Enter HECTOR, TROILUS, AJAX, AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES,\nNESTOR, MENELAUS, and DIOMEDES, with lights]\nAGAMEMNON We go wrong, we go wrong.\nAJAX No, yonder 'tis;\nThere, where we see the lights.\nHECTOR I trouble you.\nAJAX No, not a whit.\nULYSSES Here comes himself to guide you.\n[Re-enter ACHILLES]\nACHILLES Welcome, brave Hector; welcome, princes all.\nAGAMEMNON So now, fair prince of Troy, I bid good night.\nAjax commands the guard to tend on you.\nHECTOR Thanks and good night to the Greeks' general.\nMENELAUS Good night, my lord.\nHECTOR Good night, sweet lord Menelaus.\nTHERSITES Sweet draught: 'sweet' quoth 'a! sweet sink,\nsweet sewer.\nACHILLES Good night and welcome, both at once, to those\nThat go or tarry.\nAGAMEMNON Good night.\n[Exeunt AGAMEMNON and MENELAUS]\nACHILLES Old Nestor tarries; and you too, Diomed,\nKeep Hector company an hour or two.\nDIOMEDES I cannot, lord; I have important business,\nThe tide whereof is now. Good night, great Hector.\nHECTOR Give me your hand.\nULYSSES [Aside to TROILUS] Follow his torch; he goes to\nCalchas' tent:\nI'll keep you company.\nTROILUS Sweet sir, you honour me.\nHECTOR And so, good night.\n[Exit DIOMEDES; ULYSSES and TROILUS following]\nACHILLES Come, come, enter my tent.\n[Exeunt ACHILLES, HECTOR, AJAX, and NESTOR]\nTHERSITES That same Diomed's a false-hearted rogue, a most\nunjust knave; I will no more trust him when he leers\nthan I will a serpent when he hisses: he will spend\nhis mouth, and promise, like Brabbler the hound:\nbut when he performs, astronomers foretell it; it\nis prodigious, there will come some change; the sun\nborrows of the moon, when Diomed keeps his\nword. I will rather leave to see Hector, than\nnot to dog him: they say he keeps a Trojan\ndrab, and uses the traitor Calchas' tent: I'll\nafter. Nothing but lechery! all incontinent varlets!\n[Exit]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT V\nSCENE II The same. Before Calchas' tent.\n[Enter DIOMEDES]\nDIOMEDES What, are you up here, ho? speak.\nCALCHAS [Within] Who calls?\nDIOMEDES Calchas, I think. Where's your daughter?\nCALCHAS [Within] She comes to you.\n[Enter TROILUS and ULYSSES, at a distance;\nafter them, THERSITES]\nULYSSES Stand where the torch may not discover us.\n[Enter CRESSIDA]\nTROILUS Cressid comes forth to him.\nDIOMEDES How now, my charge!\nCRESSIDA Now, my sweet guardian! Hark, a word with you.\n[Whispers]\nTROILUS Yea, so familiar!\nULYSSES She will sing any man at first sight.\nTHERSITES And any man may sing her, if he can take her cliff;\nshe's noted.\nDIOMEDES Will you remember?\nCRESSIDA Remember! yes.\nDIOMEDES Nay, but do, then;\nAnd let your mind be coupled with your words.\nTROILUS What should she remember?\nULYSSES List.\nCRESSIDA Sweet honey Greek, tempt me no more to folly.\nTHERSITES Roguery!\nDIOMEDES Nay, then,--\nCRESSIDA I'll tell you what,--\nDIOMEDES Foh, foh! come, tell a pin: you are forsworn.\nCRESSIDA In faith, I cannot: what would you have me do?\nTHERSITES A juggling trick,--to be secretly open.\nDIOMEDES What did you swear you would bestow on me?\nCRESSIDA I prithee, do not hold me to mine oath;\nBid me do any thing but that, sweet Greek.\nDIOMEDES Good night.\nTROILUS Hold, patience!\nULYSSES How now, Trojan!\nCRESSIDA Diomed,--\nDIOMEDES No, no, good night: I'll be your fool no more.\nTROILUS Thy better must.\nCRESSIDA Hark, one word in your ear.\nTROILUS O plague and madness!\nULYSSES You are moved, prince; let us depart, I pray you,\nLest your displeasure should enlarge itself\nTo wrathful terms: this place is dangerous;\nThe time right deadly; I beseech you, go.\nTROILUS Behold, I pray you!\nULYSSES Nay, good my lord, go off:\nYou flow to great distraction; come, my lord.\nTROILUS I pray thee, stay.\nULYSSES You have not patience; come.\nTROILUS I pray you, stay; by hell and all hell's torments\nI will not speak a word!\nDIOMEDES And so, good night.\nCRESSIDA Nay, but you part in anger.\nTROILUS Doth that grieve thee?\nO wither'd truth!\nULYSSES Why, how now, lord!\nTROILUS By Jove,\nI will be patient.\nCRESSIDA Guardian!--why, Greek!\nDIOMEDES Foh, foh! adieu; you palter.\nCRESSIDA In faith, I do not: come hither once again.\nULYSSES You shake, my lord, at something: will you go?\nYou will break out.\nTROILUS She strokes his cheek!\nULYSSES Come, come.\nTROILUS Nay, stay; by Jove, I will not speak a word:\nThere is between my will and all offences\nA guard of patience: stay a little while.\nTHERSITES How the devil Luxury, with his fat rump and\npotato-finger, tickles these together! Fry, lechery, fry!\nDIOMEDES But will you, then?\nCRESSIDA In faith, I will, la; never trust me else.\nDIOMEDES Give me some token for the surety of it.\nCRESSIDA I'll fetch you one.\n[Exit]\nULYSSES You have sworn patience.\nTROILUS Fear me not, sweet lord;\nI will not be myself, nor have cognition\nOf what I feel: I am all patience.\n[Re-enter CRESSIDA]\nTHERSITES Now the pledge; now, now, now!\nCRESSIDA Here, Diomed, keep this sleeve.\nTROILUS O beauty! where is thy faith?\nULYSSES My lord,--\nTROILUS I will be patient; outwardly I will.\nCRESSIDA You look upon that sleeve; behold it well.\nHe loved me--O false wench!--Give't me again.\nDIOMEDES Whose was't?\nCRESSIDA It is no matter, now I have't again.\nI will not meet with you to-morrow night:\nI prithee, Diomed, visit me no more.\nTHERSITES Now she sharpens: well said, whetstone!\nDIOMEDES I shall have it.\nCRESSIDA What, this?\nDIOMEDES Ay, that.\nCRESSIDA O, all you gods! O pretty, pretty pledge!\nThy master now lies thinking in his bed\nOf thee and me, and sighs, and takes my glove,\nAnd gives memorial dainty kisses to it,\nAs I kiss thee. Nay, do not snatch it from me;\nHe that takes that doth take my heart withal.\nDIOMEDES I had your heart before, this follows it.\nTROILUS I did swear patience.\nCRESSIDA You shall not have it, Diomed; faith, you shall not;\nI'll give you something else.\nDIOMEDES I will have this: whose was it?\nCRESSIDA It is no matter.\nDIOMEDES Come, tell me whose it was.\nCRESSIDA 'Twas one's that loved me better than you will.\nBut, now you have it, take it.\nDIOMEDES Whose was it?\nCRESSIDA By all Diana's waiting-women yond,\nAnd by herself, I will not tell you whose.\nDIOMEDES To-morrow will I wear it on my helm,\nAnd grieve his spirit that dares not challenge it.\nTROILUS Wert thou the devil, and worest it on thy horn,\nIt should be challenged.\nCRESSIDA Well, well, 'tis done, 'tis past: and yet it is not;\nI will not keep my word.\nDIOMEDES Why, then, farewell;\nThou never shalt mock Diomed again.\nCRESSIDA You shall not go: one cannot speak a word,\nBut it straight starts you.\nDIOMEDES I do not like this fooling.\nTHERSITES Nor I, by Pluto: but that that likes not you pleases me best.\nDIOMEDES What, shall I come? the hour?\nCRESSIDA Ay, come:--O Jove!--do come:--I shall be plagued.\nDIOMEDES Farewell till then.\nCRESSIDA Good night: I prithee, come.\n[Exit DIOMEDES]\nTroilus, farewell! one eye yet looks on thee\nBut with my heart the other eye doth see.\nAh, poor our sex! this fault in us I find,\nThe error of our eye directs our mind:\nWhat error leads must err; O, then conclude\nMinds sway'd by eyes are full of turpitude.\n[Exit]\nTHERSITES A proof of strength she could not publish more,\nUnless she said ' My mind is now turn'd whore.'\nULYSSES All's done, my lord.\nTROILUS It is.\nULYSSES Why stay we, then?\nTROILUS To make a recordation to my soul\nOf every syllable that here was spoke.\nBut if I tell how these two did co-act,\nShall I not lie in publishing a truth?\nSith yet there is a credence in my heart,\nAn esperance so obstinately strong,\nThat doth invert the attest of eyes and ears,\nAs if those organs had deceptious functions,\nCreated only to calumniate.\nWas Cressid here?\nULYSSES I cannot conjure, Trojan.\nTROILUS She was not, sure.\nULYSSES Most sure she was.\nTROILUS Why, my negation hath no taste of madness.\nULYSSES Nor mine, my lord: Cressid was here but now.\nTROILUS Let it not be believed for womanhood!\nThink, we had mothers; do not give advantage\nTo stubborn critics, apt, without a theme,\nFor depravation, to square the general sex\nBy Cressid's rule: rather think this not Cressid.\nULYSSES What hath she done, prince, that can soil our mothers?\nTROILUS Nothing at all, unless that this were she.\nTHERSITES Will he swagger himself out on's own eyes?\nTROILUS This she? no, this is Diomed's Cressida:\nIf beauty have a soul, this is not she;\nIf souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimonies,\nIf sanctimony be the gods' delight,\nIf there be rule in unity itself,\nThis is not she. O madness of discourse,\nThat cause sets up with and against itself!\nBi-fold authority! where reason can revolt\nWithout perdition, and loss assume all reason\nWithout revolt: this is, and is not, Cressid.\nWithin my soul there doth conduce a fight\nOf this strange nature that a thing inseparate\nDivides more wider than the sky and earth,\nAnd yet the spacious breadth of this division\nAdmits no orifex for a point as subtle\nAs Ariachne's broken woof to enter.\nInstance, O instance! strong as Pluto's gates;\nCressid is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven:\nInstance, O instance! strong as heaven itself;\nThe bonds of heaven are slipp'd, dissolved, and loosed;\nAnd with another knot, five-finger-tied,\nThe fractions of her faith, orts of her love,\nThe fragments, scraps, the bits and greasy relics\nOf her o'er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed.\nULYSSES May worthy Troilus be half attach'd\nWith that which here his passion doth express?\nTROILUS Ay, Greek; and that shall be divulged well\nIn characters as red as Mars his heart\nInflamed with Venus: never did young man fancy\nWith so eternal and so fix'd a soul.\nHark, Greek: as much as I do Cressid love,\nSo much by weight hate I her Diomed:\nThat sleeve is mine that he'll bear on his helm;\nWere it a casque composed by Vulcan's skill,\nMy sword should bite it: not the dreadful spout\nWhich shipmen do the hurricano call,\nConstringed in mass by the almighty sun,\nShall dizzy with more clamour Neptune's ear\nIn his descent than shall my prompted sword\nFalling on Diomed.\nTHERSITES He'll tickle it for his concupy.\nTROILUS O Cressid! O false Cressid! false, false, false!\nLet all untruths stand by thy stained name,\nAnd they'll seem glorious.\nULYSSES O, contain yourself\nYour passion draws ears hither.\n[Enter AENEAS]\nAENEAS I have been seeking you this hour, my lord:\nHector, by this, is arming him in Troy;\nAjax, your guard, stays to conduct you home.\nTROILUS Have with you, prince. My courteous lord, adieu.\nFarewell, revolted fair! and, Diomed,\nStand fast, and wear a castle on thy head!\nULYSSES I'll bring you to the gates.\nTROILUS Accept distracted thanks.\n[Exeunt TROILUS, AENEAS, and ULYSSES]\nTHERSITES Would I could meet that rogue Diomed! I would\ncroak like a raven; I would bode, I would bode.\nPatroclus will give me any thing for the\nintelligence of this whore: the parrot will not\ndo more for an almond than he for a commodious drab.\nLechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery; nothing\nelse holds fashion: a burning devil take them!\n[Exit]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT V\nSCENE III Troy. Before Priam's palace.\n[Enter HECTOR and ANDROMACHE]\nANDROMACHE When was my lord so much ungently temper'd,\nTo stop his ears against admonishment?\nUnarm, unarm, and do not fight to-day.\nHECTOR You train me to offend you; get you in:\nBy all the everlasting gods, I'll go!\nANDROMACHE My dreams will, sure, prove ominous to the day.\nHECTOR No more, I say.\n[Enter CASSANDRA]\nCASSANDRA Where is my brother Hector?\nANDROMACHE Here, sister; arm'd, and bloody in intent.\nConsort with me in loud and dear petition,\nPursue we him on knees; for I have dream'd\nOf bloody turbulence, and this whole night\nHath nothing been but shapes and forms of slaughter.\nCASSANDRA O, 'tis true.\nHECTOR Ho! bid my trumpet sound!\nCASSANDRA No notes of sally, for the heavens, sweet brother.\nHECTOR Be gone, I say: the gods have heard me swear.\nCASSANDRA The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows:\nThey are polluted offerings, more abhorr'd\nThan spotted livers in the sacrifice.\nANDROMACHE O, be persuaded! do not count it holy\nTo hurt by being just: it is as lawful,\nFor we would give much, to use violent thefts,\nAnd rob in the behalf of charity.\nCASSANDRA It is the purpose that makes strong the vow;\nBut vows to every purpose must not hold:\nUnarm, sweet Hector.\nHECTOR Hold you still, I say;\nMine honour keeps the weather of my fate:\nLie every man holds dear; but the brave man\nHolds honour far more precious-dear than life.\n[Enter TROILUS]\nHow now, young man! mean'st thou to fight to-day?\nANDROMACHE Cassandra, call my father to persuade.\n[Exit CASSANDRA]\nHECTOR No, faith, young Troilus; doff thy harness, youth;\nI am to-day i' the vein of chivalry:\nLet grow thy sinews till their knots be strong,\nAnd tempt not yet the brushes of the war.\nUnarm thee, go, and doubt thou not, brave boy,\nI'll stand to-day for thee and me and Troy.\nTROILUS Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you,\nWhich better fits a lion than a man.\nHECTOR What vice is that, good Troilus? chide me for it.\nTROILUS When many times the captive Grecian falls,\nEven in the fan and wind of your fair sword,\nYou bid them rise, and live.\nHECTOR O,'tis fair play.\nTROILUS Fool's play, by heaven, Hector.\nHECTOR How now! how now!\nTROILUS For the love of all the gods,\nLet's leave the hermit pity with our mothers,\nAnd when we have our armours buckled on,\nThe venom'd vengeance ride upon our swords,\nSpur them to ruthful work, rein them from ruth.\nHECTOR Fie, savage, fie!\nTROILUS Hector, then 'tis wars.\nHECTOR Troilus, I would not have you fight to-day.\nTROILUS Who should withhold me?\nNot fate, obedience, nor the hand of Mars\nBeckoning with fiery truncheon my retire;\nNot Priamus and Hecuba on knees,\nTheir eyes o'ergalled with recourse of tears;\nNot you, my brother, with your true sword drawn,\nOpposed to hinder me, should stop my way,\nBut by my ruin.\n[Re-enter CASSANDRA, with PRIAM]\nCASSANDRA Lay hold upon him, Priam, hold him fast:\nHe is thy crutch; now if thou lose thy stay,\nThou on him leaning, and all Troy on thee,\nFall all together.\nPRIAM Come, Hector, come, go back:\nThy wife hath dream'd; thy mother hath had visions;\nCassandra doth foresee; and I myself\nAm like a prophet suddenly enrapt\nTo tell thee that this day is ominous:\nTherefore, come back.\nHECTOR AEneas is a-field;\nAnd I do stand engaged to many Greeks,\nEven in the faith of valour, to appear\nThis morning to them.\nPRIAM Ay, but thou shalt not go.\nHECTOR I must not break my faith.\nYou know me dutiful; therefore, dear sir,\nLet me not shame respect; but give me leave\nTo take that course by your consent and voice,\nWhich you do here forbid me, royal Priam.\nCASSANDRA O Priam, yield not to him!\nANDROMACHE Do not, dear father.\nHECTOR Andromache, I am offended with you:\nUpon the love you bear me, get you in.\n[Exit ANDROMACHE]\nTROILUS This foolish, dreaming, superstitious girl\nMakes all these bodements.\nCASSANDRA O, farewell, dear Hector!\nLook, how thou diest! look, how thy eye turns pale!\nLook, how thy wounds do bleed at many vents!\nHark, how Troy roars! how Hecuba cries out!\nHow poor Andromache shrills her dolours forth!\nBehold, distraction, frenzy and amazement,\nLike witless antics, one another meet,\nAnd all cry, Hector! Hector's dead! O Hector!\nTROILUS Away! away!\nCASSANDRA Farewell: yet, soft! Hector! take my leave:\nThou dost thyself and all our Troy deceive.\n[Exit]\nHECTOR You are amazed, my liege, at her exclaim:\nGo in and cheer the town: we'll forth and fight,\nDo deeds worth praise and tell you them at night.\nPRIAM Farewell: the gods with safety stand about thee!\n[Exeunt severally PRIAM and HECTOR. Alarums]\nTROILUS They are at it, hark! Proud Diomed, believe,\nI come to lose my arm, or win my sleeve.\n[Enter PANDARUS]\nPANDARUS Do you hear, my lord? do you hear?\nTROILUS What now?\nPANDARUS Here's a letter come from yond poor girl.\nTROILUS Let me read.\nPANDARUS A whoreson tisick, a whoreson rascally tisick so\ntroubles me, and the foolish fortune of this girl;\nand what one thing, what another, that I shall\nleave you one o' these days: and I have a rheum\nin mine eyes too, and such an ache in my bones\nthat, unless a man were cursed, I cannot tell what\nto think on't. What says she there?\nTROILUS Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart:\nThe effect doth operate another way.\n[Tearing the letter]\nGo, wind, to wind, there turn and change together.\nMy love with words and errors still she feeds;\nBut edifies another with her deeds.\n[Exeunt severally]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT V\nSCENE IV Plains between Troy and the Grecian camp.\n[Alarums: excursions. Enter THERSITES]\nTHERSITES Now they are clapper-clawing one another; I'll go\nlook on. That dissembling abominable varlets Diomed,\nhas got that same scurvy doting foolish young knave's\nsleeve of Troy there in his helm: I would fain see\nthem meet; that that same young Trojan ass, that\nloves the whore there, might send that Greekish\nwhore-masterly villain, with the sleeve, back to the\ndissembling luxurious drab, of a sleeveless errand.\nO' the t'other side, the policy of those crafty\nswearing rascals, that stale old mouse-eaten dry\ncheese, Nestor, and that same dog-fox, Ulysses, is\nnot proved worthy a blackberry: they set me up, in\npolicy, that mongrel cur, Ajax, against that dog of\nas bad a kind, Achilles: and now is the cur Ajax\nprouder than the cur Achilles, and will not arm\nto-day; whereupon the Grecians begin to proclaim\nbarbarism, and policy grows into an ill opinion.\nSoft! here comes sleeve, and t'other.\n[Enter DIOMEDES, TROILUS following]\nTROILUS Fly not; for shouldst thou take the river Styx,\nI would swim after.\nDIOMEDES Thou dost miscall retire:\nI do not fly, but advantageous care\nWithdrew me from the odds of multitude:\nHave at thee!\nTHERSITES Hold thy whore, Grecian!--now for thy whore,\nTrojan!--now the sleeve, now the sleeve!\n[Exeunt TROILUS and DIOMEDES, fighting]\n[Enter HECTOR]\nHECTOR What art thou, Greek? art thou for Hector's match?\nArt thou of blood and honour?\nTHERSITES No, no, I am a rascal; a scurvy railing knave:\na very filthy rogue.\nHECTOR I do believe thee: live.\n[Exit]\nTHERSITES God-a-mercy, that thou wilt believe me; but a\nplague break thy neck for frightening me! What's\nbecome of the wenching rogues? I think they have\nswallowed one another: I would laugh at that\nmiracle: yet, in a sort, lechery eats itself.\nI'll seek them.\n[Exit]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT V\nSCENE V Another part of the plains.\n[Enter DIOMEDES and a Servant]\nDIOMEDES Go, go, my servant, take thou Troilus' horse;\nPresent the fair steed to my lady Cressid:\nFellow, commend my service to her beauty;\nTell her I have chastised the amorous Trojan,\nAnd am her knight by proof.\nServant I go, my lord.\n[Exit]\n[Enter AGAMEMNON]\nAGAMEMNON Renew, renew! The fierce Polydamas\nHath beat down Menon: bastard Margarelon\nHath Doreus prisoner,\nAnd stands colossus-wise, waving his beam,\nUpon the pashed corses of the kings\nEpistrophus and Cedius: Polyxenes is slain,\nAmphimachus and Thoas deadly hurt,\nPatroclus ta'en or slain, and Palamedes\nSore hurt and bruised: the dreadful Sagittary\nAppals our numbers: haste we, Diomed,\nTo reinforcement, or we perish all.\n[Enter NESTOR]\nNESTOR Go, bear Patroclus' body to Achilles;\nAnd bid the snail-paced Ajax arm for shame.\nThere is a thousand Hectors in the field:\nNow here he fights on Galathe his horse,\nAnd there lacks work; anon he's there afoot,\nAnd there they fly or die, like scaled sculls\nBefore the belching whale; then is he yonder,\nAnd there the strawy Greeks, ripe for his edge,\nFall down before him, like the mower's swath:\nHere, there, and every where, he leaves and takes,\nDexterity so obeying appetite\nThat what he will he does, and does so much\nThat proof is call'd impossibility.\n[Enter ULYSSES]\nULYSSES O, courage, courage, princes! great Achilles\nIs arming, weeping, cursing, vowing vengeance:\nPatroclus' wounds have roused his drowsy blood,\nTogether with his mangled Myrmidons,\nThat noseless, handless, hack'd and chipp'd, come to him,\nCrying on Hector. Ajax hath lost a friend\nAnd foams at mouth, and he is arm'd and at it,\nRoaring for Troilus, who hath done to-day\nMad and fantastic execution,\nEngaging and redeeming of himself\nWith such a careless force and forceless care\nAs if that luck, in very spite of cunning,\nBade him win all.\n[Enter AJAX]\nAJAX Troilus! thou coward Troilus!\n[Exit]\nDIOMEDES Ay, there, there.\nNESTOR So, so, we draw together.\n[Enter ACHILLES]\nACHILLES Where is this Hector?\nCome, come, thou boy-queller, show thy face;\nKnow what it is to meet Achilles angry:\nHector? where's Hector? I will none but Hector.\n[Exeunt]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT V\nSCENE VI Another part of the plains.\n[Enter AJAX]\nAJAX Troilus, thou coward Troilus, show thy head!\n[Enter DIOMEDES]\nDIOMEDES Troilus, I say! where's Troilus?\nAJAX What wouldst thou?\nDIOMEDES I would correct him.\nAJAX Were I the general, thou shouldst have my office\nEre that correction. Troilus, I say! what, Troilus!\n[Enter TROILUS]\nTROILUS O traitor Diomed! turn thy false face, thou traitor,\nAnd pay thy life thou owest me for my horse!\nDIOMEDES Ha, art thou there?\nAJAX I'll fight with him alone: stand, Diomed.\nDIOMEDES He is my prize; I will not look upon.\nTROILUS Come, both you cogging Greeks; have at you both!\n[Exeunt, fighting]\n[Enter HECTOR]\nHECTOR Yea, Troilus? O, well fought, my youngest brother!\n[Enter ACHILLES]\nACHILLES Now do I see thee, ha! have at thee, Hector!\nHECTOR Pause, if thou wilt.\nACHILLES I do disdain thy courtesy, proud Trojan:\nBe happy that my arms are out of use:\nMy rest and negligence befriends thee now,\nBut thou anon shalt hear of me again;\nTill when, go seek thy fortune.\n[Exit]\nHECTOR Fare thee well:\nI would have been much more a fresher man,\nHad I expected thee. How now, my brother!\n[Re-enter TROILUS]\nTROILUS Ajax hath ta'en AEneas: shall it be?\nNo, by the flame of yonder glorious heaven,\nHe shall not carry him: I'll be ta'en too,\nOr bring him off: fate, hear me what I say!\nI reck not though I end my life to-day.\n[Exit]\n[Enter one in sumptuous armour]\nHECTOR Stand, stand, thou Greek; thou art a goodly mark:\nNo? wilt thou not? I like thy armour well;\nI'll frush it and unlock the rivets all,\nBut I'll be master of it: wilt thou not,\nbeast, abide?\nWhy, then fly on, I'll hunt thee for thy hide.\n[Exeunt]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT V\nSCENE VII Another part of the plains.\n[Enter ACHILLES, with Myrmidons]\nACHILLES Come here about me, you my Myrmidons;\nMark what I say. Attend me where I wheel:\nStrike not a stroke, but keep yourselves in breath:\nAnd when I have the bloody Hector found,\nEmpale him with your weapons round about;\nIn fellest manner execute your aims.\nFollow me, sirs, and my proceedings eye:\nIt is decreed Hector the great must die.\n[Exeunt]\n[Enter MENELAUS and PARIS, fighting:\nthen THERSITES]\nTHERSITES The cuckold and the cuckold-maker are at it. Now,\nbull! now, dog! 'Loo, Paris, 'loo! now my double-\nhenned sparrow! 'loo, Paris, 'loo! The bull has the\ngame: ware horns, ho!\n[Exeunt PARIS and MENELAUS]\n[Enter MARGARELON]\nMARGARELON Turn, slave, and fight.\nTHERSITES What art thou?\nMARGARELON A bastard son of Priam's.\nTHERSITES I am a bastard too; I love bastards: I am a bastard\nbegot, bastard instructed, bastard in mind, bastard\nin valour, in every thing illegitimate. One bear will\nnot bite another, and wherefore should one bastard?\nTake heed, the quarrel's most ominous to us: if the\nson of a whore fight for a whore, he tempts judgment:\nfarewell, bastard.\n[Exit]\nMARGARELON The devil take thee, coward!\n[Exit]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT V\nSCENE VIII Another part of the plains.\n[Enter HECTOR]\nHECTOR Most putrefied core, so fair without,\nThy goodly armour thus hath cost thy life.\nNow is my day's work done; I'll take good breath:\nRest, sword; thou hast thy fill of blood and death.\n[Puts off his helmet and hangs his shield\nbehind him]\n[Enter ACHILLES and Myrmidons]\nACHILLES Look, Hector, how the sun begins to set;\nHow ugly night comes breathing at his heels:\nEven with the vail and darking of the sun,\nTo close the day up, Hector's life is done.\nHECTOR I am unarm'd; forego this vantage, Greek.\nACHILLES Strike, fellows, strike; this is the man I seek.\n[HECTOR falls]\nSo, Ilion, fall thou next! now, Troy, sink down!\nHere lies thy heart, thy sinews, and thy bone.\nOn, Myrmidons, and cry you all amain,\n'Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain.'\n[A retreat sounded]\nHark! a retire upon our Grecian part.\nMYRMIDONS The Trojan trumpets sound the like, my lord.\nACHILLES The dragon wing of night o'erspreads the earth,\nAnd, stickler-like, the armies separates.\nMy half-supp'd sword, that frankly would have fed,\nPleased with this dainty bait, thus goes to bed.\n[Sheathes his sword]\nCome, tie his body to my horse's tail;\nAlong the field I will the Trojan trail.\n[Exeunt]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT V\nSCENE IX Another part of the plains.\n[Enter AGAMEMNON, AJAX, MENELAUS, NESTOR, DIOMEDES,\nand others, marching. Shouts within]\nAGAMEMNON Hark! hark! what shout is that?\nNESTOR Peace, drums!\n[Within]\nAchilles! Achilles! Hector's slain! Achilles.\nDIOMEDES The bruit is, Hector's slain, and by Achilles.\nAJAX If it be so, yet bragless let it be;\nGreat Hector was a man as good as he.\nAGAMEMNON March patiently along: let one be sent\nTo pray Achilles see us at our tent.\nIf in his death the gods have us befriended,\nGreat Troy is ours, and our sharp wars are ended.\n[Exeunt, marching]\nTROILUS AND CRESSIDA\nACT V\nSCENE X Another part of the plains.\n[Enter AENEAS and Trojans]\nAENEAS Stand, ho! yet are we masters of the field:\nNever go home; here starve we out the night.\n[Enter TROILUS]\nTROILUS Hector is slain.\nALL Hector! the gods forbid!\nTROILUS He's dead; and at the murderer's horse's tail,\nIn beastly sort, dragg'd through the shameful field.\nFrown on, you heavens, effect your rage with speed!\nSit, gods, upon your thrones, and smile at Troy!\nI say, at once let your brief plagues be mercy,\nAnd linger not our sure destructions on!\nAENEAS My lord, you do discomfort all the host!\nTROILUS You understand me not that tell me so:\nI do not speak of flight, of fear, of death,\nBut dare all imminence that gods and men\nAddress their dangers in. Hector is gone:\nWho shall tell Priam so, or Hecuba?\nLet him that will a screech-owl aye be call'd,\nGo in to Troy, and say there, Hector's dead:\nThere is a word will Priam turn to stone;\nMake wells and Niobes of the maids and wives,\nCold statues of the youth, and, in a word,\nScare Troy out of itself. But, march away:\nHector is dead; there is no more to say.\nStay yet. You vile abominable tents,\nThus proudly pight upon our Phrygian plains,\nLet Titan rise as early as he dare,\nI'll through and through you! and, thou great-sized coward,\nNo space of earth shall sunder our two hates:\nI'll haunt thee like a wicked conscience still,\nThat mouldeth goblins swift as frenzy's thoughts.\nStrike a free march to Troy! with comfort go:\nHope of revenge shall hide our inward woe.\n[Exeunt AENEAS and Trojans]\n[As TROILUS is going out, enter, from the other\nside, PANDARUS]\nPANDARUS But hear you, hear you!\nTROILUS Hence, broker-lackey! ignomy and shame\nPursue thy life, and live aye with thy name!\n[Exit]\nPANDARUS A goodly medicine for my aching bones! O world!\nworld! world! thus is the poor agent despised!\nO traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set\na-work, and how ill requited! why should our\nendeavour be so loved and the performance so loathed?\nwhat verse for it? what instance for it? Let me see:\nFull merrily the humble-bee doth sing,\nTill he hath lost his honey and his sting;\nAnd being once subdued in armed tail,\nSweet honey and sweet notes together fail.\nGood traders in the flesh, set this in your\npainted cloths.\nAs many as be here of pander's hall,\nYour eyes, half out, weep out at Pandar's fall;\nOr if you cannot weep, yet give some groans,\nThough not for me, yet for your aching bones.\nBrethren and sisters of the hold-door trade,\nSome two months hence my will shall here be made:\nIt should be now, but that my fear is this,\nSome galled goose of Winchester would hiss:\nTill then I'll sweat and seek about for eases,\nAnd at that time bequeathe you my diseases.\n[Exit]","title":"Troilus and Cressida","type":"page"}