	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


	DRAMATIS PERSONAE


PRIAM	king of Troy.


HECTOR	|
	|
TROILUS	|
	|
PARIS	|  his sons.
	|
DEIPHOBUS	|
	|
HELENUS	|


MARGARELON	a bastard son of Priam.


AENEAS	|
	|  Trojan commanders.
ANTENOR	|


CALCHAS	a Trojan priest, taking part with the Greeks.

PANDARUS	uncle to Cressida.

AGAMEMNON	the Grecian general.

MENELAUS	his brother.


ACHILLES	|
	|
AJAX	|
	|
ULYSSES	|
	|  Grecian princes.
NESTOR	|
	|
DIOMEDES	|
	|
PATROCLUS	|


THERSITES	a deformed and scurrilous Grecian.

ALEXANDER	servant to Cressida.

	Servant to Troilus. (Boy:)

	Servant to Paris.

	Servant to Diomedes. (Servant:)

HELEN	wife to Menelaus.

ANDROMACHE	wife to Hector.

CASSANDRA	daughter to Priam, a prophetess.

CRESSIDA	daughter to Calchas.

	Trojan and Greek Soldiers, and Attendants.


SCENE	Troy, and the Grecian camp before it.




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA

	PROLOGUE


	In Troy, there lies the scene. From isles of Greece
	The princes orgulous, their high blood chafed,
	Have to the port of Athens sent their ships,
	Fraught with the ministers and instruments
	Of cruel war: sixty and nine, that wore
	Their crownets regal, from the Athenian bay
	Put forth toward Phrygia; and their vow is made
	To ransack Troy, within whose strong immures
	The ravish'd Helen, Menelaus' queen,
	With wanton Paris sleeps; and that's the quarrel.
	To Tenedos they come;
	And the deep-drawing barks do there disgorge
	Their warlike fraughtage: now on Dardan plains
	The fresh and yet unbruised Greeks do pitch
	Their brave pavilions: Priam's six-gated city,
	Dardan, and Tymbria, Helias, Chetas, Troien,
	And Antenorides, with massy staples
	And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts,
	Sperr up the sons of Troy.
	Now expectation, tickling skittish spirits,
	On one and other side, Trojan and Greek,
	Sets all on hazard: and hither am I come
	A prologue arm'd, but not in confidence
	Of author's pen or actor's voice, but suited
	In like conditions as our argument,
	To tell you, fair beholders, that our play
	Leaps o'er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils,
	Beginning in the middle, starting thence away
	To what may be digested in a play.
	Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are:
	Now good or bad, 'tis but the chance of war.




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT I



SCENE I	Troy. Before Priam's palace.


	[Enter TROILUS armed, and PANDARUS]

TROILUS	Call here my varlet; I'll unarm again:
	Why should I war without the walls of Troy,
	That find such cruel battle here within?
	Each Trojan that is master of his heart,
	Let him to field; Troilus, alas! hath none.

PANDARUS	Will this gear ne'er be mended?

TROILUS	The Greeks are strong and skilful to their strength,
	Fierce to their skill and to their fierceness valiant;
	But I am weaker than a woman's tear,
	Tamer than sleep, fonder than ignorance,
	Less valiant than the virgin in the night
	And skilless as unpractised infancy.

PANDARUS	Well, I have told you enough of this: for my part,
	I'll not meddle nor make no further. He that will
	have a cake out of the wheat must needs tarry the grinding.

TROILUS	Have I not tarried?

PANDARUS	Ay, the grinding; but you must tarry
	the bolting.

TROILUS	Have I not tarried?

PANDARUS	Ay, the bolting, but you must tarry the leavening.

TROILUS	Still have I tarried.

PANDARUS	Ay, to the leavening; but here's yet in the word
	'hereafter' the kneading, the making of the cake, the
	heating of the oven and the baking; nay, you must
	stay the cooling too, or you may chance to burn your lips.

TROILUS	Patience herself, what goddess e'er she be,
	Doth lesser blench at sufferance than I do.
	At Priam's royal table do I sit;
	And when fair Cressid comes into my thoughts,--
	So, traitor! 'When she comes!' When is she thence?

PANDARUS	Well, she looked yesternight fairer than ever I saw
	her look, or any woman else.

TROILUS	I was about to tell thee:--when my heart,
	As wedged with a sigh, would rive in twain,
	Lest Hector or my father should perceive me,
	I have, as when the sun doth light a storm,
	Buried this sigh in wrinkle of a smile:
	But sorrow, that is couch'd in seeming gladness,
	Is like that mirth fate turns to sudden sadness.

PANDARUS	An her hair were not somewhat darker than Helen's--
	well, go to--there were no more comparison between
	the women: but, for my part, she is my kinswoman; I
	would not, as they term it, praise her: but I would
	somebody had heard her talk yesterday, as I did. I
	will not dispraise your sister Cassandra's wit, but--

TROILUS	O Pandarus! I tell thee, Pandarus,--
	When I do tell thee, there my hopes lie drown'd,
	Reply not in how many fathoms deep
	They lie indrench'd. I tell thee I am mad
	In Cressid's love: thou answer'st 'she is fair;'
	Pour'st in the open ulcer of my heart
	Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice,
	Handlest in thy discourse, O, that her hand,
	In whose comparison all whites are ink,
	Writing their own reproach, to whose soft seizure
	The cygnet's down is harsh and spirit of sense
	Hard as the palm of ploughman: this thou tell'st me,
	As true thou tell'st me, when I say I love her;
	But, saying thus, instead of oil and balm,
	Thou lay'st in every gash that love hath given me
	The knife that made it.

PANDARUS	I speak no more than truth.

TROILUS	Thou dost not speak so much.

PANDARUS	Faith, I'll not meddle in't. Let her be as she is:
	if she be fair, 'tis the better for her; an she be
	not, she has the mends in her own hands.

TROILUS	Good Pandarus, how now, Pandarus!

PANDARUS	I have had my labour for my travail; ill-thought on of
	her and ill-thought on of you; gone between and
	between, but small thanks for my labour.

TROILUS	What, art thou angry, Pandarus? what, with me?

PANDARUS	Because she's kin to me, therefore she's not so fair
	as Helen: an she were not kin to me, she would be as
	fair on Friday as Helen is on Sunday. But what care
	I? I care not an she were a black-a-moor; 'tis all one to me.

TROILUS	Say I she is not fair?

PANDARUS	I do not care whether you do or no. She's a fool to
	stay behind her father; let her to the Greeks; and so
	I'll tell her the next time I see her: for my part,
	I'll meddle nor make no more i' the matter.

TROILUS	Pandarus,--

PANDARUS	Not I.

TROILUS	Sweet Pandarus,--

PANDARUS	Pray you, speak no more to me: I will leave all as I
	found it, and there an end.

	[Exit PANDARUS. An alarum]

TROILUS	Peace, you ungracious clamours! peace, rude sounds!
	Fools on both sides! Helen must needs be fair,
	When with your blood you daily paint her thus.
	I cannot fight upon this argument;
	It is too starved a subject for my sword.
	But Pandarus,--O gods, how do you plague me!
	I cannot come to Cressid but by Pandar;
	And he's as tetchy to be woo'd to woo.
	As she is stubborn-chaste against all suit.
	Tell me, Apollo, for thy Daphne's love,
	What Cressid is, what Pandar, and what we?
	Her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl:
	Between our Ilium and where she resides,
	Let it be call'd the wild and wandering flood,
	Ourself the merchant, and this sailing Pandar
	Our doubtful hope, our convoy and our bark.

	[Alarum. Enter AENEAS]

AENEAS	How now, Prince Troilus! wherefore not afield?

TROILUS	Because not there: this woman's answer sorts,
	For womanish it is to be from thence.
	What news, AEneas, from the field to-day?

AENEAS	That Paris is returned home and hurt.

TROILUS	By whom, AEneas?

AENEAS	                  Troilus, by Menelaus.

TROILUS	Let Paris bleed; 'tis but a scar to scorn;
	Paris is gored with Menelaus' horn.

	[Alarum]

AENEAS	Hark, what good sport is out of town to-day!

TROILUS	Better at home, if 'would I might' were 'may.'
	But to the sport abroad: are you bound thither?

AENEAS	In all swift haste.

TROILUS	Come, go we then together.

	[Exeunt]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT I



SCENE II	The Same. A street.


	[Enter CRESSIDA and ALEXANDER]

CRESSIDA	Who were those went by?

ALEXANDER	Queen Hecuba and Helen.

CRESSIDA	And whither go they?

ALEXANDER	Up to the eastern tower,
	Whose height commands as subject all the vale,
	To see the battle. Hector, whose patience
	Is, as a virtue, fix'd, to-day was moved:
	He chid Andromache and struck his armourer,
	And, like as there were husbandry in war,
	Before the sun rose he was harness'd light,
	And to the field goes he; where every flower
	Did, as a prophet, weep what it foresaw
	In Hector's wrath.

CRESSIDA	                  What was his cause of anger?

ALEXANDER	The noise goes, this: there is among the Greeks
	A lord of Trojan blood, nephew to Hector;
	They call him Ajax.

CRESSIDA	Good; and what of him?

ALEXANDER	They say he is a very man per se,
	And stands alone.

CRESSIDA	So do all men, unless they are drunk, sick, or have no legs.

ALEXANDER	This man, lady, hath robbed many beasts of their
	particular additions; he is as valiant as the lion,
	churlish as the bear, slow as the elephant: a man
	into whom nature hath so crowded humours that his
	valour is crushed into folly, his folly sauced with
	discretion: there is no man hath a virtue that he
	hath not a glimpse of, nor any man an attaint but he
	carries some stain of it: he is melancholy without
	cause, and merry against the hair: he hath the
	joints of every thing, but everything so out of joint
	that he is a gouty Briareus, many hands and no use,
	or purblind Argus, all eyes and no sight.

CRESSIDA	But how should this man, that makes
	me smile, make Hector angry?

ALEXANDER	They say he yesterday coped Hector in the battle and
	struck him down, the disdain and shame whereof hath
	ever since kept Hector fasting and waking.

CRESSIDA	Who comes here?

ALEXANDER	Madam, your uncle Pandarus.

	[Enter PANDARUS]

CRESSIDA	Hector's a gallant man.

ALEXANDER	As may be in the world, lady.

PANDARUS	What's that? what's that?

CRESSIDA	Good morrow, uncle Pandarus.

PANDARUS	Good morrow, cousin Cressid: what do you talk of?
	Good morrow, Alexander. How do you, cousin? When
	were you at Ilium?

CRESSIDA	This morning, uncle.

PANDARUS	What were you talking of when I came? Was Hector
	armed and gone ere ye came to Ilium? Helen was not
	up, was she?

CRESSIDA	Hector was gone, but Helen was not up.

PANDARUS	Even so: Hector was stirring early.

CRESSIDA	That were we talking of, and of his anger.

PANDARUS	Was he angry?

CRESSIDA	So he says here.

PANDARUS	True, he was so: I know the cause too: he'll lay
	about him to-day, I can tell them that: and there's
	Troilus will not come far behind him: let them take
	heed of Troilus, I can tell them that too.

CRESSIDA	What, is he angry too?

PANDARUS	Who, Troilus? Troilus is the better man of the two.

CRESSIDA	O Jupiter! there's no comparison.

PANDARUS	What, not between Troilus and Hector? Do you know a
	man if you see him?

CRESSIDA	Ay, if I ever saw him before and knew him.

PANDARUS	Well, I say Troilus is Troilus.

CRESSIDA	Then you say as I say; for, I am sure, he is not Hector.

PANDARUS	No, nor Hector is not Troilus in some degrees.

CRESSIDA	'Tis just to each of them; he is himself.

PANDARUS	Himself! Alas, poor Troilus! I would he were.

CRESSIDA	So he is.

PANDARUS	Condition, I had gone barefoot to India.

CRESSIDA	He is not Hector.

PANDARUS	Himself! no, he's not himself: would a' were
	himself! Well, the gods are above; time must friend
	or end: well, Troilus, well: I would my heart were
	in her body. No, Hector is not a better man than Troilus.

CRESSIDA	Excuse me.

PANDARUS	He is elder.

CRESSIDA	Pardon me, pardon me.

PANDARUS	Th' other's not come to't; you shall tell me another
	tale, when th' other's come to't. Hector shall not
	have his wit this year.

CRESSIDA	He shall not need it, if he have his own.

PANDARUS	Nor his qualities.

CRESSIDA	No matter.

PANDARUS	Nor his beauty.

CRESSIDA	'Twould not become him; his own's better.

PANDARUS	You have no judgment, niece: Helen
	herself swore th' other day, that Troilus, for
	a brown favour--for so 'tis, I must confess,--
	not brown neither,--

CRESSIDA	No, but brown.

PANDARUS	'Faith, to say truth, brown and not brown.

CRESSIDA	To say the truth, true and not true.

PANDARUS	She praised his complexion above Paris.

CRESSIDA	Why, Paris hath colour enough.

PANDARUS	So he has.

CRESSIDA	Then Troilus should have too much: if she praised
	him above, his complexion is higher than his; he
	having colour enough, and the other higher, is too
	flaming a praise for a good complexion. I had as
	lief Helen's golden tongue had commended Troilus for
	a copper nose.

PANDARUS	I swear to you. I think Helen loves him better than Paris.

CRESSIDA	Then she's a merry Greek indeed.

PANDARUS	Nay, I am sure she does. She came to him th' other
	day into the compassed window,--and, you know, he
	has not past three or four hairs on his chin,--

CRESSIDA	Indeed, a tapster's arithmetic may soon bring his
	particulars therein to a total.

PANDARUS	Why, he is very young: and yet will he, within
	three pound, lift as much as his brother Hector.

CRESSIDA	Is he so young a man and so old a lifter?

PANDARUS	But to prove to you that Helen loves him: she came
	and puts me her white hand to his cloven chin--

CRESSIDA	Juno have mercy! how came it cloven?

PANDARUS	Why, you know 'tis dimpled: I think his smiling
	becomes him better than any man in all Phrygia.

CRESSIDA	O, he smiles valiantly.

PANDARUS	Does he not?

CRESSIDA	O yes, an 'twere a cloud in autumn.

PANDARUS	Why, go to, then: but to prove to you that Helen
	loves Troilus,--

CRESSIDA	Troilus will stand to the proof, if you'll
	prove it so.

PANDARUS	Troilus! why, he esteems her no more than I esteem
	an addle egg.

CRESSIDA	If you love an addle egg as well as you love an idle
	head, you would eat chickens i' the shell.

PANDARUS	I cannot choose but laugh, to think how she tickled
	his chin: indeed, she has a marvellous white hand, I
	must needs confess,--

CRESSIDA	Without the rack.

PANDARUS	And she takes upon her to spy a white hair on his chin.

CRESSIDA	Alas, poor chin! many a wart is richer.

PANDARUS	But there was such laughing! Queen Hecuba laughed
	that her eyes ran o'er.

CRESSIDA	With mill-stones.

PANDARUS	And Cassandra laughed.

CRESSIDA	But there was more temperate fire under the pot of
	her eyes: did her eyes run o'er too?

PANDARUS	And Hector laughed.

CRESSIDA	At what was all this laughing?

PANDARUS	Marry, at the white hair that Helen spied on Troilus' chin.

CRESSIDA	An't had been a green hair, I should have laughed
	too.

PANDARUS	They laughed not so much at the hair as at his pretty answer.

CRESSIDA	What was his answer?

PANDARUS	Quoth she, 'Here's but two and fifty hairs on your
	chin, and one of them is white.

CRESSIDA	This is her question.

PANDARUS	That's true; make no question of that. 'Two and
	fifty hairs' quoth he, 'and one white: that white
	hair is my father, and all the rest are his sons.'
	'Jupiter!' quoth she, 'which of these hairs is Paris,
	my husband? 'The forked one,' quoth he, 'pluck't
	out, and give it him.' But there was such laughing!
	and Helen so blushed, an Paris so chafed, and all the
	rest so laughed, that it passed.

CRESSIDA	So let it now; for it has been while going by.

PANDARUS	Well, cousin. I told you a thing yesterday; think on't.

CRESSIDA	So I do.

PANDARUS	I'll be sworn 'tis true; he will weep you, an 'twere
	a man born in April.

CRESSIDA	And I'll spring up in his tears, an 'twere a nettle
	against May.

	[A retreat sounded]

PANDARUS	Hark! they are coming from the field: shall we
	stand up here, and see them as they pass toward
	Ilium? good niece, do, sweet niece Cressida.

CRESSIDA	At your pleasure.

PANDARUS	Here, here, here's an excellent place; here we may
	see most bravely: I'll tell you them all by their
	names as they pass by; but mark Troilus above the rest.

CRESSIDA	Speak not so loud.

	[AENEAS passes]

PANDARUS	That's AEneas: is not that a brave man? he's one of
	the flowers of Troy, I can tell you: but mark
	Troilus; you shall see anon.

	[ANTENOR passes]

CRESSIDA	Who's that?

PANDARUS	That's Antenor: he has a shrewd wit, I can tell you;
	and he's a man good enough, he's one o' the soundest
	judgments in whosoever, and a proper man of person.
	When comes Troilus? I'll show you Troilus anon: if
	he see me, you shall see him nod at me.

CRESSIDA	Will he give you the nod?

PANDARUS	You shall see.

CRESSIDA	If he do, the rich shall have more.

	[HECTOR passes]

PANDARUS	That's Hector, that, that, look you, that; there's a
	fellow! Go thy way, Hector! There's a brave man,
	niece. O brave Hector! Look how he looks! there's
	a countenance! is't not a brave man?

CRESSIDA	O, a brave man!

PANDARUS	Is a' not? it does a man's heart good. Look you
	what hacks are on his helmet! look you yonder, do
	you see? look you there: there's no jesting;
	there's laying on, take't off who will, as they say:
	there be hacks!

CRESSIDA	Be those with swords?

PANDARUS	Swords! any thing, he cares not; an the devil come
	to him, it's all one: by God's lid, it does one's
	heart good. Yonder comes Paris, yonder comes Paris.

	[PARIS passes]

	Look ye yonder, niece; is't not a gallant man too,
	is't not? Why, this is brave now. Who said he came
	hurt home to-day? he's not hurt: why, this will do
	Helen's heart good now, ha! Would I could see
	Troilus now! You shall see Troilus anon.

	[HELENUS passes]

CRESSIDA	Who's that?

PANDARUS	That's Helenus. I marvel where Troilus is. That's
	Helenus. I think he went not forth to-day. That's Helenus.

CRESSIDA	Can Helenus fight, uncle?

PANDARUS	Helenus? no. Yes, he'll fight indifferent well. I
	marvel where Troilus is. Hark! do you not hear the
	people cry 'Troilus'? Helenus is a priest.

CRESSIDA	What sneaking fellow comes yonder?

	[TROILUS passes]

PANDARUS	Where? yonder? that's Deiphobus. 'Tis Troilus!
	there's a man, niece! Hem! Brave Troilus! the
	prince of chivalry!

CRESSIDA	Peace, for shame, peace!

PANDARUS	Mark him; note him. O brave Troilus! Look well upon
	him, niece: look you how his sword is bloodied, and
	his helm more hacked than Hector's, and how he looks,
	and how he goes! O admirable youth! he ne'er saw
	three and twenty. Go thy way, Troilus, go thy way!
	Had I a sister were a grace, or a daughter a goddess,
	he should take his choice. O admirable man! Paris?
	Paris is dirt to him; and, I warrant, Helen, to
	change, would give an eye to boot.

CRESSIDA	Here come more.

	[Forces pass]

PANDARUS	Asses, fools, dolts! chaff and bran, chaff and bran!
	porridge after meat! I could live and die i' the
	eyes of Troilus. Ne'er look, ne'er look: the eagles
	are gone: crows and daws, crows and daws! I had
	rather be such a man as Troilus than Agamemnon and
	all Greece.

CRESSIDA	There is among the Greeks Achilles, a better man than Troilus.

PANDARUS	Achilles! a drayman, a porter, a very camel.

CRESSIDA	Well, well.

PANDARUS	'Well, well!' why, have you any discretion? have
	you any eyes? Do you know what a man is? Is not
	birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood,
	learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality,
	and such like, the spice and salt that season a man?

CRESSIDA	Ay, a minced man: and then to be baked with no date
	in the pie, for then the man's date's out.

PANDARUS	You are such a woman! one knows not at what ward you
	lie.

CRESSIDA	Upon my back, to defend my belly; upon my wit, to
	defend my wiles; upon my secrecy, to defend mine
	honesty; my mask, to defend my beauty; and you, to
	defend all these: and at all these wards I lie, at a
	thousand watches.

PANDARUS	Say one of your watches.

CRESSIDA	Nay, I'll watch you for that; and that's one of the
	chiefest of them too: if I cannot ward what I would
	not have hit, I can watch you for telling how I took
	the blow; unless it swell past hiding, and then it's
	past watching.

PANDARUS	You are such another!

	[Enter Troilus's Boy]

Boy	Sir, my lord would instantly speak with you.

PANDARUS	Where?

Boy	At your own house; there he unarms him.

PANDARUS	Good boy, tell him I come.

	[Exit boy]

	I doubt he be hurt. Fare ye well, good niece.

CRESSIDA	Adieu, uncle.

PANDARUS	I'll be with you, niece, by and by.

CRESSIDA	To bring, uncle?

PANDARUS	Ay, a token from Troilus.

CRESSIDA	By the same token, you are a bawd.

	[Exit PANDARUS]

	Words, vows, gifts, tears, and love's full sacrifice,
	He offers in another's enterprise;
	But more in Troilus thousand fold I see
	Than in the glass of Pandar's praise may be;
	Yet hold I off. Women are angels, wooing:
	Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing.
	That she beloved knows nought that knows not this:
	Men prize the thing ungain'd more than it is:
	That she was never yet that ever knew
	Love got so sweet as when desire did sue.
	Therefore this maxim out of love I teach:
	Achievement is command; ungain'd, beseech:
	Then though my heart's content firm love doth bear,
	Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear.

	[Exeunt]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT I



SCENE III	The Grecian camp. Before Agamemnon's tent.


	[Sennet. Enter AGAMEMNON, NESTOR, ULYSSES,
	MENELAUS, and others]

AGAMEMNON	Princes,
	What grief hath set the jaundice on your cheeks?
	The ample proposition that hope makes
	In all designs begun on earth below
	Fails in the promised largeness: cheques and disasters
	Grow in the veins of actions highest rear'd,
	As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
	Infect the sound pine and divert his grain
	Tortive and errant from his course of growth.
	Nor, princes, is it matter new to us
	That we come short of our suppose so far
	That after seven years' siege yet Troy walls stand;
	Sith every action that hath gone before,
	Whereof we have record, trial did draw
	Bias and thwart, not answering the aim,
	And that unbodied figure of the thought
	That gave't surmised shape. Why then, you princes,
	Do you with cheeks abash'd behold our works,
	And call them shames? which are indeed nought else
	But the protractive trials of great Jove
	To find persistive constancy in men:
	The fineness of which metal is not found
	In fortune's love; for then the bold and coward,
	The wise and fool, the artist and unread,
	The hard and soft seem all affined and kin:
	But, in the wind and tempest of her frown,
	Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan,
	Puffing at all, winnows the light away;
	And what hath mass or matter, by itself
	Lies rich in virtue and unmingled.

NESTOR	With due observance of thy godlike seat,
	Great Agamemnon, Nestor shall apply
	Thy latest words. In the reproof of chance
	Lies the true proof of men: the sea being smooth,
	How many shallow bauble boats dare sail
	Upon her patient breast, making their way
	With those of nobler bulk!
	But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage
	The gentle Thetis, and anon behold
	The strong-ribb'd bark through liquid mountains cut,
	Bounding between the two moist elements,
	Like Perseus' horse: where's then the saucy boat
	Whose weak untimber'd sides but even now
	Co-rivall'd greatness? Either to harbour fled,
	Or made a toast for Neptune. Even so
	Doth valour's show and valour's worth divide
	In storms of fortune; for in her ray and brightness
	The herd hath more annoyance by the breeze
	Than by the tiger; but when the splitting wind
	Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks,
	And flies fled under shade, why, then the thing of courage
	As roused with rage with rage doth sympathize,
	And with an accent tuned in selfsame key
	Retorts to chiding fortune.

ULYSSES	Agamemnon,
	Thou great commander, nerve and bone of Greece,
	Heart of our numbers, soul and only spirit.
	In whom the tempers and the minds of all
	Should be shut up, hear what Ulysses speaks.
	Besides the applause and approbation To which,

	[To AGAMEMNON]

	most mighty for thy place and sway,

	[To NESTOR]

	And thou most reverend for thy stretch'd-out life
	I give to both your speeches, which were such
	As Agamemnon and the hand of Greece
	Should hold up high in brass, and such again
	As venerable Nestor, hatch'd in silver,
	Should with a bond of air, strong as the axle-tree
	On which heaven rides, knit all the Greekish ears
	To his experienced tongue, yet let it please both,
	Thou great, and wise, to hear Ulysses speak.

AGAMEMNON	Speak, prince of Ithaca; and be't of less expect
	That matter needless, of importless burden,
	Divide thy lips, than we are confident,
	When rank Thersites opes his mastic jaws,
	We shall hear music, wit and oracle.

ULYSSES	Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down,
	And the great Hector's sword had lack'd a master,
	But for these instances.
	The specialty of rule hath been neglected:
	And, look, how many Grecian tents do stand
	Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions.
	When that the general is not like the hive
	To whom the foragers shall all repair,
	What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded,
	The unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.
	The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre
	Observe degree, priority and place,
	Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
	Office and custom, in all line of order;
	And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
	In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
	Amidst the other; whose medicinable eye
	Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
	And posts, like the commandment of a king,
	Sans cheque to good and bad: but when the planets
	In evil mixture to disorder wander,
	What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!
	What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!
	Commotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors,
	Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
	The unity and married calm of states
	Quite from their fixure! O, when degree is shaked,
	Which is the ladder to all high designs,
	Then enterprise is sick! How could communities,
	Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities,
	Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
	The primogenitive and due of birth,
	Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
	But by degree, stand in authentic place?
	Take but degree away, untune that string,
	And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
	In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
	Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
	And make a sop of all this solid globe:
	Strength should be lord of imbecility,
	And the rude son should strike his father dead:
	Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong,
	Between whose endless jar justice resides,
	Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
	Then every thing includes itself in power,
	Power into will, will into appetite;
	And appetite, an universal wolf,
	So doubly seconded with will and power,
	Must make perforce an universal prey,
	And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,
	This chaos, when degree is suffocate,
	Follows the choking.
	And this neglection of degree it is
	That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose
	It hath to climb. The general's disdain'd
	By him one step below, he by the next,
	That next by him beneath; so every step,
	Exampled by the first pace that is sick
	Of his superior, grows to an envious fever
	Of pale and bloodless emulation:
	And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,
	Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,
	Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.

NESTOR	Most wisely hath Ulysses here discover'd
	The fever whereof all our power is sick.

AGAMEMNON	The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses,
	What is the remedy?

ULYSSES	The great Achilles, whom opinion crowns
	The sinew and the forehand of our host,
	Having his ear full of his airy fame,
	Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent
	Lies mocking our designs: with him Patroclus
	Upon a lazy bed the livelong day
	Breaks scurril jests;
	And with ridiculous and awkward action,
	Which, slanderer, he imitation calls,
	He pageants us. Sometime, great Agamemnon,
	Thy topless deputation he puts on,
	And, like a strutting player, whose conceit
	Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich
	To hear the wooden dialogue and sound
	'Twixt his stretch'd footing and the scaffoldage,--
	Such to-be-pitied and o'er-wrested seeming
	He acts thy greatness in: and when he speaks,
	'Tis like a chime a-mending; with terms unsquared,
	Which, from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropp'd
	Would seem hyperboles. At this fusty stuff
	The large Achilles, on his press'd bed lolling,
	From his deep chest laughs out a loud applause;
	Cries 'Excellent! 'tis Agamemnon just.
	Now play me Nestor; hem, and stroke thy beard,
	As he being drest to some oration.'
	That's done, as near as the extremest ends
	Of parallels, as like as Vulcan and his wife:
	Yet god Achilles still cries 'Excellent!
	'Tis Nestor right. Now play him me, Patroclus,
	Arming to answer in a night alarm.'
	And then, forsooth, the faint defects of age
	Must be the scene of mirth; to cough and spit,
	And, with a palsy-fumbling on his gorget,
	Shake in and out the rivet: and at this sport
	Sir Valour dies; cries 'O, enough, Patroclus;
	Or give me ribs of steel! I shall split all
	In pleasure of my spleen.' And in this fashion,
	All our abilities, gifts, natures, shapes,
	Severals and generals of grace exact,
	Achievements, plots, orders, preventions,
	Excitements to the field, or speech for truce,
	Success or loss, what is or is not, serves
	As stuff for these two to make paradoxes.

NESTOR	And in the imitation of these twain--
	Who, as Ulysses says, opinion crowns
	With an imperial voice--many are infect.
	Ajax is grown self-will'd, and bears his head
	In such a rein, in full as proud a place
	As broad Achilles; keeps his tent like him;
	Makes factious feasts; rails on our state of war,
	Bold as an oracle, and sets Thersites,
	A slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint,
	To match us in comparisons with dirt,
	To weaken and discredit our exposure,
	How rank soever rounded in with danger.

ULYSSES	They tax our policy, and call it cowardice,
	Count wisdom as no member of the war,
	Forestall prescience, and esteem no act
	But that of hand: the still and mental parts,
	That do contrive how many hands shall strike,
	When fitness calls them on, and know by measure
	Of their observant toil the enemies' weight,--
	Why, this hath not a finger's dignity:
	They call this bed-work, mappery, closet-war;
	So that the ram that batters down the wall,
	For the great swing and rudeness of his poise,
	They place before his hand that made the engine,
	Or those that with the fineness of their souls
	By reason guide his execution.

NESTOR	Let this be granted, and Achilles' horse
	Makes many Thetis' sons.

	[A tucket]

AGAMEMNON	What trumpet? look, Menelaus.

MENELAUS	From Troy.

	[Enter AENEAS]

AGAMEMNON	What would you 'fore our tent?

AENEAS	Is this great Agamemnon's tent, I pray you?

AGAMEMNON	Even this.

AENEAS	May one, that is a herald and a prince,
	Do a fair message to his kingly ears?

AGAMEMNON	With surety stronger than Achilles' arm
	'Fore all the Greekish heads, which with one voice
	Call Agamemnon head and general.

AENEAS	Fair leave and large security. How may
	A stranger to those most imperial looks
	Know them from eyes of other mortals?

AGAMEMNON	How!

AENEAS	Ay;
	I ask, that I might waken reverence,
	And bid the cheek be ready with a blush
	Modest as morning when she coldly eyes
	The youthful Phoebus:
	Which is that god in office, guiding men?
	Which is the high and mighty Agamemnon?

AGAMEMNON	This Trojan scorns us; or the men of Troy
	Are ceremonious courtiers.

AENEAS	Courtiers as free, as debonair, unarm'd,
	As bending angels; that's their fame in peace:
	But when they would seem soldiers, they have galls,
	Good arms, strong joints, true swords; and,
	Jove's accord,
	Nothing so full of heart. But peace, AEneas,
	Peace, Trojan; lay thy finger on thy lips!
	The worthiness of praise distains his worth,
	If that the praised himself bring the praise forth:
	But what the repining enemy commends,
	That breath fame blows; that praise, sole sure,
	transcends.

AGAMEMNON	Sir, you of Troy, call you yourself AEneas?

AENEAS	Ay, Greek, that is my name.

AGAMEMNON	What's your affair I pray you?

AENEAS	Sir, pardon; 'tis for Agamemnon's ears.

AGAMEMNON	He hears naught privately that comes from Troy.

AENEAS	Nor I from Troy come not to whisper him:
	I bring a trumpet to awake his ear,
	To set his sense on the attentive bent,
	And then to speak.

AGAMEMNON	                  Speak frankly as the wind;
	It is not Agamemnon's sleeping hour:
	That thou shalt know. Trojan, he is awake,
	He tells thee so himself.

AENEAS	Trumpet, blow loud,
	Send thy brass voice through all these lazy tents;
	And every Greek of mettle, let him know,
	What Troy means fairly shall be spoke aloud.

	[Trumpet sounds]

	We have, great Agamemnon, here in Troy
	A prince call'd Hector,--Priam is his father,--
	Who in this dull and long-continued truce
	Is rusty grown: he bade me take a trumpet,
	And to this purpose speak. Kings, princes, lords!
	If there be one among the fair'st of Greece
	That holds his honour higher than his ease,
	That seeks his praise more than he fears his peril,
	That knows his valour, and knows not his fear,
	That loves his mistress more than in confession,
	With truant vows to her own lips he loves,
	And dare avow her beauty and her worth
	In other arms than hers,--to him this challenge.
	Hector, in view of Trojans and of Greeks,
	Shall make it good, or do his best to do it,
	He hath a lady, wiser, fairer, truer,
	Than ever Greek did compass in his arms,
	And will to-morrow with his trumpet call
	Midway between your tents and walls of Troy,
	To rouse a Grecian that is true in love:
	If any come, Hector shall honour him;
	If none, he'll say in Troy when he retires,
	The Grecian dames are sunburnt and not worth
	The splinter of a lance. Even so much.

AGAMEMNON	This shall be told our lovers, Lord AEneas;
	If none of them have soul in such a kind,
	We left them all at home: but we are soldiers;
	And may that soldier a mere recreant prove,
	That means not, hath not, or is not in love!
	If then one is, or hath, or means to be,
	That one meets Hector; if none else, I am he.

NESTOR	Tell him of Nestor, one that was a man
	When Hector's grandsire suck'd: he is old now;
	But if there be not in our Grecian host
	One noble man that hath one spark of fire,
	To answer for his love, tell him from me
	I'll hide my silver beard in a gold beaver
	And in my vantbrace put this wither'd brawn,
	And meeting him will tell him that my lady
	Was fairer than his grandam and as chaste
	As may be in the world: his youth in flood,
	I'll prove this truth with my three drops of blood.

AENEAS	Now heavens forbid such scarcity of youth!

ULYSSES	Amen.

AGAMEMNON	Fair Lord AEneas, let me touch your hand;
	To our pavilion shall I lead you, sir.
	Achilles shall have word of this intent;
	So shall each lord of Greece, from tent to tent:
	Yourself shall feast with us before you go
	And find the welcome of a noble foe.

	[Exeunt all but ULYSSES and NESTOR]

ULYSSES	Nestor!

NESTOR	What says Ulysses?

ULYSSES	I have a young conception in my brain;
	Be you my time to bring it to some shape.

NESTOR	What is't?

ULYSSES	This 'tis:
	Blunt wedges rive hard knots: the seeded pride
	That hath to this maturity blown up
	In rank Achilles must or now be cropp'd,
	Or, shedding, breed a nursery of like evil,
	To overbulk us all.

NESTOR	Well, and how?

ULYSSES	This challenge that the gallant Hector sends,
	However it is spread in general name,
	Relates in purpose only to Achilles.

NESTOR	The purpose is perspicuous even as substance,
	Whose grossness little characters sum up:
	And, in the publication, make no strain,
	But that Achilles, were his brain as barren
	As banks of Libya,--though, Apollo knows,
	'Tis dry enough,--will, with great speed of judgment,
	Ay, with celerity, find Hector's purpose
	Pointing on him.

ULYSSES	And wake him to the answer, think you?

NESTOR	Yes, 'tis most meet: whom may you else oppose,
	That can from Hector bring his honour off,
	If not Achilles? Though't be a sportful combat,
	Yet in the trial much opinion dwells;
	For here the Trojans taste our dear'st repute
	With their finest palate: and trust to me, Ulysses,
	Our imputation shall be oddly poised
	In this wild action; for the success,
	Although particular, shall give a scantling
	Of good or bad unto the general;
	And in such indexes, although small pricks
	To their subsequent volumes, there is seen
	The baby figure of the giant mass
	Of things to come at large. It is supposed
	He that meets Hector issues from our choice
	And choice, being mutual act of all our souls,
	Makes merit her election, and doth boil,
	As 'twere from us all, a man distill'd
	Out of our virtues; who miscarrying,
	What heart receives from hence the conquering part,
	To steel a strong opinion to themselves?
	Which entertain'd, limbs are his instruments,
	In no less working than are swords and bows
	Directive by the limbs.

ULYSSES	Give pardon to my speech:
	Therefore 'tis meet Achilles meet not Hector.
	Let us, like merchants, show our foulest wares,
	And think, perchance, they'll sell; if not,
	The lustre of the better yet to show,
	Shall show the better. Do not consent
	That ever Hector and Achilles meet;
	For both our honour and our shame in this
	Are dogg'd with two strange followers.

NESTOR	I see them not with my old eyes: what are they?

ULYSSES	What glory our Achilles shares from Hector,
	Were he not proud, we all should share with him:
	But he already is too insolent;
	And we were better parch in Afric sun
	Than in the pride and salt scorn of his eyes,
	Should he 'scape Hector fair: if he were foil'd,
	Why then, we did our main opinion crush
	In taint of our best man. No, make a lottery;
	And, by device, let blockish Ajax draw
	The sort to fight with Hector: among ourselves
	Give him allowance for the better man;
	For that will physic the great Myrmidon
	Who broils in loud applause, and make him fall
	His crest that prouder than blue Iris bends.
	If the dull brainless Ajax come safe off,
	We'll dress him up in voices: if he fail,
	Yet go we under our opinion still
	That we have better men. But, hit or miss,
	Our project's life this shape of sense assumes:
	Ajax employ'd plucks down Achilles' plumes.

NESTOR	Ulysses,
	Now I begin to relish thy advice;
	And I will give a taste of it forthwith
	To Agamemnon: go we to him straight.
	Two curs shall tame each other: pride alone
	Must tarre the mastiffs on, as 'twere their bone.

	[Exeunt]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT II



SCENE I	A part of the Grecian camp.


	[Enter AJAX and THERSITES]

AJAX	Thersites!

THERSITES	Agamemnon, how if he had boils? full, all over,
	generally?

AJAX	Thersites!

THERSITES	And those boils did run? say so: did not the
	general run then? were not that a botchy core?

AJAX	Dog!

THERSITES	Then would come some matter from him; I see none now.

AJAX	Thou bitch-wolf's son, canst thou not hear?

	[Beating him]

	Feel, then.

THERSITES	The plague of Greece upon thee, thou mongrel
	beef-witted lord!

AJAX	Speak then, thou vinewedst leaven, speak: I will
	beat thee into handsomeness.

THERSITES	I shall sooner rail thee into wit and holiness: but,
	I think, thy horse will sooner con an oration than
	thou learn a prayer without book. Thou canst strike,
	canst thou? a red murrain o' thy jade's tricks!

AJAX	Toadstool, learn me the proclamation.

THERSITES	Dost thou think I have no sense, thou strikest me thus?

AJAX	The proclamation!

THERSITES	Thou art proclaimed a fool, I think.

AJAX	Do not, porpentine, do not: my fingers itch.

THERSITES	I would thou didst itch from head to foot and I had
	the scratching of thee; I would make thee the
	loathsomest scab in Greece. When thou art forth in
	the incursions, thou strikest as slow as another.

AJAX	I say, the proclamation!

THERSITES	Thou grumblest and railest every hour on Achilles,
	and thou art as full of envy at his greatness as
	Cerberus is at Proserpine's beauty, ay, that thou
	barkest at him.

AJAX	Mistress Thersites!

THERSITES	Thou shouldest strike him.

AJAX	Cobloaf!

THERSITES	He would pun thee into shivers with his fist, as a
	sailor breaks a biscuit.

AJAX	[Beating him]  You whoreson cur!

THERSITES	Do, do.

AJAX	Thou stool for a witch!

THERSITES	Ay, do, do; thou sodden-witted lord! thou hast no
	more brain than I have in mine elbows; an assinego
	may tutor thee: thou scurvy-valiant ass! thou art
	here but to thrash Trojans; and thou art bought and
	sold among those of any wit, like a barbarian slave.
	If thou use to beat me, I will begin at thy heel, and
	tell what thou art by inches, thou thing of no
	bowels, thou!

AJAX	You dog!

THERSITES	You scurvy lord!

AJAX	[Beating him]  You cur!

THERSITES	Mars his idiot! do, rudeness; do, camel; do, do.

	[Enter ACHILLES and PATROCLUS]

ACHILLES	Why, how now, Ajax! wherefore do you thus? How now,
	Thersites! what's the matter, man?

THERSITES	You see him there, do you?

ACHILLES	Ay; what's the matter?

THERSITES	Nay, look upon him.

ACHILLES	So I do: what's the matter?

THERSITES	Nay, but regard him well.

ACHILLES	'Well!' why, I do so.

THERSITES	But yet you look not well upon him; for whosoever you
	take him to be, he is Ajax.

ACHILLES	I know that, fool.

THERSITES	Ay, but that fool knows not himself.

AJAX	Therefore I beat thee.

THERSITES	Lo, lo, lo, lo, what modicums of wit he utters! his
	evasions have ears thus long. I have bobbed his
	brain more than he has beat my bones: I will buy
	nine sparrows for a penny, and his pia mater is not
	worth the nineth part of a sparrow. This lord,
	Achilles, Ajax, who wears his wit in his belly and
	his guts in his head, I'll tell you what I say of
	him.

ACHILLES	What?

THERSITES	I say, this Ajax--

	[Ajax offers to beat him]

ACHILLES	Nay, good Ajax.

THERSITES	Has not so much wit--

ACHILLES	Nay, I must hold you.

THERSITES	As will stop the eye of Helen's needle, for whom he
	comes to fight.

ACHILLES	Peace, fool!

THERSITES	I would have peace and quietness, but the fool will
	not: he there: that he: look you there.

AJAX	O thou damned cur! I shall--

ACHILLES	Will you set your wit to a fool's?

THERSITES	No, I warrant you; for a fools will shame it.

PATROCLUS	Good words, Thersites.

ACHILLES	What's the quarrel?

AJAX	I bade the vile owl go learn me the tenor of the
	proclamation, and he rails upon me.

THERSITES	I serve thee not.

AJAX	Well, go to, go to.

THERSITES	I serve here voluntarily.

ACHILLES	Your last service was sufferance, 'twas not
	voluntary: no man is beaten voluntary: Ajax was
	here the voluntary, and you as under an impress.

THERSITES	E'en so; a great deal of your wit, too, lies in your
	sinews, or else there be liars. Hector have a great
	catch, if he knock out either of your brains: a'
	were as good crack a fusty nut with no kernel.

ACHILLES	What, with me too, Thersites?

THERSITES	There's Ulysses and old Nestor, whose wit was mouldy
	ere your grandsires had nails on their toes, yoke you
	like draught-oxen and make you plough up the wars.

ACHILLES	What, what?

THERSITES	Yes, good sooth: to, Achilles! to, Ajax! to!

AJAX	I shall cut out your tongue.

THERSITES	'Tis no matter! I shall speak as much as thou
	afterwards.

PATROCLUS	No more words, Thersites; peace!

THERSITES	I will hold my peace when Achilles' brach bids me, shall I?

ACHILLES	There's for you, Patroclus.

THERSITES	I will see you hanged, like clotpoles, ere I come
	any more to your tents: I will keep where there is
	wit stirring and leave the faction of fools.

	[Exit]

PATROCLUS	A good riddance.

ACHILLES	Marry, this, sir, is proclaim'd through all our host:
	That Hector, by the fifth hour of the sun,
	Will with a trumpet 'twixt our tents and Troy
	To-morrow morning call some knight to arms
	That hath a stomach; and such a one that dare
	Maintain--I know not what: 'tis trash. Farewell.

AJAX	Farewell. Who shall answer him?

ACHILLES	I know not: 'tis put to lottery; otherwise
	He knew his man.

AJAX	O, meaning you. I will go learn more of it.

	[Exeunt]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT II



SCENE II	Troy. A room in Priam's palace.


	[Enter PRIAM, HECTOR, TROILUS, PARIS, and HELENUS]

PRIAM	After so many hours, lives, speeches spent,
	Thus once again says Nestor from the Greeks:
	'Deliver Helen, and all damage else--
	As honour, loss of time, travail, expense,
	Wounds, friends, and what else dear that is consumed
	In hot digestion of this cormorant war--
	Shall be struck off.' Hector, what say you to't?

HECTOR	Though no man lesser fears the Greeks than I
	As far as toucheth my particular,
	Yet, dread Priam,
	There is no lady of more softer bowels,
	More spongy to suck in the sense of fear,
	More ready to cry out 'Who knows what follows?'
	Than Hector is: the wound of peace is surety,
	Surety secure; but modest doubt is call'd
	The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches
	To the bottom of the worst. Let Helen go:
	Since the first sword was drawn about this question,
	Every tithe soul, 'mongst many thousand dismes,
	Hath been as dear as Helen; I mean, of ours:
	If we have lost so many tenths of ours,
	To guard a thing not ours nor worth to us,
	Had it our name, the value of one ten,
	What merit's in that reason which denies
	The yielding of her up?

TROILUS	Fie, fie, my brother!
	Weigh you the worth and honour of a king
	So great as our dread father in a scale
	Of common ounces? will you with counters sum
	The past proportion of his infinite?
	And buckle in a waist most fathomless
	With spans and inches so diminutive
	As fears and reasons? fie, for godly shame!

HELENUS	No marvel, though you bite so sharp at reasons,
	You are so empty of them. Should not our father
	Bear the great sway of his affairs with reasons,
	Because your speech hath none that tells him so?

TROILUS	You are for dreams and slumbers, brother priest;
	You fur your gloves with reason. Here are
	your reasons:
	You know an enemy intends you harm;
	You know a sword employ'd is perilous,
	And reason flies the object of all harm:
	Who marvels then, when Helenus beholds
	A Grecian and his sword, if he do set
	The very wings of reason to his heels
	And fly like chidden Mercury from Jove,
	Or like a star disorb'd? Nay, if we talk of reason,
	Let's shut our gates and sleep: manhood and honour
	Should have hare-hearts, would they but fat
	their thoughts
	With this cramm'd reason: reason and respect
	Make livers pale and lustihood deject.

HECTOR	Brother, she is not worth what she doth cost
	The holding.

TROILUS	                  What is aught, but as 'tis valued?

HECTOR	But value dwells not in particular will;
	It holds his estimate and dignity
	As well wherein 'tis precious of itself
	As in the prizer: 'tis mad idolatry
	To make the service greater than the god
	And the will dotes that is attributive
	To what infectiously itself affects,
	Without some image of the affected merit.

TROILUS	I take to-day a wife, and my election
	Is led on in the conduct of my will;
	My will enkindled by mine eyes and ears,
	Two traded pilots 'twixt the dangerous shores
	Of will and judgment: how may I avoid,
	Although my will distaste what it elected,
	The wife I chose? there can be no evasion
	To blench from this and to stand firm by honour:
	We turn not back the silks upon the merchant,
	When we have soil'd them, nor the remainder viands
	We do not throw in unrespective sieve,
	Because we now are full. It was thought meet
	Paris should do some vengeance on the Greeks:
	Your breath of full consent bellied his sails;
	The seas and winds, old wranglers, took a truce
	And did him service: he touch'd the ports desired,
	And for an old aunt whom the Greeks held captive,
	He brought a Grecian queen, whose youth and freshness
	Wrinkles Apollo's, and makes stale the morning.
	Why keep we her? the Grecians keep our aunt:
	Is she worth keeping? why, she is a pearl,
	Whose price hath launch'd above a thousand ships,
	And turn'd crown'd kings to merchants.
	If you'll avouch 'twas wisdom Paris went--
	As you must needs, for you all cried 'Go, go,'--
	If you'll confess he brought home noble prize--
	As you must needs, for you all clapp'd your hands
	And cried 'Inestimable!'--why do you now
	The issue of your proper wisdoms rate,
	And do a deed that fortune never did,
	Beggar the estimation which you prized
	Richer than sea and land? O, theft most base,
	That we have stol'n what we do fear to keep!
	But, thieves, unworthy of a thing so stol'n,
	That in their country did them that disgrace,
	We fear to warrant in our native place!

CASSANDRA	[Within]  Cry, Trojans, cry!

PRIAM	What noise? what shriek is this?

TROILUS	'Tis our mad sister, I do know her voice.

CASSANDRA	[Within]  Cry, Trojans!

HECTOR	It is Cassandra.

	[Enter CASSANDRA, raving]

CASSANDRA	Cry, Trojans, cry! lend me ten thousand eyes,
	And I will fill them with prophetic tears.

HECTOR	Peace, sister, peace!

CASSANDRA	Virgins and boys, mid-age and wrinkled eld,
	Soft infancy, that nothing canst but cry,
	Add to my clamours! let us pay betimes
	A moiety of that mass of moan to come.
	Cry, Trojans, cry! practise your eyes with tears!
	Troy must not be, nor goodly Ilion stand;
	Our firebrand brother, Paris, burns us all.
	Cry, Trojans, cry! a Helen and a woe:
	Cry, cry! Troy burns, or else let Helen go.

	[Exit]

HECTOR	Now, youthful Troilus, do not these high strains
	Of divination in our sister work
	Some touches of remorse? or is your blood
	So madly hot that no discourse of reason,
	Nor fear of bad success in a bad cause,
	Can qualify the same?

TROILUS	Why, brother Hector,
	We may not think the justness of each act
	Such and no other than event doth form it,
	Nor once deject the courage of our minds,
	Because Cassandra's mad: her brain-sick raptures
	Cannot distaste the goodness of a quarrel
	Which hath our several honours all engaged
	To make it gracious. For my private part,
	I am no more touch'd than all Priam's sons:
	And Jove forbid there should be done amongst us
	Such things as might offend the weakest spleen
	To fight for and maintain!

PARIS	Else might the world convince of levity
	As well my undertakings as your counsels:
	But I attest the gods, your full consent
	Gave wings to my propension and cut off
	All fears attending on so dire a project.
	For what, alas, can these my single arms?
	What Propugnation is in one man's valour,
	To stand the push and enmity of those
	This quarrel would excite? Yet, I protest,
	Were I alone to pass the difficulties
	And had as ample power as I have will,
	Paris should ne'er retract what he hath done,
	Nor faint in the pursuit.

PRIAM	Paris, you speak
	Like one besotted on your sweet delights:
	You have the honey still, but these the gall;
	So to be valiant is no praise at all.

PARIS	Sir, I propose not merely to myself
	The pleasures such a beauty brings with it;
	But I would have the soil of her fair rape
	Wiped off, in honourable keeping her.
	What treason were it to the ransack'd queen,
	Disgrace to your great worths and shame to me,
	Now to deliver her possession up
	On terms of base compulsion! Can it be
	That so degenerate a strain as this
	Should once set footing in your generous bosoms?
	There's not the meanest spirit on our party
	Without a heart to dare or sword to draw
	When Helen is defended, nor none so noble
	Whose life were ill bestow'd or death unfamed
	Where Helen is the subject; then, I say,
	Well may we fight for her whom, we know well,
	The world's large spaces cannot parallel.

HECTOR	Paris and Troilus, you have both said well,
	And on the cause and question now in hand
	Have glozed, but superficially: not much
	Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought
	Unfit to hear moral philosophy:
	The reasons you allege do more conduce
	To the hot passion of distemper'd blood
	Than to make up a free determination
	'Twixt right and wrong, for pleasure and revenge
	Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice
	Of any true decision. Nature craves
	All dues be render'd to their owners: now,
	What nearer debt in all humanity
	Than wife is to the husband? If this law
	Of nature be corrupted through affection,
	And that great minds, of partial indulgence
	To their benumbed wills, resist the same,
	There is a law in each well-order'd nation
	To curb those raging appetites that are
	Most disobedient and refractory.
	If Helen then be wife to Sparta's king,
	As it is known she is, these moral laws
	Of nature and of nations speak aloud
	To have her back return'd: thus to persist
	In doing wrong extenuates not wrong,
	But makes it much more heavy. Hector's opinion
	Is this in way of truth; yet ne'ertheless,
	My spritely brethren, I propend to you
	In resolution to keep Helen still,
	For 'tis a cause that hath no mean dependance
	Upon our joint and several dignities.

TROILUS	Why, there you touch'd the life of our design:
	Were it not glory that we more affected
	Than the performance of our heaving spleens,
	I would not wish a drop of Trojan blood
	Spent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector,
	She is a theme of honour and renown,
	A spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds,
	Whose present courage may beat down our foes,
	And fame in time to come canonize us;
	For, I presume, brave Hector would not lose
	So rich advantage of a promised glory
	As smiles upon the forehead of this action
	For the wide world's revenue.

HECTOR	I am yours,
	You valiant offspring of great Priamus.
	I have a roisting challenge sent amongst
	The dun and factious nobles of the Greeks
	Will strike amazement to their drowsy spirits:
	I was advertised their great general slept,
	Whilst emulation in the army crept:
	This, I presume, will wake him.

	[Exeunt]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT II



SCENE III	The Grecian camp. Before Achilles' tent.


	[Enter THERSITES, solus]

THERSITES	How now, Thersites! what lost in the labyrinth of
	thy fury! Shall the elephant Ajax carry it thus? He
	beats me, and I rail at him: O, worthy satisfaction!
	would it were otherwise; that I could beat him,
	whilst he railed at me. 'Sfoot, I'll learn to
	conjure and raise devils, but I'll see some issue of
	my spiteful execrations. Then there's Achilles, a
	rare enginer! If Troy be not taken till these two
	undermine it, the walls will stand till they fall of
	themselves. O thou great thunder-darter of Olympus,
	forget that thou art Jove, the king of gods and,
	Mercury, lose all the serpentine craft of thy
	caduceus, if ye take not that little, little less
	than little wit from them that they have! which
	short-armed ignorance itself knows is so abundant
	scarce, it will not in circumvention deliver a fly
	from a spider, without drawing their massy irons and
	cutting the web. After this, the vengeance on the
	whole camp! or rather, the bone-ache! for that,
	methinks, is the curse dependent on those that war
	for a placket. I have said my prayers and devil Envy
	say Amen. What ho! my Lord Achilles!

	[Enter PATROCLUS]

PATROCLUS	Who's there? Thersites! Good Thersites, come in and rail.

THERSITES	If I could have remembered a gilt counterfeit, thou
	wouldst not have slipped out of my contemplation: but
	it is no matter; thyself upon thyself! The common
	curse of mankind, folly and ignorance, be thine in
	great revenue! heaven bless thee from a tutor, and
	discipline come not near thee! Let thy blood be thy
	direction till thy death! then if she that lays thee
	out says thou art a fair corse, I'll be sworn and
	sworn upon't she never shrouded any but lazars.
	Amen. Where's Achilles?

PATROCLUS	What, art thou devout? wast thou in prayer?

THERSITES	Ay: the heavens hear me!

	[Enter ACHILLES]

ACHILLES	Who's there?

PATROCLUS	Thersites, my lord.

ACHILLES	Where, where? Art thou come? why, my cheese, my
	digestion, why hast thou not served thyself in to
	my table so many meals? Come, what's Agamemnon?

THERSITES	Thy commander, Achilles. Then tell me, Patroclus,
	what's Achilles?

PATROCLUS	Thy lord, Thersites: then tell me, I pray thee,
	what's thyself?

THERSITES	Thy knower, Patroclus: then tell me, Patroclus,
	what art thou?

PATROCLUS	Thou mayst tell that knowest.

ACHILLES	O, tell, tell.

THERSITES	I'll decline the whole question. Agamemnon commands
	Achilles; Achilles is my lord; I am Patroclus'
	knower, and Patroclus is a fool.

PATROCLUS	You rascal!

THERSITES	Peace, fool! I have not done.

ACHILLES	He is a privileged man. Proceed, Thersites.

THERSITES	Agamemnon is a fool; Achilles is a fool; Thersites
	is a fool, and, as aforesaid, Patroclus is a fool.

ACHILLES	Derive this; come.

THERSITES	Agamemnon is a fool to offer to command Achilles;
	Achilles is a fool to be commanded of Agamemnon;
	Thersites is a fool to serve such a fool, and
	Patroclus is a fool positive.

PATROCLUS	Why am I a fool?

THERSITES	Make that demand of the prover. It suffices me thou
	art. Look you, who comes here?

ACHILLES	Patroclus, I'll speak with nobody.
	Come in with me, Thersites.

	[Exit]

THERSITES	Here is such patchery, such juggling and such
	knavery! all the argument is a cuckold and a
	whore; a good quarrel to draw emulous factions
	and bleed to death upon. Now, the dry serpigo on
	the subject! and war and lechery confound all!

	[Exit]

	[Enter AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES, NESTOR, DIOMEDES, and AJAX]

AGAMEMNON	Where is Achilles?

PATROCLUS	Within his tent; but ill disposed, my lord.

AGAMEMNON	Let it be known to him that we are here.
	He shent our messengers; and we lay by
	Our appertainments, visiting of him:
	Let him be told so; lest perchance he think
	We dare not move the question of our place,
	Or know not what we are.

PATROCLUS	I shall say so to him.

	[Exit]

ULYSSES	We saw him at the opening of his tent:
	He is not sick.

AJAX	Yes, lion-sick, sick of proud heart: you may call it
	melancholy, if you will favour the man; but, by my
	head, 'tis pride: but why, why? let him show us the
	cause. A word, my lord.

	[Takes AGAMEMNON aside]

NESTOR	What moves Ajax thus to bay at him?

ULYSSES	Achilles hath inveigled his fool from him.

NESTOR	Who, Thersites?

ULYSSES	He.

NESTOR	Then will Ajax lack matter, if he have lost his argument.

ULYSSES	No, you see, he is his argument that has his
	argument, Achilles.

NESTOR	All the better; their fraction is more our wish than
	their faction: but it was a strong composure a fool
	could disunite.

ULYSSES	The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily
	untie. Here comes Patroclus.

	[Re-enter PATROCLUS]

NESTOR	No Achilles with him.

ULYSSES	The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy:
	his legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure.

PATROCLUS	Achilles bids me say, he is much sorry,
	If any thing more than your sport and pleasure
	Did move your greatness and this noble state
	To call upon him; he hopes it is no other
	But for your health and your digestion sake,
	And after-dinner's breath.

AGAMEMNON	Hear you, Patroclus:
	We are too well acquainted with these answers:
	But his evasion, wing'd thus swift with scorn,
	Cannot outfly our apprehensions.
	Much attribute he hath, and much the reason
	Why we ascribe it to him; yet all his virtues,
	Not virtuously on his own part beheld,
	Do in our eyes begin to lose their gloss,
	Yea, like fair fruit in an unwholesome dish,
	Are like to rot untasted. Go and tell him,
	We come to speak with him; and you shall not sin,
	If you do say we think him over-proud
	And under-honest, in self-assumption greater
	Than in the note of judgment; and worthier
	than himself
	Here tend the savage strangeness he puts on,
	Disguise the holy strength of their command,
	And underwrite in an observing kind
	His humorous predominance; yea, watch
	His pettish lunes, his ebbs, his flows, as if
	The passage and whole carriage of this action
	Rode on his tide. Go tell him this, and add,
	That if he overhold his price so much,
	We'll none of him; but let him, like an engine
	Not portable, lie under this report:
	'Bring action hither, this cannot go to war:
	A stirring dwarf we do allowance give
	Before a sleeping giant.' Tell him so.

PATROCLUS	I shall; and bring his answer presently.

	[Exit]

AGAMEMNON	In second voice we'll not be satisfied;
	We come to speak with him. Ulysses, enter you.

	[Exit ULYSSES]

AJAX	What is he more than another?

AGAMEMNON	No more than what he thinks he is.

AJAX	Is he so much? Do you not think he thinks himself a
	better man than I am?

AGAMEMNON	No question.

AJAX	Will you subscribe his thought, and say he is?

AGAMEMNON	No, noble Ajax; you are as strong, as valiant, as
	wise, no less noble, much more gentle, and altogether
	more tractable.

AJAX	Why should a man be proud? How doth pride grow? I
	know not what pride is.

AGAMEMNON	Your mind is the clearer, Ajax, and your virtues the
	fairer. He that is proud eats up himself: pride is
	his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle;
	and whatever praises itself but in the deed, devours
	the deed in the praise.

AJAX	I do hate a proud man, as I hate the engendering of toads.

NESTOR	Yet he loves himself: is't not strange?

	[Aside]

	[Re-enter ULYSSES]

ULYSSES	Achilles will not to the field to-morrow.

AGAMEMNON	What's his excuse?

ULYSSES	                  He doth rely on none,
	But carries on the stream of his dispose
	Without observance or respect of any,
	In will peculiar and in self-admission.

AGAMEMNON	Why will he not upon our fair request
	Untent his person and share the air with us?

ULYSSES	Things small as nothing, for request's sake only,
	He makes important: possess'd he is with greatness,
	And speaks not to himself but with a pride
	That quarrels at self-breath: imagined worth
	Holds in his blood such swoln and hot discourse
	That 'twixt his mental and his active parts
	Kingdom'd Achilles in commotion rages
	And batters down himself: what should I say?
	He is so plaguy proud that the death-tokens of it
	Cry 'No recovery.'

AGAMEMNON	                  Let Ajax go to him.
	Dear lord, go you and greet him in his tent:
	'Tis said he holds you well, and will be led
	At your request a little from himself.

ULYSSES	O Agamemnon, let it not be so!
	We'll consecrate the steps that Ajax makes
	When they go from Achilles: shall the proud lord
	That bastes his arrogance with his own seam
	And never suffers matter of the world
	Enter his thoughts, save such as do revolve
	And ruminate himself, shall he be worshipp'd
	Of that we hold an idol more than he?
	No, this thrice worthy and right valiant lord
	Must not so stale his palm, nobly acquired;
	Nor, by my will, assubjugate his merit,
	As amply titled as Achilles is,
	By going to Achilles:
	That were to enlard his fat already pride
	And add more coals to Cancer when he burns
	With entertaining great Hyperion.
	This lord go to him! Jupiter forbid,
	And say in thunder 'Achilles go to him.'

NESTOR	[Aside to DIOMEDES]  O, this is well; he rubs the
	vein of him.

DIOMEDES	[Aside to NESTOR]  And how his silence drinks up
	this applause!

AJAX	If I go to him, with my armed fist I'll pash him o'er the face.

AGAMEMNON	O, no, you shall not go.

AJAX	An a' be proud with me, I'll pheeze his pride:
	Let me go to him.

ULYSSES	Not for the worth that hangs upon our quarrel.

AJAX	A paltry, insolent fellow!

NESTOR	How he describes himself!

AJAX	Can he not be sociable?

ULYSSES	The raven chides blackness.

AJAX	I'll let his humours blood.

AGAMEMNON	He will be the physician that should be the patient.

AJAX	An all men were o' my mind,--

ULYSSES	Wit would be out of fashion.

AJAX	A' should not bear it so, a' should eat swords first:
	shall pride carry it?

NESTOR	An 'twould, you'ld carry half.

ULYSSES	A' would have ten shares.

AJAX	I will knead him; I'll make him supple.

NESTOR	He's not yet through warm: force him with praises:
	pour in, pour in; his ambition is dry.

ULYSSES	[To AGAMEMNON]  My lord, you feed too much on this dislike.

NESTOR	Our noble general, do not do so.

DIOMEDES	You must prepare to fight without Achilles.

ULYSSES	Why, 'tis this naming of him does him harm.
	Here is a man--but 'tis before his face;
	I will be silent.

NESTOR	                  Wherefore should you so?
	He is not emulous, as Achilles is.

ULYSSES	Know the whole world, he is as valiant.

AJAX	A whoreson dog, that shall pelter thus with us!
	Would he were a Trojan!

NESTOR	What a vice were it in Ajax now,--

ULYSSES	If he were proud,--

DIOMEDES	Or covetous of praise,--

ULYSSES	Ay, or surly borne,--

DIOMEDES	Or strange, or self-affected!

ULYSSES	Thank the heavens, lord, thou art of sweet composure;
	Praise him that got thee, she that gave thee suck:
	Famed be thy tutor, and thy parts of nature
	Thrice famed, beyond all erudition:
	But he that disciplined thy arms to fight,
	Let Mars divide eternity in twain,
	And give him half: and, for thy vigour,
	Bull-bearing Milo his addition yield
	To sinewy Ajax. I will not praise thy wisdom,
	Which, like a bourn, a pale, a shore, confines
	Thy spacious and dilated parts: here's Nestor;
	Instructed by the antiquary times,
	He must, he is, he cannot but be wise:
	Put pardon, father Nestor, were your days
	As green as Ajax' and your brain so temper'd,
	You should not have the eminence of him,
	But be as Ajax.

AJAX	                  Shall I call you father?

NESTOR	Ay, my good son.

DIOMEDES	                  Be ruled by him, Lord Ajax.

ULYSSES	There is no tarrying here; the hart Achilles
	Keeps thicket. Please it our great general
	To call together all his state of war;
	Fresh kings are come to Troy: to-morrow
	We must with all our main of power stand fast:
	And here's a lord,--come knights from east to west,
	And cull their flower, Ajax shall cope the best.

AGAMEMNON	Go we to council. Let Achilles sleep:
	Light boats sail swift, though greater hulks draw deep.

	[Exeunt]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT III



SCENE I	Troy. Priam's palace.


	[Enter a Servant and PANDARUS]

PANDARUS	Friend, you! pray you, a word: do not you follow
	the young Lord Paris?

Servant	Ay, sir, when he goes before me.

PANDARUS	You depend upon him, I mean?

Servant	Sir, I do depend upon the lord.

PANDARUS	You depend upon a noble gentleman; I must needs
	praise him.

Servant	The lord be praised!

PANDARUS	You know me, do you not?

Servant	Faith, sir, superficially.

PANDARUS	Friend, know me better; I am the Lord Pandarus.

Servant	I hope I shall know your honour better.

PANDARUS	I do desire it.

Servant	You are in the state of grace.

PANDARUS	Grace! not so, friend: honour and lordship are my titles.

	[Music within]

	What music is this?

Servant	I do but partly know, sir: it is music in parts.

PANDARUS	Know you the musicians?

Servant	Wholly, sir.

PANDARUS	Who play they to?

Servant	To the hearers, sir.

PANDARUS	At whose pleasure, friend

Servant	At mine, sir, and theirs that love music.

PANDARUS	Command, I mean, friend.

Servant	Who shall I command, sir?

PANDARUS	Friend, we understand not one another: I am too
	courtly and thou art too cunning. At whose request
	do these men play?

Servant	That's to 't indeed, sir: marry, sir, at the request
	of Paris my lord, who's there in person; with him,
	the mortal Venus, the heart-blood of beauty, love's
	invisible soul,--

PANDARUS	Who, my cousin Cressida?

Servant	No, sir, Helen: could you not find out that by her
	attributes?

PANDARUS	It should seem, fellow, that thou hast not seen the
	Lady Cressida. I come to speak with Paris from the
	Prince Troilus: I will make a complimental assault
	upon him, for my business seethes.

Servant	Sodden business! there's a stewed phrase indeed!

	[Enter PARIS and HELEN, attended]

PANDARUS	Fair be to you, my lord, and to all this fair
	company! fair desires, in all fair measure,
	fairly guide them! especially to you, fair queen!
	fair thoughts be your fair pillow!

HELEN	Dear lord, you are full of fair words.

PANDARUS	You speak your fair pleasure, sweet queen. Fair
	prince, here is good broken music.

PARIS	You have broke it, cousin: and, by my life, you
	shall make it whole again; you shall piece it out
	with a piece of your performance. Nell, he is full
	of harmony.

PANDARUS	Truly, lady, no.

HELEN	O, sir,--

PANDARUS	Rude, in sooth; in good sooth, very rude.

PARIS	Well said, my lord! well, you say so in fits.

PANDARUS	I have business to my lord, dear queen. My lord,
	will you vouchsafe me a word?

HELEN	Nay, this shall not hedge us out: we'll hear you
	sing, certainly.

PANDARUS	Well, sweet queen. you are pleasant with me. But,
	marry, thus, my lord: my dear lord and most esteemed
	friend, your brother Troilus,--

HELEN	My Lord Pandarus; honey-sweet lord,--

PANDARUS	Go to, sweet queen, to go:--commends himself most
	affectionately to you,--

HELEN	You shall not bob us out of our melody: if you do,
	our melancholy upon your head!

PANDARUS	Sweet queen, sweet queen! that's a sweet queen, i' faith.

HELEN	And to make a sweet lady sad is a sour offence.

PANDARUS	Nay, that shall not serve your turn; that shall not,
	in truth, la. Nay, I care not for such words; no,
	no. And, my lord, he desires you, that if the king
	call for him at supper, you will make his excuse.

HELEN	My Lord Pandarus,--

PANDARUS	What says my sweet queen, my very very sweet queen?

PARIS	What exploit's in hand? where sups he to-night?

HELEN	Nay, but, my lord,--

PANDARUS	What says my sweet queen? My cousin will fall out
	with you. You must not know where he sups.

PARIS	I'll lay my life, with my disposer Cressida.

PANDARUS	No, no, no such matter; you are wide: come, your
	disposer is sick.

PARIS	Well, I'll make excuse.

PANDARUS	Ay, good my lord. Why should you say Cressida? no,
	your poor disposer's sick.

PARIS	I spy.

PANDARUS	You spy! what do you spy? Come, give me an
	instrument. Now, sweet queen.

HELEN	Why, this is kindly done.

PANDARUS	My niece is horribly in love with a thing you have,
	sweet queen.

HELEN	She shall have it, my lord, if it be not my lord Paris.

PANDARUS	He! no, she'll none of him; they two are twain.

HELEN	Falling in, after falling out, may make them three.

PANDARUS	Come, come, I'll hear no more of this; I'll sing
	you a song now.

HELEN	Ay, ay, prithee now. By my troth, sweet lord, thou
	hast a fine forehead.

PANDARUS	Ay, you may, you may.

HELEN	Let thy song be love: this love will undo us all.
	O Cupid, Cupid, Cupid!

PANDARUS	Love! ay, that it shall, i' faith.

PARIS	Ay, good now, love, love, nothing but love.

PANDARUS	In good troth, it begins so.

	[Sings]

	Love, love, nothing but love, still more!
	For, O, love's bow
	Shoots buck and doe:
	The shaft confounds,
	Not that it wounds,
	But tickles still the sore.
	These lovers cry Oh! oh! they die!
	Yet that which seems the wound to kill,
	Doth turn oh! oh! to ha! ha! he!
	So dying love lives still:
	Oh! oh! a while, but ha! ha! ha!
	Oh! oh! groans out for ha! ha! ha!
	Heigh-ho!

HELEN	In love, i' faith, to the very tip of the nose.

PARIS	He eats nothing but doves, love, and that breeds hot
	blood, and hot blood begets hot thoughts, and hot
	thoughts beget hot deeds, and hot deeds is love.

PANDARUS	Is this the generation of love? hot blood, hot
	thoughts, and hot deeds? Why, they are vipers:
	is love a generation of vipers? Sweet lord, who's
	a-field to-day?

PARIS	Hector, Deiphobus, Helenus, Antenor, and all the
	gallantry of Troy: I  would fain have armed to-day,
	but my Nell would not have it so. How chance my
	brother Troilus went not?

HELEN	He hangs the lip at something: you know all, Lord Pandarus.

PANDARUS	Not I, honey-sweet queen. I long to hear how they
	sped to-day. You'll remember your brother's excuse?

PARIS	To a hair.

PANDARUS	Farewell, sweet queen.

HELEN	Commend me to your niece.

PANDARUS	I will, sweet queen.

	[Exit]

	[A retreat sounded]

PARIS	They're come from field: let us to Priam's hall,
	To greet the warriors. Sweet Helen, I must woo you
	To help unarm our Hector: his stubborn buckles,
	With these your white enchanting fingers touch'd,
	Shall more obey than to the edge of steel
	Or force of Greekish sinews; you shall do more
	Than all the island kings,--disarm great Hector.

HELEN	'Twill make us proud to be his servant, Paris;
	Yea, what he shall receive of us in duty
	Gives us more palm in beauty than we have,
	Yea, overshines ourself.

PARIS	Sweet, above thought I love thee.

	[Exeunt]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT III



SCENE II	The same. Pandarus' orchard.


	[Enter PANDARUS and Troilus's Boy, meeting]

PANDARUS	How now! where's thy master? at my cousin
	Cressida's?

Boy	No, sir; he stays for you to conduct him thither.

PANDARUS	O, here he comes.

	[Enter TROILUS]

	How now, how now!

TROILUS	Sirrah, walk off.

	[Exit Boy]

PANDARUS	Have you seen my cousin?

TROILUS	No, Pandarus: I stalk about her door,
	Like a strange soul upon the Stygian banks
	Staying for waftage. O, be thou my Charon,
	And give me swift transportance to those fields
	Where I may wallow in the lily-beds
	Proposed for the deserver! O gentle Pandarus,
	From Cupid's shoulder pluck his painted wings
	And fly with me to Cressid!

PANDARUS	Walk here i' the orchard, I'll bring her straight.

	[Exit]

TROILUS	I am giddy; expectation whirls me round.
	The imaginary relish is so sweet
	That it enchants my sense: what will it be,
	When that the watery palate tastes indeed
	Love's thrice repured nectar? death, I fear me,
	Swooning destruction, or some joy too fine,
	Too subtle-potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness,
	For the capacity of my ruder powers:
	I fear it much; and I do fear besides,
	That I shall lose distinction in my joys;
	As doth a battle, when they charge on heaps
	The enemy flying.

	[Re-enter PANDARUS]

PANDARUS	She's making her ready, she'll come straight: you
	must be witty now. She does so blush, and fetches
	her wind so short, as if she were frayed with a
	sprite: I'll fetch her. It is the prettiest
	villain: she fetches her breath as short as a
	new-ta'en sparrow.

	[Exit]

TROILUS	Even such a passion doth embrace my bosom:
	My heart beats thicker than a feverous pulse;
	And all my powers do their bestowing lose,
	Like vassalage at unawares encountering
	The eye of majesty.

	[Re-enter PANDARUS with CRESSIDA]

PANDARUS	Come, come, what need you blush? shame's a baby.
	Here she is now: swear the oaths now to her that
	you have sworn to me. What, are you gone again?
	you must be watched ere you be made tame, must you?
	Come your ways, come your ways; an you draw backward,
	we'll put you i' the fills. Why do you not speak to
	her? Come, draw this curtain, and let's see your
	picture. Alas the day, how loath you are to offend
	daylight! an 'twere dark, you'ld close sooner.
	So, so; rub on, and kiss the mistress. How now!
	a kiss in fee-farm! build there, carpenter; the air
	is sweet. Nay, you shall fight your hearts out ere
	I part you. The falcon as the tercel, for all the
	ducks i' the river: go to, go to.

TROILUS	You have bereft me of all words, lady.

PANDARUS	Words pay no debts, give her deeds: but she'll
	bereave you o' the deeds too, if she call your
	activity in question. What, billing again? Here's
	'In witness whereof the parties interchangeably'--
	Come in, come in: I'll go get a fire.

	[Exit]

CRESSIDA	Will you walk in, my lord?

TROILUS	O Cressida, how often have I wished me thus!

CRESSIDA	Wished, my lord! The gods grant,--O my lord!

TROILUS	What should they grant? what makes this pretty
	abruption? What too curious dreg espies my sweet
	lady in the fountain of our love?

CRESSIDA	More dregs than water, if my fears have eyes.

TROILUS	Fears make devils of cherubims; they never see truly.

CRESSIDA	Blind fear, that seeing reason leads, finds safer
	footing than blind reason stumbling without fear: to
	fear the worst oft cures the worse.

TROILUS	O, let my lady apprehend no fear: in all Cupid's
	pageant there is presented no monster.

CRESSIDA	Nor nothing monstrous neither?

TROILUS	Nothing, but our undertakings; when we vow to weep
	seas, live in fire, eat rocks, tame tigers; thinking
	it harder for our mistress to devise imposition
	enough than for us to undergo any difficulty imposed.
	This is the monstruosity in love, lady, that the will
	is infinite and the execution confined, that the
	desire is boundless and the act a slave to limit.

CRESSIDA	They say all lovers swear more performance than they
	are able and yet reserve an ability that they never
	perform, vowing more than the perfection of ten and
	discharging less than the tenth part of one. They
	that have the voice of lions and the act of hares,
	are they not monsters?

TROILUS	Are there such? such are not we: praise us as we
	are tasted, allow us as we prove; our head shall go
	bare till merit crown it: no perfection in reversion
	shall have a praise in present: we will not name
	desert before his birth, and, being born, his addition
	shall be humble. Few words to fair faith: Troilus
	shall be such to Cressid as what envy can say worst
	shall be a mock for his truth, and what truth can
	speak truest not truer than Troilus.

CRESSIDA	Will you walk in, my lord?

	[Re-enter PANDARUS]

PANDARUS	What, blushing still? have you not done talking yet?

CRESSIDA	Well, uncle, what folly I commit, I dedicate to you.

PANDARUS	I thank you for that: if my lord get a boy of you,
	you'll give him me. Be true to my lord: if he
	flinch, chide me for it.

TROILUS	You know now your hostages; your uncle's word and my
	firm faith.

PANDARUS	Nay, I'll give my word for her too: our kindred,
	though they be long ere they are wooed, they are
	constant being won: they are burs, I can tell you;
	they'll stick where they are thrown.

CRESSIDA	Boldness comes to me now, and brings me heart.
	Prince Troilus, I have loved you night and day
	For many weary months.

TROILUS	Why was my Cressid then so hard to win?

CRESSIDA	Hard to seem won: but I was won, my lord,
	With the first glance that ever--pardon me--
	If I confess much, you will play the tyrant.
	I love you now; but not, till now, so much
	But I might master it: in faith, I lie;
	My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown
	Too headstrong for their mother. See, we fools!
	Why have I blabb'd? who shall be true to us,
	When we are so unsecret to ourselves?
	But, though I loved you well, I woo'd you not;
	And yet, good faith, I wish'd myself a man,
	Or that we women had men's privilege
	Of speaking first. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue,
	For in this rapture I shall surely speak
	The thing I shall repent. See, see, your silence,
	Cunning in dumbness, from my weakness draws
	My very soul of counsel! stop my mouth.

TROILUS	And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence.

PANDARUS	Pretty, i' faith.

CRESSIDA	My lord, I do beseech you, pardon me;
	'Twas not my purpose, thus to beg a kiss:
	I am ashamed. O heavens! what have I done?
	For this time will I take my leave, my lord.

TROILUS	Your leave, sweet Cressid!

PANDARUS	Leave! an you take leave till to-morrow morning,--

CRESSIDA	Pray you, content you.

TROILUS	What offends you, lady?

CRESSIDA	Sir, mine own company.

TROILUS	You cannot shun Yourself.

CRESSIDA	        Let me go and try:
	I have a kind of self resides with you;
	But an unkind self, that itself will leave,
	To be another's fool. I would be gone:
	Where is my wit? I know not what I speak.

TROILUS	Well know they what they speak that speak so wisely.

CRESSIDA	Perchance, my lord, I show more craft than love;
	And fell so roundly to a large confession,
	To angle for your thoughts: but you are wise,
	Or else you love not, for to be wise and love
	Exceeds man's might; that dwells with gods above.

TROILUS	O that I thought it could be in a woman--
	As, if it can, I will presume in you--
	To feed for aye her ramp and flames of love;
	To keep her constancy in plight and youth,
	Outliving beauty's outward, with a mind
	That doth renew swifter than blood decays!
	Or that persuasion could but thus convince me,
	That my integrity and truth to you
	Might be affronted with the match and weight
	Of such a winnow'd purity in love;
	How were I then uplifted! but, alas!
	I am as true as truth's simplicity
	And simpler than the infancy of truth.

CRESSIDA	In that I'll war with you.

TROILUS	O virtuous fight,
	When right with right wars who shall be most right!
	True swains in love shall in the world to come
	Approve their truths by Troilus: when their rhymes,
	Full of protest, of oath and big compare,
	Want similes, truth tired with iteration,
	As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,
	As sun to day, as turtle to her mate,
	As iron to adamant, as earth to the centre,
	Yet, after all comparisons of truth,
	As truth's authentic author to be cited,
	'As true as Troilus' shall crown up the verse,
	And sanctify the numbers.

CRESSIDA	Prophet may you be!
	If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,
	When time is old and hath forgot itself,
	When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,
	And blind oblivion swallow'd cities up,
	And mighty states characterless are grated
	To dusty nothing, yet let memory,
	From false to false, among false maids in love,
	Upbraid my falsehood! when they've said 'as false
	As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth,
	As fox to lamb, as wolf to heifer's calf,
	Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son,'
	'Yea,' let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood,
	'As false as Cressid.'

PANDARUS	Go to, a bargain made: seal it, seal it; I'll be the
	witness. Here I hold your hand, here my cousin's.
	If ever you prove false one to another, since I have
	taken such pains to bring you together, let all
	pitiful goers-between be called to the world's end
	after my name; call them all Pandars; let all
	constant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids,
	and all brokers-between Pandars! say, amen.

TROILUS	Amen.

CRESSIDA	Amen.

PANDARUS	Amen. Whereupon I will show you a chamber with a
	bed; which bed, because it shall not speak of your
	pretty encounters, press it to death: away!
	And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here
	Bed, chamber, Pandar to provide this gear!

	[Exeunt]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT III



SCENE III	The Grecian camp. Before Achilles' tent.


	[Enter AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES, DIOMEDES, NESTOR, AJAX,
	MENELAUS, and CALCHAS]

CALCHAS	Now, princes, for the service I have done you,
	The advantage of the time prompts me aloud
	To call for recompense. Appear it to your mind
	That, through the sight I bear in things to love,
	I have abandon'd Troy, left my possession,
	Incurr'd a traitor's name; exposed myself,
	From certain and possess'd conveniences,
	To doubtful fortunes; sequestering from me all
	That time, acquaintance, custom and condition
	Made tame and most familiar to my nature,
	And here, to do you service, am become
	As new into the world, strange, unacquainted:
	I do beseech you, as in way of taste,
	To give me now a little benefit,
	Out of those many register'd in promise,
	Which, you say, live to come in my behalf.

AGAMEMNON	What wouldst thou of us, Trojan? make demand.

CALCHAS	You have a Trojan prisoner, call'd Antenor,
	Yesterday took: Troy holds him very dear.
	Oft have you--often have you thanks therefore--
	Desired my Cressid in right great exchange,
	Whom Troy hath still denied: but this Antenor,
	I know, is such a wrest in their affairs
	That their negotiations all must slack,
	Wanting his manage; and they will almost
	Give us a prince of blood, a son of Priam,
	In change of him: let him be sent, great princes,
	And he shall buy my daughter; and her presence
	Shall quite strike off all service I have done,
	In most accepted pain.

AGAMEMNON	Let Diomedes bear him,
	And bring us Cressid hither: Calchas shall have
	What he requests of us. Good Diomed,
	Furnish you fairly for this interchange:
	Withal bring word if Hector will to-morrow
	Be answer'd in his challenge: Ajax is ready.

DIOMEDES	This shall I undertake; and 'tis a burden
	Which I am proud to bear.

	[Exeunt DIOMEDES and CALCHAS]

	[Enter ACHILLES and PATROCLUS, before their tent]

ULYSSES	Achilles stands i' the entrance of his tent:
	Please it our general to pass strangely by him,
	As if he were forgot; and, princes all,
	Lay negligent and loose regard upon him:
	I will come last. 'Tis like he'll question me
	Why such unplausive eyes are bent on him:
	If so, I have derision medicinable,
	To use between your strangeness and his pride,
	Which his own will shall have desire to drink:
	It may be good: pride hath no other glass
	To show itself but pride, for supple knees
	Feed arrogance and are the proud man's fees.

AGAMEMNON	We'll execute your purpose, and put on
	A form of strangeness as we pass along:
	So do each lord, and either greet him not,
	Or else disdainfully, which shall shake him more
	Than if not look'd on. I will lead the way.

ACHILLES	What, comes the general to speak with me?
	You know my mind, I'll fight no more 'gainst Troy.

AGAMEMNON	What says Achilles? would he aught with us?

NESTOR	Would you, my lord, aught with the general?

ACHILLES	No.

NESTOR	Nothing, my lord.

AGAMEMNON	The better.

	[Exeunt AGAMEMNON and NESTOR]

ACHILLES	Good day, good day.

MENELAUS	How do you? how do you?

	[Exit]

ACHILLES	What, does the cuckold scorn me?

AJAX	How now, Patroclus!

ACHILLES	Good morrow, Ajax.

AJAX	Ha?

ACHILLES	Good morrow.

AJAX	Ay, and good next day too.

	[Exit]

ACHILLES	What mean these fellows? Know they not Achilles?

PATROCLUS	They pass by strangely: they were used to bend
	To send their smiles before them to Achilles;
	To come as humbly as they used to creep
	To holy altars.

ACHILLES	                  What, am I poor of late?
	'Tis certain, greatness, once fall'n out with fortune,
	Must fall out with men too: what the declined is
	He shall as soon read in the eyes of others
	As feel in his own fall; for men, like butterflies,
	Show not their mealy wings but to the summer,
	And not a man, for being simply man,
	Hath any honour, but honour for those honours
	That are without him, as place, riches, favour,
	Prizes of accident as oft as merit:
	Which when they fall, as being slippery standers,
	The love that lean'd on them as slippery too,
	Do one pluck down another and together
	Die in the fall. But 'tis not so with me:
	Fortune and I are friends: I do enjoy
	At ample point all that I did possess,
	Save these men's looks; who do, methinks, find out
	Something not worth in me such rich beholding
	As they have often given. Here is Ulysses;
	I'll interrupt his reading.
	How now Ulysses!

ULYSSES	                  Now, great Thetis' son!

ACHILLES	What are you reading?

ULYSSES	A strange fellow here
	Writes me: 'That man, how dearly ever parted,
	How much in having, or without or in,
	Cannot make boast to have that which he hath,
	Nor feels not what he owes, but by reflection;
	As when his virtues shining upon others
	Heat them and they retort that heat again
	To the first giver.'

ACHILLES	This is not strange, Ulysses.
	The beauty that is borne here in the face
	The bearer knows not, but commends itself
	To others' eyes; nor doth the eye itself,
	That most pure spirit of sense, behold itself,
	Not going from itself; but eye to eye opposed
	Salutes each other with each other's form;
	For speculation turns not to itself,
	Till it hath travell'd and is mirror'd there
	Where it may see itself. This is not strange at all.

ULYSSES	I do not strain at the position,--
	It is familiar,--but at the author's drift;
	Who, in his circumstance, expressly proves
	That no man is the lord of any thing,
	Though in and of him there be much consisting,
	Till he communicate his parts to others:
	Nor doth he of himself know them for aught
	Till he behold them form'd in the applause
	Where they're extended; who, like an arch,
	reverberates
	The voice again, or, like a gate of steel
	Fronting the sun, receives and renders back
	His figure and his heat.  I was much wrapt in this;
	And apprehended here immediately
	The unknown Ajax.
	Heavens, what a man is there! a very horse,
	That has he knows not what. Nature, what things there are
	Most abject in regard and dear in use!
	What things again most dear in the esteem
	And poor in worth! Now shall we see to-morrow--
	An act that very chance doth throw upon him--
	Ajax renown'd. O heavens, what some men do,
	While some men leave to do!
	How some men creep in skittish fortune's hall,
	Whiles others play the idiots in her eyes!
	How one man eats into another's pride,
	While pride is fasting in his wantonness!
	To see these Grecian lords!--why, even already
	They clap the lubber Ajax on the shoulder,
	As if his foot were on brave Hector's breast
	And great Troy shrieking.

ACHILLES	I do believe it; for they pass'd by me
	As misers do by beggars, neither gave to me
	Good word nor look: what, are my deeds forgot?

ULYSSES	Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
	Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
	A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:
	Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour'd
	As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
	As done: perseverance, dear my lord,
	Keeps honour bright: to have done is to hang
	Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
	In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;
	For honour travels in a strait so narrow,
	Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path;
	For emulation hath a thousand sons
	That one by one pursue: if you give way,
	Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
	Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by
	And leave you hindmost;
	Or like a gallant horse fall'n in first rank,
	Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
	O'er-run and trampled on: then what they do in present,
	Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours;
	For time is like a fashionable host
	That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
	And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly,
	Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles,
	And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not
	virtue seek
	Remuneration for the thing it was;
	For beauty, wit,
	High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
	Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
	To envious and calumniating time.
	One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,
	That all with one consent praise new-born gawds,
	Though they are made and moulded of things past,
	And give to dust that is a little gilt
	More laud than gilt o'er-dusted.
	The present eye praises the present object.
	Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,
	That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax;
	Since things in motion sooner catch the eye
	Than what not stirs. The cry went once on thee,
	And still it might, and yet it may again,
	If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive
	And case thy reputation in thy tent;
	Whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late,
	Made emulous missions 'mongst the gods themselves
	And drave great Mars to faction.

ACHILLES	Of this my privacy
	I have strong reasons.

ULYSSES	But 'gainst your privacy
	The reasons are more potent and heroical:
	'Tis known, Achilles, that you are in love
	With one of Priam's daughters.

ACHILLES	Ha! known!

ULYSSES	Is that a wonder?
	The providence that's in a watchful state
	Knows almost every grain of Plutus' gold,
	Finds bottom in the uncomprehensive deeps,
	Keeps place with thought and almost, like the gods,
	Does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles.
	There is a mystery--with whom relation
	Durst never meddle--in the soul of state;
	Which hath an operation more divine
	Than breath or pen can give expressure to:
	All the commerce that you have had with Troy
	As perfectly is ours as yours, my lord;
	And better would it fit Achilles much
	To throw down Hector than Polyxena:
	But it must grieve young Pyrrhus now at home,
	When fame shall in our islands sound her trump,
	And all the Greekish girls shall tripping sing,
	'Great Hector's sister did Achilles win,
	But our great Ajax bravely beat down him.'
	Farewell, my lord: I as your lover speak;
	The fool slides o'er the ice that you should break.

	[Exit]

PATROCLUS	To this effect, Achilles, have I moved you:
	A woman impudent and mannish grown
	Is not more loathed than an effeminate man
	In time of action. I stand condemn'd for this;
	They think my little stomach to the war
	And your great love to me restrains you thus:
	Sweet, rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid
	Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold,
	And, like a dew-drop from the lion's mane,
	Be shook to air.

ACHILLES	                  Shall Ajax fight with Hector?

PATROCLUS	Ay, and perhaps receive much honour by him.

ACHILLES	I see my reputation is at stake
	My fame is shrewdly gored.

PATROCLUS	O, then, beware;
	Those wounds heal ill that men do give themselves:
	Omission to do what is necessary
	Seals a commission to a blank of danger;
	And danger, like an ague, subtly taints
	Even then when we sit idly in the sun.

ACHILLES	Go call Thersites hither, sweet Patroclus:
	I'll send the fool to Ajax and desire him
	To invite the Trojan lords after the combat
	To see us here unarm'd: I have a woman's longing,
	An appetite that I am sick withal,
	To see great Hector in his weeds of peace,
	To talk with him and to behold his visage,
	Even to my full of view.

	[Enter THERSITES]

		   A labour saved!

THERSITES	A wonder!

ACHILLES	What?

THERSITES	Ajax goes up and down the field, asking for himself.

ACHILLES	How so?

THERSITES	He must fight singly to-morrow with Hector, and is so
	prophetically proud of an heroical cudgelling that he
	raves in saying nothing.

ACHILLES	How can that be?

THERSITES	Why, he stalks up and down like a peacock,--a stride
	and a stand: ruminates like an hostess that hath no
	arithmetic but her brain to set down her reckoning:
	bites his lip with a politic regard, as who should
	say 'There were wit in this head, an 'twould out;'
	and so there is, but it lies as coldly in him as fire
	in a flint, which will not show without knocking.
	The man's undone forever; for if Hector break not his
	neck i' the combat, he'll break 't himself in
	vain-glory. He knows not me: I said 'Good morrow,
	Ajax;' and he replies 'Thanks, Agamemnon.' What think
	you of this man that takes me for the general? He's
	grown a very land-fish, language-less, a monster.
	A plague of opinion! a man may wear it on both
	sides, like a leather jerkin.

ACHILLES	Thou must be my ambassador to him, Thersites.

THERSITES	Who, I? why, he'll answer nobody; he professes not
	answering: speaking is for beggars; he wears his
	tongue in's arms. I will put on his presence: let
	Patroclus make demands to me, you shall see the
	pageant of Ajax.

ACHILLES	To him, Patroclus; tell him I humbly desire the
	valiant Ajax to invite the most valorous Hector
	to come unarmed to my tent, and to procure
	safe-conduct for his person of the magnanimous
	and most illustrious six-or-seven-times-honoured
	captain-general of the Grecian army, Agamemnon,
	et cetera. Do this.

PATROCLUS	Jove bless great Ajax!

THERSITES	Hum!

PATROCLUS	I come from the worthy Achilles,--

THERSITES	Ha!

PATROCLUS	Who most humbly desires you to invite Hector to his tent,--

THERSITES	Hum!

PATROCLUS	And to procure safe-conduct from Agamemnon.

THERSITES	Agamemnon!

PATROCLUS	Ay, my lord.

THERSITES	Ha!

PATROCLUS	What say you to't?

THERSITES	God b' wi' you, with all my heart.

PATROCLUS	Your answer, sir.

THERSITES	If to-morrow be a fair day, by eleven o'clock it will
	go one way or other: howsoever, he shall pay for me
	ere he has me.

PATROCLUS	Your answer, sir.

THERSITES	Fare you well, with all my heart.

ACHILLES	Why, but he is not in this tune, is he?

THERSITES	No, but he's out o' tune thus. What music will be in
	him when Hector has knocked out his brains, I know
	not; but, I am sure, none, unless the fiddler Apollo
	get his sinews to make catlings on.

ACHILLES	Come, thou shalt bear a letter to him straight.

THERSITES	Let me bear another to his horse; for that's the more
	capable creature.

ACHILLES	My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr'd;
	And I myself see not the bottom of it.

	[Exeunt ACHILLES and PATROCLUS]

THERSITES	Would the fountain of your mind were clear again,
	that I might water an ass at it! I had rather be a
	tick in a sheep than such a valiant ignorance.

	[Exit]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT IV



SCENE I	Troy. A street.


	[Enter, from one side, AENEAS, and Servant with a
	torch; from the other, PARIS, DEIPHOBUS, ANTENOR,
	DIOMEDES, and others, with torches]

PARIS	See, ho! who is that there?

DEIPHOBUS	It is the Lord AEneas.

AENEAS	Is the prince there in person?
	Had I so good occasion to lie long
	As you, prince Paris, nothing but heavenly business
	Should rob my bed-mate of my company.

DIOMEDES	That's my mind too. Good morrow, Lord AEneas.

PARIS	A valiant Greek, AEneas,--take his hand,--
	Witness the process of your speech, wherein
	You told how Diomed, a whole week by days,
	Did haunt you in the field.

AENEAS	Health to you, valiant sir,
	During all question of the gentle truce;
	But when I meet you arm'd, as black defiance
	As heart can think or courage execute.

DIOMEDES	The one and other Diomed embraces.
	Our bloods are now in calm; and, so long, health!
	But when contention and occasion meet,
	By Jove, I'll play the hunter for thy life
	With all my force, pursuit and policy.

AENEAS	And thou shalt hunt a lion, that will fly
	With his face backward. In humane gentleness,
	Welcome to Troy! now, by Anchises' life,
	Welcome, indeed! By Venus' hand I swear,
	No man alive can love in such a sort
	The thing he means to kill more excellently.

DIOMEDES	We sympathize: Jove, let AEneas live,
	If to my sword his fate be not the glory,
	A thousand complete courses of the sun!
	But, in mine emulous honour, let him die,
	With every joint a wound, and that to-morrow!

AENEAS	We know each other well.

DIOMEDES	We do; and long to know each other worse.

PARIS	This is the most despiteful gentle greeting,
	The noblest hateful love, that e'er I heard of.
	What business, lord, so early?

AENEAS	I was sent for to the king; but why, I know not.

PARIS	His purpose meets you: 'twas to bring this Greek
	To Calchas' house, and there to render him,
	For the enfreed Antenor, the fair Cressid:
	Let's have your company, or, if you please,
	Haste there before us: I constantly do think--
	Or rather, call my thought a certain knowledge--
	My brother Troilus lodges there to-night:
	Rouse him and give him note of our approach.
	With the whole quality wherefore: I fear
	We shall be much unwelcome.

AENEAS	That I assure you:
	Troilus had rather Troy were borne to Greece
	Than Cressid borne from Troy.

PARIS	There is no help;
	The bitter disposition of the time
	Will have it so. On, lord; we'll follow you.

AENEAS	Good morrow, all.

	[Exit with Servant]

PARIS	And tell me, noble Diomed, faith, tell me true,
	Even in the soul of sound good-fellowship,
	Who, in your thoughts, merits fair Helen best,
	Myself or Menelaus?

DIOMEDES	Both alike:
	He merits well to have her, that doth seek her,
	Not making any scruple of her soilure,
	With such a hell of pain and world of charge,
	And you as well to keep her, that defend her,
	Not palating the taste of her dishonour,
	With such a costly loss of wealth and friends:
	He, like a puling cuckold, would drink up
	The lees and dregs of a flat tamed piece;
	You, like a lecher, out of whorish loins
	Are pleased to breed out your inheritors:
	Both merits poised, each weighs nor less nor more;
	But he as he, the heavier for a whore.

PARIS	You are too bitter to your countrywoman.

DIOMEDES	She's bitter to her country: hear me, Paris:
	For every false drop in her bawdy veins
	A Grecian's life hath sunk; for every scruple
	Of her contaminated carrion weight,
	A Trojan hath been slain: since she could speak,
	She hath not given so many good words breath
	As for her Greeks and Trojans suffer'd death.

PARIS	Fair Diomed, you do as chapmen do,
	Dispraise the thing that you desire to buy:
	But we in silence hold this virtue well,
	We'll but commend what we intend to sell.
	Here lies our way.

	[Exeunt]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT IV



SCENE II	The same. Court of Pandarus' house.


	[Enter TROILUS and CRESSIDA]

TROILUS	Dear, trouble not yourself: the morn is cold.

CRESSIDA	Then, sweet my lord, I'll call mine uncle down;
	He shall unbolt the gates.

TROILUS	Trouble him not;
	To bed, to bed: sleep kill those pretty eyes,
	And give as soft attachment to thy senses
	As infants' empty of all thought!

CRESSIDA	Good morrow, then.

TROILUS	I prithee now, to bed.

CRESSIDA	Are you a-weary of me?

TROILUS	O Cressida! but that the busy day,
	Waked by the lark, hath roused the ribald crows,
	And dreaming night will hide our joys no longer,
	I would not from thee.

CRESSIDA	Night hath been too brief.

TROILUS	Beshrew the witch! with venomous wights she stays
	As tediously as hell, but flies the grasps of love
	With wings more momentary-swift than thought.
	You will catch cold, and curse me.

CRESSIDA	Prithee, tarry:
	You men will never tarry.
	O foolish Cressid! I might have still held off,
	And then you would have tarried. Hark!
	there's one up.

PANDARUS	[Within]  What, 's all the doors open here?

TROILUS	It is your uncle.

CRESSIDA	A pestilence on him! now will he be mocking:
	I shall have such a life!

	[Enter PANDARUS]

PANDARUS	How now, how now! how go maidenheads? Here, you
	maid! where's my cousin Cressid?

CRESSIDA	Go hang yourself, you naughty mocking uncle!
	You bring me to do, and then you flout me too.

PANDARUS	To do what? to do what? let her say
	what: what have I brought you to do?

CRESSIDA	Come, come, beshrew your heart! you'll ne'er be good,
	Nor suffer others.

PANDARUS	Ha! ha! Alas, poor wretch! ah, poor capocchia!
	hast not slept to-night? would he not, a naughty
	man, let it sleep? a bugbear take him!

CRESSIDA	Did not I tell you? Would he were knock'd i' the head!

	[Knocking within]

	Who's that at door? good uncle, go and see.
	My lord, come you again into my chamber:
	You smile and mock me, as if I meant naughtily.

TROILUS	Ha, ha!

CRESSIDA	Come, you are deceived, I think of no such thing.

	[Knocking within]

	How earnestly they knock! Pray you, come in:
	I would not for half Troy have you seen here.

	[Exeunt TROILUS and CRESSIDA]

PANDARUS	Who's there? what's the matter? will you beat
	down the door? How now! what's the matter?

	[Enter AENEAS]

AENEAS	Good morrow, lord, good morrow.

PANDARUS	Who's there? my Lord AEneas! By my troth,
	I knew you not: what news with you so early?

AENEAS	Is not Prince Troilus here?

PANDARUS	Here! what should he do here?

AENEAS	Come, he is here, my lord; do not deny him:
	It doth import him much to speak with me.

PANDARUS	Is he here, say you? 'tis more than I know, I'll
	be sworn: for my own part, I came in late. What
	should he do here?

AENEAS	Who!--nay, then: come, come, you'll do him wrong
	ere you're ware: you'll be so true to him, to be
	false to him: do not you know of him, but yet go
	fetch him hither; go.

	[Re-enter TROILUS]

TROILUS	How now! what's the matter?

AENEAS	My lord, I scarce have leisure to salute you,
	My matter is so rash: there is at hand
	Paris your brother, and Deiphobus,
	The Grecian Diomed, and our Antenor
	Deliver'd to us; and for him forthwith,
	Ere the first sacrifice, within this hour,
	We must give up to Diomedes' hand
	The Lady Cressida.

TROILUS	                  Is it so concluded?

AENEAS	By Priam and the general state of Troy:
	They are at hand and ready to effect it.

TROILUS	How my achievements mock me!
	I will go meet them: and, my Lord AEneas,
	We met by chance; you did not find me here.

AENEAS	Good, good, my lord; the secrets of nature
	Have not more gift in taciturnity.

	[Exeunt TROILUS and AENEAS]

PANDARUS	Is't possible? no sooner got but lost? The devil
	take Antenor! the young prince will go mad: a
	plague upon Antenor! I would they had broke 's neck!

	[Re-enter CRESSIDA]

CRESSIDA	How now! what's the matter? who was here?

PANDARUS	Ah, ah!

CRESSIDA	Why sigh you so profoundly? where's my lord? gone!
	Tell me, sweet uncle, what's the matter?

PANDARUS	Would I were as deep under the earth as I am above!

CRESSIDA	O the gods! what's the matter?

PANDARUS	Prithee, get thee in: would thou hadst ne'er been
	born! I knew thou wouldst be his death. O, poor
	gentleman! A plague upon Antenor!

CRESSIDA	Good uncle, I beseech you, on my knees! beseech you,
	what's the matter?

PANDARUS	Thou must be gone, wench, thou must be gone; thou
	art changed for Antenor: thou must to thy father,
	and be gone from Troilus: 'twill be his death;
	'twill be his bane; he cannot bear it.

CRESSIDA	O you immortal gods! I will not go.

PANDARUS	Thou must.

CRESSIDA	I will not, uncle: I have forgot my father;
	I know no touch of consanguinity;
	No kin no love, no blood, no soul so near me
	As the sweet Troilus. O you gods divine!
	Make Cressid's name the very crown of falsehood,
	If ever she leave Troilus! Time, force, and death,
	Do to this body what extremes you can;
	But the strong base and building of my love
	Is as the very centre of the earth,
	Drawing all things to it. I'll go in and weep,--

PANDARUS	Do, do.

CRESSIDA	Tear my bright hair and scratch my praised cheeks,
	Crack my clear voice with sobs and break my heart
	With sounding Troilus. I will not go from Troy.

	[Exeunt]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT IV



SCENE III	The same. Street before Pandarus' house.


	[Enter PARIS, TROILUS, AENEAS, DEIPHOBUS, ANTENOR,
	and DIOMEDES]

PARIS	It is great morning, and the hour prefix'd
	Of her delivery to this valiant Greek
	Comes fast upon. Good my brother Troilus,
	Tell you the lady what she is to do,
	And haste her to the purpose.

TROILUS	Walk into her house;
	I'll bring her to the Grecian presently:
	And to his hand when I deliver her,
	Think it an altar, and thy brother Troilus
	A priest there offering to it his own heart.

	[Exit]

PARIS	I know what 'tis to love;
	And would, as I shall pity, I could help!
	Please you walk in, my lords.

	[Exeunt]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT IV



SCENE IV	The same. Pandarus' house.


	[Enter PANDARUS and CRESSIDA]

PANDARUS	Be moderate, be moderate.

CRESSIDA	Why tell you me of moderation?
	The grief is fine, full, perfect, that I taste,
	And violenteth in a sense as strong
	As that which causeth it: how can I moderate it?
	If I could temporize with my affection,
	Or brew it to a weak and colder palate,
	The like allayment could I give my grief.
	My love admits no qualifying dross;
	No more my grief, in such a precious loss.

PANDARUS	Here, here, here he comes.

	[Enter TROILUS]

	Ah, sweet ducks!

CRESSIDA	O Troilus! Troilus!

	[Embracing him]

PANDARUS	What a pair of spectacles is here!
	Let me embrace too. 'O heart,' as the goodly saying is,
	'--O heart, heavy heart,
	Why sigh'st thou without breaking?
	where he answers again,
	'Because thou canst not ease thy smart
	By friendship nor by speaking.'
	There was never a truer rhyme. Let us cast away
	nothing, for we may live to have need of such a
	verse: we see it, we see it. How now, lambs?

TROILUS	Cressid, I love thee in so strain'd a purity,
	That the bless'd gods, as angry with my fancy,
	More bright in zeal than the devotion which
	Cold lips blow to their deities, take thee from me.

CRESSIDA	Have the gods envy?

PANDARUS	Ay, ay, ay, ay; 'tis too plain a case.

CRESSIDA	And is it true that I must go from Troy?

TROILUS	A hateful truth.

CRESSIDA	                  What, and from Troilus too?

TROILUS	From Troy and Troilus.

CRESSIDA	Is it possible?

TROILUS	And suddenly; where injury of chance
	Puts back leave-taking, justles roughly by
	All time of pause, rudely beguiles our lips
	Of all rejoindure, forcibly prevents
	Our lock'd embrasures, strangles our dear vows
	Even in the birth of our own labouring breath:
	We two, that with so many thousand sighs
	Did buy each other, must poorly sell ourselves
	With the rude brevity and discharge of one.
	Injurious time now with a robber's haste
	Crams his rich thievery up, he knows not how:
	As many farewells as be stars in heaven,
	With distinct breath and consign'd kisses to them,
	He fumbles up into a lose adieu,
	And scants us with a single famish'd kiss,
	Distasted with the salt of broken tears.

AENEAS	[Within]  My lord, is the lady ready?

TROILUS	Hark! you are call'd: some say the Genius so
	Cries 'come' to him that instantly must die.
	Bid them have patience; she shall come anon.

PANDARUS	Where are my tears? rain, to lay this wind, or
	my heart will be blown up by the root.

	[Exit]

CRESSIDA	I must then to the Grecians?

TROILUS	No remedy.

CRESSIDA	A woful Cressid 'mongst the merry Greeks!
	When shall we see again?

TROILUS	Hear me, my love: be thou but true of heart,--

CRESSIDA	I true! how now! what wicked deem is this?

TROILUS	Nay, we must use expostulation kindly,
	For it is parting from us:
	I speak not 'be thou true,' as fearing thee,
	For I will throw my glove to Death himself,
	That there's no maculation in thy heart:
	But 'be thou true,' say I, to fashion in
	My sequent protestation; be thou true,
	And I will see thee.

CRESSIDA	O, you shall be exposed, my lord, to dangers
	As infinite as imminent! but I'll be true.

TROILUS	And I'll grow friend with danger. Wear this sleeve.

CRESSIDA	And you this glove. When shall I see you?

TROILUS	I will corrupt the Grecian sentinels,
	To give thee nightly visitation.
	But yet be true.

CRESSIDA	                  O heavens! 'be true' again!

TROILUS	Hear while I speak it, love:
	The Grecian youths are full of quality;
	They're loving, well composed with gifts of nature,
	Flowing and swelling o'er with arts and exercise:
	How novelty may move, and parts with person,
	Alas, a kind of godly jealousy--
	Which, I beseech you, call a virtuous sin--
	Makes me afeard.

CRESSIDA	                  O heavens! you love me not.

TROILUS	Die I a villain, then!
	In this I do not call your faith in question
	So mainly as my merit: I cannot sing,
	Nor heel the high lavolt, nor sweeten talk,
	Nor play at subtle games; fair virtues all,
	To which the Grecians are most prompt and pregnant:
	But I can tell that in each grace of these
	There lurks a still and dumb-discoursive devil
	That tempts most cunningly: but be not tempted.

CRESSIDA	Do you think I will?

TROILUS	No.
	But something may be done that we will not:
	And sometimes we are devils to ourselves,
	When we will tempt the frailty of our powers,
	Presuming on their changeful potency.

AENEAS	[Within]  Nay, good my lord,--

TROILUS	Come, kiss; and let us part.

PARIS	[Within]  Brother Troilus!

TROILUS	Good brother, come you hither;
	And bring AEneas and the Grecian with you.

CRESSIDA	My lord, will you be true?

TROILUS	Who, I? alas, it is my vice, my fault:
	Whiles others fish with craft for great opinion,
	I with great truth catch mere simplicity;
	Whilst some with cunning gild their copper crowns,
	With truth and plainness I do wear mine bare.
	Fear not my truth: the moral of my wit
	Is 'plain and true;' there's all the reach of it.

	[Enter AENEAS, PARIS, ANTENOR, DEIPHOBUS,
	and DIOMEDES]

	Welcome, Sir Diomed! here is the lady
	Which for Antenor we deliver you:
	At the port, lord, I'll give her to thy hand,
	And by the way possess thee what she is.
	Entreat her fair; and, by my soul, fair Greek,
	If e'er thou stand at mercy of my sword,
	Name Cressida and thy life shall be as safe
	As Priam is in Ilion.

DIOMEDES	Fair Lady Cressid,
	So please you, save the thanks this prince expects:
	The lustre in your eye, heaven in your cheek,
	Pleads your fair usage; and to Diomed
	You shall be mistress, and command him wholly.

TROILUS	Grecian, thou dost not use me courteously,
	To shame the zeal of my petition to thee
	In praising her: I tell thee, lord of Greece,
	She is as far high-soaring o'er thy praises
	As thou unworthy to be call'd her servant.
	I charge thee use her well, even for my charge;
	For, by the dreadful Pluto, if thou dost not,
	Though the great bulk Achilles be thy guard,
	I'll cut thy throat.

DIOMEDES	O, be not moved, Prince Troilus:
	Let me be privileged by my place and message,
	To be a speaker free; when I am hence
	I'll answer to my lust: and know you, lord,
	I'll nothing do on charge: to her own worth
	She shall be prized; but that you say 'be't so,'
	I'll speak it in my spirit and honour, 'no.'

TROILUS	Come, to the port. I'll tell thee, Diomed,
	This brave shall oft make thee to hide thy head.
	Lady, give me your hand, and, as we walk,
	To our own selves bend we our needful talk.

	[Exeunt TROILUS, CRESSIDA, and DIOMEDES]

	[Trumpet within]

PARIS	Hark! Hector's trumpet.

AENEAS	How have we spent this morning!
	The prince must think me tardy and remiss,
	That sore to ride before him to the field.

PARIS	'Tis Troilus' fault: come, come, to field with him.

DEIPHOBUS	Let us make ready straight.

AENEAS	Yea, with a bridegroom's fresh alacrity,
	Let us address to tend on Hector's heels:
	The glory of our Troy doth this day lie
	On his fair worth and single chivalry.

	[Exeunt]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT IV



SCENE V	The Grecian camp. Lists set out.


	[Enter AJAX, armed; AGAMEMNON, ACHILLES, PATROCLUS,
	MENELAUS, ULYSSES, NESTOR, and others]

AGAMEMNON	Here art thou in appointment fresh and fair,
	Anticipating time with starting courage.
	Give with thy trumpet a loud note to Troy,
	Thou dreadful Ajax; that the appalled air
	May pierce the head of the great combatant
	And hale him hither.

AJAX	Thou, trumpet, there's my purse.
	Now crack thy lungs, and split thy brazen pipe:
	Blow, villain, till thy sphered bias cheek
	Outswell the colic of puff'd Aquilon:
	Come, stretch thy chest and let thy eyes spout blood;
	Thou blow'st for Hector.

	[Trumpet sounds]

ULYSSES	No trumpet answers.

ACHILLES	'Tis but early days.

AGAMEMNON	Is not yond Diomed, with Calchas' daughter?

ULYSSES	'Tis he, I ken the manner of his gait;
	He rises on the toe: that spirit of his
	In aspiration lifts him from the earth.

	[Enter DIOMEDES, with CRESSIDA]

AGAMEMNON	Is this the Lady Cressid?

DIOMEDES	Even she.

AGAMEMNON	Most dearly welcome to the Greeks, sweet lady.

NESTOR	Our general doth salute you with a kiss.

ULYSSES	Yet is the kindness but particular;
	'Twere better she were kiss'd in general.

NESTOR	And very courtly counsel: I'll begin.
	So much for Nestor.

ACHILLES	I'll take what winter from your lips, fair lady:
	Achilles bids you welcome.

MENELAUS	I had good argument for kissing once.

PATROCLUS	But that's no argument for kissing now;
	For this popp'd Paris in his hardiment,
	And parted thus you and your argument.

ULYSSES	O deadly gall, and theme of all our scorns!
	For which we lose our heads to gild his horns.

PATROCLUS	The first was Menelaus' kiss; this, mine:
	Patroclus kisses you.

MENELAUS	O, this is trim!

PATROCLUS	Paris and I kiss evermore for him.

MENELAUS	I'll have my kiss, sir. Lady, by your leave.

CRESSIDA	In kissing, do you render or receive?

PATROCLUS	Both take and give.

CRESSIDA	I'll make my match to live,
	The kiss you take is better than you give;
	Therefore no kiss.

MENELAUS	I'll give you boot, I'll give you three for one.

CRESSIDA	You're an odd man; give even or give none.

MENELAUS	An odd man, lady! every man is odd.

CRESSIDA	No, Paris is not; for you know 'tis true,
	That you are odd, and he is even with you.

MENELAUS	You fillip me o' the head.

CRESSIDA	No, I'll be sworn.

ULYSSES	It were no match, your nail against his horn.
	May I, sweet lady, beg a kiss of you?

CRESSIDA	You may.

ULYSSES	       I do desire it.

CRESSIDA	Why, beg, then.

ULYSSES	Why then for Venus' sake, give me a kiss,
	When Helen is a maid again, and his.

CRESSIDA	I am your debtor, claim it when 'tis due.

ULYSSES	Never's my day, and then a kiss of you.

DIOMEDES	Lady, a word: I'll bring you to your father.

	[Exit with CRESSIDA]

NESTOR	A woman of quick sense.

ULYSSES	Fie, fie upon her!
	There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,
	Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out
	At every joint and motive of her body.
	O, these encounterers, so glib of tongue,
	That give accosting welcome ere it comes,
	And wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts
	To every ticklish reader! set them down
	For sluttish spoils of opportunity
	And daughters of the game.

	[Trumpet within]

ALL	The Trojans' trumpet.

AGAMEMNON	Yonder comes the troop.

	[Enter HECTOR, armed; AENEAS, TROILUS, and other
	Trojans, with Attendants]

AENEAS	Hail, all you state of Greece! what shall be done
	To him that victory commands? or do you purpose
	A victor shall be known? will you the knights
	Shall to the edge of all extremity
	Pursue each other, or shall be divided
	By any voice or order of the field?
	Hector bade ask.

AGAMEMNON	Which way would Hector have it?

AENEAS	He cares not; he'll obey conditions.

ACHILLES	'Tis done like Hector; but securely done,
	A little proudly, and great deal misprizing
	The knight opposed.

AENEAS	If not Achilles, sir,
	What is your name?

ACHILLES	                  If not Achilles, nothing.

AENEAS	Therefore Achilles: but, whate'er, know this:
	In the extremity of great and little,
	Valour and pride excel themselves in Hector;
	The one almost as infinite as all,
	The other blank as nothing. Weigh him well,
	And that which looks like pride is courtesy.
	This Ajax is half made of Hector's blood:
	In love whereof, half Hector stays at home;
	Half heart, half hand, half Hector comes to seek
	This blended knight, half Trojan and half Greek.

ACHILLES	A maiden battle, then? O, I perceive you.

	[Re-enter DIOMEDES]

AGAMEMNON	Here is Sir Diomed. Go, gentle knight,
	Stand by our Ajax: as you and Lord AEneas
	Consent upon the order of their fight,
	So be it; either to the uttermost,
	Or else a breath: the combatants being kin
	Half stints their strife before their strokes begin.

	[AJAX and HECTOR enter the lists]

ULYSSES	They are opposed already.

AGAMEMNON	What Trojan is that same that looks so heavy?

ULYSSES	The youngest son of Priam, a true knight,
	Not yet mature, yet matchless, firm of word,
	Speaking in deeds and deedless in his tongue;
	Not soon provoked nor being provoked soon calm'd:
	His heart and hand both open and both free;
	For what he has he gives, what thinks he shows;
	Yet gives he not till judgment guide his bounty,
	Nor dignifies an impure thought with breath;
	Manly as Hector, but more dangerous;
	For Hector in his blaze of wrath subscribes
	To tender objects, but he in heat of action
	Is more vindicative than jealous love:
	They call him Troilus, and on him erect
	A second hope, as fairly built as Hector.
	Thus says AEneas; one that knows the youth
	Even to his inches, and with private soul
	Did in great Ilion thus translate him to me.

	[Alarum. Hector and Ajax fight]

AGAMEMNON	They are in action.

NESTOR	Now, Ajax, hold thine own!

TROILUS	Hector, thou sleep'st;
	Awake thee!

AGAMEMNON	His blows are well disposed: there, Ajax!

DIOMEDES	You must no more.

	[Trumpets cease]

AENEAS	                  Princes, enough, so please you.

AJAX	I am not warm yet; let us fight again.

DIOMEDES	As Hector pleases.

HECTOR	                  Why, then will I no more:
	Thou art, great lord, my father's sister's son,
	A cousin-german to great Priam's seed;
	The obligation of our blood forbids
	A gory emulation 'twixt us twain:
	Were thy commixtion Greek and Trojan so
	That thou couldst say 'This hand is Grecian all,
	And this is Trojan; the sinews of this leg
	All Greek, and this all Troy; my mother's blood
	Runs on the dexter cheek, and this sinister
	Bounds in my father's;' by Jove multipotent,
	Thou shouldst not bear from me a Greekish member
	Wherein my sword had not impressure made
	Of our rank feud: but the just gods gainsay
	That any drop thou borrow'dst from thy mother,
	My sacred aunt, should by my mortal sword
	Be drain'd! Let me embrace thee, Ajax:
	By him that thunders, thou hast lusty arms;
	Hector would have them fall upon him thus:
	Cousin, all honour to thee!

AJAX	I thank thee, Hector
	Thou art too gentle and too free a man:
	I came to kill thee, cousin, and bear hence
	A great addition earned in thy death.

HECTOR	Not Neoptolemus so mirable,
	On whose bright crest Fame with her loud'st Oyes
	Cries 'This is he,' could promise to himself
	A thought of added honour torn from Hector.

AENEAS	There is expectance here from both the sides,
	What further you will do.

HECTOR	We'll answer it;
	The issue is embracement: Ajax, farewell.

AJAX	If I might in entreaties find success--
	As seld I have the chance--I would desire
	My famous cousin to our Grecian tents.

DIOMEDES	'Tis Agamemnon's wish, and great Achilles
	Doth long to see unarm'd the valiant Hector.

HECTOR	AEneas, call my brother Troilus to me,
	And signify this loving interview
	To the expecters of our Trojan part;
	Desire them home. Give me thy hand, my cousin;
	I will go eat with thee and see your knights.

AJAX	Great Agamemnon comes to meet us here.

HECTOR	The worthiest of them tell me name by name;
	But for Achilles, mine own searching eyes
	Shall find him by his large and portly size.

AGAMEMNON	Worthy of arms! as welcome as to one
	That would be rid of such an enemy;
	But that's no welcome: understand more clear,
	What's past and what's to come is strew'd with husks
	And formless ruin of oblivion;
	But in this extant moment, faith and troth,
	Strain'd purely from all hollow bias-drawing,
	Bids thee, with most divine integrity,
	From heart of very heart, great Hector, welcome.

HECTOR	I thank thee, most imperious Agamemnon.

AGAMEMNON	[To TROILUS]  My well-famed lord of Troy, no
	less to you.

MENELAUS	Let me confirm my princely brother's greeting:
	You brace of warlike brothers, welcome hither.

HECTOR	Who must we answer?

AENEAS	The noble Menelaus.

HECTOR	O, you, my lord? by Mars his gauntlet, thanks!
	Mock not, that I affect the untraded oath;
	Your quondam wife swears still by Venus' glove:
	She's well, but bade me not commend her to you.

MENELAUS	Name her not now, sir; she's a deadly theme.

HECTOR	O, pardon; I offend.

NESTOR	I have, thou gallant Trojan, seen thee oft
	Labouring for destiny make cruel way
	Through ranks of Greekish youth, and I have seen thee,
	As hot as Perseus, spur thy Phrygian steed,
	Despising many forfeits and subduements,
	When thou hast hung thy advanced sword i' the air,
	Not letting it decline on the declined,
	That I have said to some my standers by
	'Lo, Jupiter is yonder, dealing life!'
	And I have seen thee pause and take thy breath,
	When that a ring of Greeks have hemm'd thee in,
	Like an Olympian wrestling: this have I seen;
	But this thy countenance, still lock'd in steel,
	I never saw till now. I knew thy grandsire,
	And once fought with him: he was a soldier good;
	But, by great Mars, the captain of us all,
	Never saw like thee. Let an old man embrace thee;
	And, worthy warrior, welcome to our tents.

AENEAS	'Tis the old Nestor.

HECTOR	Let me embrace thee, good old chronicle,
	That hast so long walk'd hand in hand with time:
	Most reverend Nestor, I am glad to clasp thee.

NESTOR	I would my arms could match thee in contention,
	As they contend with thee in courtesy.

HECTOR	I would they could.

NESTOR	Ha!
	By this white beard, I'ld fight with thee to-morrow.
	Well, welcome, welcome! I have seen the time.

ULYSSES	I wonder now how yonder city stands
	When we have here her base and pillar by us.

HECTOR	I know your favour, Lord Ulysses, well.
	Ah, sir, there's many a Greek and Trojan dead,
	Since first I saw yourself and Diomed
	In Ilion, on your Greekish embassy.

ULYSSES	Sir, I foretold you then what would ensue:
	My prophecy is but half his journey yet;
	For yonder walls, that pertly front your town,
	Yond towers, whose wanton tops do buss the clouds,
	Must kiss their own feet.

HECTOR	I must not believe you:
	There they stand yet, and modestly I think,
	The fall of every Phrygian stone will cost
	A drop of Grecian blood: the end crowns all,
	And that old common arbitrator, Time,
	Will one day end it.

ULYSSES	So to him we leave it.
	Most gentle and most valiant Hector, welcome:
	After the general, I beseech you next
	To feast with me and see me at my tent.

ACHILLES	I shall forestall thee, Lord Ulysses, thou!
	Now, Hector, I have fed mine eyes on thee;
	I have with exact view perused thee, Hector,
	And quoted joint by joint.

HECTOR	Is this Achilles?

ACHILLES	I am Achilles.

HECTOR	Stand fair, I pray thee: let me look on thee.

ACHILLES	Behold thy fill.

HECTOR	                  Nay, I have done already.

ACHILLES	Thou art too brief: I will the second time,
	As I would buy thee, view thee limb by limb.

HECTOR	O, like a book of sport thou'lt read me o'er;
	But there's more in me than thou understand'st.
	Why dost thou so oppress me with thine eye?

ACHILLES	Tell me, you heavens, in which part of his body
	Shall I destroy him? whether there, or there, or there?
	That I may give the local wound a name
	And make distinct the very breach whereout
	Hector's great spirit flew: answer me, heavens!

HECTOR	It would discredit the blest gods, proud man,
	To answer such a question: stand again:
	Think'st thou to catch my life so pleasantly
	As to prenominate in nice conjecture
	Where thou wilt hit me dead?

ACHILLES	I tell thee, yea.

HECTOR	Wert thou an oracle to tell me so,
	I'd not believe thee. Henceforth guard thee well;
	For I'll not kill thee there, nor there, nor there;
	But, by the forge that stithied Mars his helm,
	I'll kill thee every where, yea, o'er and o'er.
	You wisest Grecians, pardon me this brag;
	His insolence draws folly from my lips;
	But I'll endeavour deeds to match these words,
	Or may I never--

AJAX	                  Do not chafe thee, cousin:
	And you, Achilles, let these threats alone,
	Till accident or purpose bring you to't:
	You may have every day enough of Hector
	If you have stomach; the general state, I fear,
	Can scarce entreat you to be odd with him.

HECTOR	I pray you, let us see you in the field:
	We have had pelting wars, since you refused
	The Grecians' cause.

ACHILLES	Dost thou entreat me, Hector?
	To-morrow do I meet thee, fell as death;
	To-night all friends.

HECTOR	Thy hand upon that match.

AGAMEMNON	First, all you peers of Greece, go to my tent;
	There in the full convive we: afterwards,
	As Hector's leisure and your bounties shall
	Concur together, severally entreat him.
	Beat loud the tabourines, let the trumpets blow,
	That this great soldier may his welcome know.

	[Exeunt all except TROILUS and ULYSSES]

TROILUS	My Lord Ulysses, tell me, I beseech you,
	In what place of the field doth Calchas keep?

ULYSSES	At Menelaus' tent, most princely Troilus:
	There Diomed doth feast with him to-night;
	Who neither looks upon the heaven nor earth,
	But gives all gaze and bent of amorous view
	On the fair Cressid.

TROILUS	Shall sweet lord, be bound to you so much,
	After we part from Agamemnon's tent,
	To bring me thither?

ULYSSES	You shall command me, sir.
	As gentle tell me, of what honour was
	This Cressida in Troy? Had she no lover there
	That wails her absence?


TROILUS	O, sir, to such as boasting show their scars
	A mock is due. Will you walk on, my lord?
	She was beloved, she loved; she is, and doth:
	But still sweet love is food for fortune's tooth.

	[Exeunt]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT V



SCENE I	The Grecian camp. Before Achilles' tent.


	[Enter ACHILLES and PATROCLUS]

ACHILLES	I'll heat his blood with Greekish wine to-night,
	Which with my scimitar I'll cool to-morrow.
	Patroclus, let us feast him to the height.

PATROCLUS	Here comes Thersites.

	[Enter THERSITES]

ACHILLES	How now, thou core of envy!
	Thou crusty batch of nature, what's the news?

THERSITES	Why, thou picture of what thou seemest, and idol
	of idiot worshippers, here's a letter for thee.

ACHILLES	From whence, fragment?

THERSITES	Why, thou full dish of fool, from Troy.

PATROCLUS	Who keeps the tent now?

THERSITES	The surgeon's box, or the patient's wound.

PATROCLUS	Well said, adversity! and what need these tricks?

THERSITES	Prithee, be silent, boy; I profit not by thy talk:
	thou art thought to be Achilles' male varlet.

PATROCLUS	Male varlet, you rogue! what's that?

THERSITES	Why, his masculine whore. Now, the rotten diseases
	of the south, the guts-griping, ruptures, catarrhs,
	loads o' gravel i' the back, lethargies, cold
	palsies, raw eyes, dirt-rotten livers, wheezing
	lungs, bladders full of imposthume, sciaticas,
	limekilns i' the palm, incurable bone-ache, and the
	rivelled fee-simple of the tetter, take and take
	again such preposterous discoveries!

PATROCLUS	Why thou damnable box of envy, thou, what meanest
	thou to curse thus?

THERSITES	Do I curse thee?

PATROCLUS	Why no, you ruinous butt, you whoreson
	indistinguishable cur, no.

THERSITES	No! why art thou then exasperate, thou idle
	immaterial skein of sleave-silk, thou green sarcenet
	flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal's
	purse, thou? Ah, how the poor world is pestered
	with such waterflies, diminutives of nature!

PATROCLUS	Out, gall!

THERSITES	Finch-egg!

ACHILLES	My sweet Patroclus, I am thwarted quite
	From my great purpose in to-morrow's battle.
	Here is a letter from Queen Hecuba,
	A token from her daughter, my fair love,
	Both taxing me and gaging me to keep
	An oath that I have sworn. I will not break it:
	Fall Greeks; fail fame; honour or go or stay;
	My major vow lies here, this I'll obey.
	Come, come, Thersites, help to trim my tent:
	This night in banqueting must all be spent.
	Away, Patroclus!

	[Exeunt ACHILLES and PATROCLUS]

THERSITES	With too much blood and too little brain, these two
	may run mad; but, if with too much brain and too
	little blood they do, I'll be a curer of madmen.
	Here's Agamemnon, an honest fellow enough and one
	that loves quails; but he has not so much brain as
	earwax: and the goodly transformation of Jupiter
	there, his brother, the bull,--the primitive statue,
	and oblique memorial of cuckolds; a thrifty
	shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his brother's
	leg,--to what form but that he is, should wit larded
	with malice and malice forced with wit turn him to?
	To an ass, were nothing; he is both ass and ox: to
	an ox, were nothing; he is both ox and ass. To be a
	dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a toad, a lizard, an
	owl, a puttock, or a herring without a roe, I would
	not care; but to be Menelaus, I would conspire
	against destiny. Ask me not, what I would be, if I
	were not Thersites; for I care not to be the louse
	of a lazar, so I were not Menelaus! Hey-day!
	spirits and fires!

	[Enter HECTOR, TROILUS, AJAX, AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES,
	NESTOR, MENELAUS, and DIOMEDES, with lights]

AGAMEMNON	We go wrong, we go wrong.

AJAX	No, yonder 'tis;
	There, where we see the lights.

HECTOR	I trouble you.

AJAX	No, not a whit.

ULYSSES	                  Here comes himself to guide you.

	[Re-enter ACHILLES]

ACHILLES	Welcome, brave Hector; welcome, princes all.

AGAMEMNON	So now, fair prince of Troy, I bid good night.
	Ajax commands the guard to tend on you.

HECTOR	Thanks and good night to the Greeks' general.

MENELAUS	Good night, my lord.

HECTOR	Good night, sweet lord Menelaus.

THERSITES	Sweet draught: 'sweet' quoth 'a! sweet sink,
	sweet sewer.

ACHILLES	Good night and welcome, both at once, to those
	That go or tarry.

AGAMEMNON	Good night.

	[Exeunt AGAMEMNON and MENELAUS]

ACHILLES	Old Nestor tarries; and you too, Diomed,
	Keep Hector company an hour or two.

DIOMEDES	I cannot, lord; I have important business,
	The tide whereof is now. Good night, great Hector.

HECTOR	Give me your hand.

ULYSSES	[Aside to TROILUS]  Follow his torch; he goes to
	Calchas' tent:
	I'll keep you company.

TROILUS	Sweet sir, you honour me.

HECTOR	And so, good night.

	[Exit DIOMEDES; ULYSSES and TROILUS following]

ACHILLES	Come, come, enter my tent.

	[Exeunt ACHILLES, HECTOR, AJAX, and NESTOR]

THERSITES	That same Diomed's a false-hearted rogue, a most
	unjust knave; I will no more trust him when he leers
	than I will a serpent when he hisses: he will spend
	his mouth, and promise, like Brabbler the hound:
	but when he performs, astronomers foretell it; it
	is prodigious, there will come some change; the sun
	borrows of the moon, when Diomed keeps his
	word. I will rather leave to see Hector, than
	not to dog him: they say he keeps a Trojan
	drab, and uses the traitor Calchas' tent: I'll
	after. Nothing but lechery! all incontinent varlets!

	[Exit]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT V



SCENE II	The same. Before Calchas' tent.


	[Enter DIOMEDES]

DIOMEDES	What, are you up here, ho? speak.

CALCHAS	[Within]  Who calls?

DIOMEDES	Calchas, I think. Where's your daughter?

CALCHAS	[Within]  She comes to you.

	[Enter TROILUS and ULYSSES, at a distance;
	after them, THERSITES]

ULYSSES	Stand where the torch may not discover us.

	[Enter CRESSIDA]

TROILUS	Cressid comes forth to him.

DIOMEDES	How now, my charge!

CRESSIDA	Now, my sweet guardian! Hark, a word with you.

	[Whispers]

TROILUS	Yea, so familiar!

ULYSSES	She will sing any man at first sight.

THERSITES	And any man may sing her, if he can take her cliff;
	she's noted.

DIOMEDES	Will you remember?

CRESSIDA	Remember! yes.

DIOMEDES	Nay, but do, then;
	And let your mind be coupled with your words.

TROILUS	What should she remember?

ULYSSES	List.

CRESSIDA	Sweet honey Greek, tempt me no more to folly.

THERSITES	Roguery!

DIOMEDES	Nay, then,--

CRESSIDA	I'll tell you what,--

DIOMEDES	Foh, foh! come, tell a pin: you are forsworn.

CRESSIDA	In faith, I cannot: what would you have me do?

THERSITES	A juggling trick,--to be secretly open.

DIOMEDES	What did you swear you would bestow on me?

CRESSIDA	I prithee, do not hold me to mine oath;
	Bid me do any thing but that, sweet Greek.

DIOMEDES	Good night.

TROILUS	Hold, patience!

ULYSSES	How now, Trojan!

CRESSIDA	Diomed,--

DIOMEDES	No, no, good night: I'll be your fool no more.

TROILUS	Thy better must.

CRESSIDA	Hark, one word in your ear.

TROILUS	O plague and madness!

ULYSSES	You are moved, prince; let us depart, I pray you,
	Lest your displeasure should enlarge itself
	To wrathful terms: this place is dangerous;
	The time right deadly; I beseech you, go.

TROILUS	Behold, I pray you!

ULYSSES	Nay, good my lord, go off:
	You flow to great distraction; come, my lord.

TROILUS	I pray thee, stay.

ULYSSES	                  You have not patience; come.

TROILUS	I pray you, stay; by hell and all hell's torments
	I will not speak a word!

DIOMEDES	And so, good night.

CRESSIDA	Nay, but you part in anger.

TROILUS	Doth that grieve thee?
	O wither'd truth!

ULYSSES	                  Why, how now, lord!

TROILUS	By Jove,
	I will be patient.

CRESSIDA	                  Guardian!--why, Greek!

DIOMEDES	Foh, foh! adieu; you palter.

CRESSIDA	In faith, I do not: come hither once again.

ULYSSES	You shake, my lord, at something: will you go?
	You will break out.

TROILUS	She strokes his cheek!

ULYSSES	Come, come.

TROILUS	Nay, stay; by Jove, I will not speak a word:
	There is between my will and all offences
	A guard of patience: stay a little while.

THERSITES	How the devil Luxury, with his fat rump and
	potato-finger, tickles these together! Fry, lechery, fry!

DIOMEDES	But will you, then?

CRESSIDA	In faith, I will, la; never trust me else.

DIOMEDES	Give me some token for the surety of it.

CRESSIDA	I'll fetch you one.

	[Exit]

ULYSSES	You have sworn patience.

TROILUS	Fear me not, sweet lord;
	I will not be myself, nor have cognition
	Of what I feel: I am all patience.

	[Re-enter CRESSIDA]

THERSITES	Now the pledge; now, now, now!

CRESSIDA	Here, Diomed, keep this sleeve.

TROILUS	O beauty! where is thy faith?

ULYSSES	My lord,--

TROILUS	I will be patient; outwardly I will.

CRESSIDA	You look upon that sleeve; behold it well.
	He loved me--O false wench!--Give't me again.

DIOMEDES	Whose was't?

CRESSIDA	It is no matter, now I have't again.
	I will not meet with you to-morrow night:
	I prithee, Diomed, visit me no more.

THERSITES	Now she sharpens: well said, whetstone!

DIOMEDES	I shall have it.

CRESSIDA	                  What, this?

DIOMEDES	Ay, that.

CRESSIDA	O, all you gods! O pretty, pretty pledge!
	Thy master now lies thinking in his bed
	Of thee and me, and sighs, and takes my glove,
	And gives memorial dainty kisses to it,
	As I kiss thee. Nay, do not snatch it from me;
	He that takes that doth take my heart withal.

DIOMEDES	I had your heart before, this follows it.

TROILUS	I did swear patience.

CRESSIDA	You shall not have it, Diomed; faith, you shall not;
	I'll give you something else.

DIOMEDES	I will have this: whose was it?

CRESSIDA	It is no matter.

DIOMEDES	Come, tell me whose it was.

CRESSIDA	'Twas one's that loved me better than you will.
	But, now you have it, take it.

DIOMEDES	Whose was it?

CRESSIDA	By all Diana's waiting-women yond,
	And by herself, I will not tell you whose.

DIOMEDES	To-morrow will I wear it on my helm,
	And grieve his spirit that dares not challenge it.

TROILUS	Wert thou the devil, and worest it on thy horn,
	It should be challenged.

CRESSIDA	Well, well, 'tis done, 'tis past: and yet it is not;
	I will not keep my word.

DIOMEDES	Why, then, farewell;
	Thou never shalt mock Diomed again.

CRESSIDA	You shall not go: one cannot speak a word,
	But it straight starts you.

DIOMEDES	I do not like this fooling.

THERSITES	Nor I, by Pluto: but that that likes not you pleases me best.

DIOMEDES	What, shall I come? the hour?

CRESSIDA	Ay, come:--O Jove!--do come:--I shall be plagued.

DIOMEDES	Farewell till then.

CRESSIDA	Good night: I prithee, come.

	[Exit DIOMEDES]

	Troilus, farewell! one eye yet looks on thee
	But with my heart the other eye doth see.
	Ah, poor our sex! this fault in us I find,
	The error of our eye directs our mind:
	What error leads must err; O, then conclude
	Minds sway'd by eyes are full of turpitude.

	[Exit]

THERSITES	A proof of strength she could not publish more,
	Unless she said ' My mind is now turn'd whore.'

ULYSSES	All's done, my lord.

TROILUS	It is.

ULYSSES	Why stay we, then?

TROILUS	To make a recordation to my soul
	Of every syllable that here was spoke.
	But if I tell how these two did co-act,
	Shall I not lie in publishing a truth?
	Sith yet there is a credence in my heart,
	An esperance so obstinately strong,
	That doth invert the attest of eyes and ears,
	As if those organs had deceptious functions,
	Created only to calumniate.
	Was Cressid here?

ULYSSES	                  I cannot conjure, Trojan.

TROILUS	She was not, sure.

ULYSSES	                  Most sure she was.

TROILUS	Why, my negation hath no taste of madness.

ULYSSES	Nor mine, my lord: Cressid was here but now.

TROILUS	Let it not be believed for womanhood!
	Think, we had mothers; do not give advantage
	To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme,
	For depravation, to square the general sex
	By Cressid's rule: rather think this not Cressid.

ULYSSES	What hath she done, prince, that can soil our mothers?

TROILUS	Nothing at all, unless that this were she.

THERSITES	Will he swagger himself out on's own eyes?

TROILUS	This she? no, this is Diomed's Cressida:
	If beauty have a soul, this is not she;
	If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimonies,
	If sanctimony be the gods' delight,
	If there be rule in unity itself,
	This is not she. O madness of discourse,
	That cause sets up with and against itself!
	Bi-fold authority! where reason can revolt
	Without perdition, and loss assume all reason
	Without revolt: this is, and is not, Cressid.
	Within my soul there doth conduce a fight
	Of this strange nature that a thing inseparate
	Divides more wider than the sky and earth,
	And yet the spacious breadth of this division
	Admits no orifex for a point as subtle
	As Ariachne's broken woof to enter.
	Instance, O instance! strong as Pluto's gates;
	Cressid is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven:
	Instance, O instance! strong as heaven itself;
	The bonds of heaven are slipp'd, dissolved, and loosed;
	And with another knot, five-finger-tied,
	The fractions of her faith, orts of her love,
	The fragments, scraps, the bits and greasy relics
	Of her o'er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed.

ULYSSES	May worthy Troilus be half attach'd
	With that which here his passion doth express?

TROILUS	Ay, Greek; and that shall be divulged well
	In characters as red as Mars his heart
	Inflamed with Venus: never did young man fancy
	With so eternal and so fix'd a soul.
	Hark, Greek: as much as I do Cressid love,
	So much by weight hate I her Diomed:
	That sleeve is mine that he'll bear on his helm;
	Were it a casque composed by Vulcan's skill,
	My sword should bite it: not the dreadful spout
	Which shipmen do the hurricano call,
	Constringed in mass by the almighty sun,
	Shall dizzy with more clamour Neptune's ear
	In his descent than shall my prompted sword
	Falling on Diomed.

THERSITES	He'll tickle it for his concupy.

TROILUS	O Cressid! O false Cressid! false, false, false!
	Let all untruths stand by thy stained name,
	And they'll seem glorious.

ULYSSES	O, contain yourself
	Your passion draws ears hither.

	[Enter AENEAS]

AENEAS	I have been seeking you this hour, my lord:
	Hector, by this, is arming him in Troy;
	Ajax, your guard, stays to conduct you home.


TROILUS	Have with you, prince. My courteous lord, adieu.
	Farewell, revolted fair! and, Diomed,
	Stand fast, and wear a castle on thy head!

ULYSSES	I'll bring you to the gates.

TROILUS	Accept distracted thanks.

	[Exeunt TROILUS, AENEAS, and ULYSSES]

THERSITES	Would I could meet that rogue Diomed! I would
	croak like a raven; I would bode, I would bode.
	Patroclus will give me any thing for the
	intelligence of this whore: the parrot will not
	do more for an almond than he for a commodious drab.
	Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery; nothing
	else holds fashion: a burning devil take them!

	[Exit]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT V



SCENE III	Troy. Before Priam's palace.


	[Enter HECTOR and ANDROMACHE]

ANDROMACHE	When was my lord so much ungently temper'd,
	To stop his ears against admonishment?
	Unarm, unarm, and do not fight to-day.

HECTOR	You train me to offend you; get you in:
	By all the everlasting gods, I'll go!

ANDROMACHE	My dreams will, sure, prove ominous to the day.

HECTOR	No more, I say.

	[Enter CASSANDRA]

CASSANDRA	                  Where is my brother Hector?

ANDROMACHE	Here, sister; arm'd, and bloody in intent.
	Consort with me in loud and dear petition,
	Pursue we him on knees; for I have dream'd
	Of bloody turbulence, and this whole night
	Hath nothing been but shapes and forms of slaughter.

CASSANDRA	O, 'tis true.

HECTOR	                  Ho! bid my trumpet sound!

CASSANDRA	No notes of sally, for the heavens, sweet brother.

HECTOR	Be gone, I say: the gods have heard me swear.

CASSANDRA	The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows:
	They are polluted offerings, more abhorr'd
	Than spotted livers in the sacrifice.

ANDROMACHE	O, be persuaded! do not count it holy
	To hurt by being just: it is as lawful,
	For we would give much, to use violent thefts,
	And rob in the behalf of charity.

CASSANDRA	It is the purpose that makes strong the vow;
	But vows to every purpose must not hold:
	Unarm, sweet Hector.

HECTOR	Hold you still, I say;
	Mine honour keeps the weather of my fate:
	Lie every man holds dear; but the brave man
	Holds honour far more precious-dear than life.

	[Enter TROILUS]

	How now, young man! mean'st thou to fight to-day?

ANDROMACHE	Cassandra, call my father to persuade.

	[Exit CASSANDRA]

HECTOR	No, faith, young Troilus; doff thy harness, youth;
	I am to-day i' the vein of chivalry:
	Let grow thy sinews till their knots be strong,
	And tempt not yet the brushes of the war.
	Unarm thee, go, and doubt thou not, brave boy,
	I'll stand to-day for thee and me and Troy.

TROILUS	Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you,
	Which better fits a lion than a man.

HECTOR	What vice is that, good Troilus? chide me for it.

TROILUS	When many times the captive Grecian falls,
	Even in the fan and wind of your fair sword,
	You bid them rise, and live.

HECTOR	O,'tis fair play.

TROILUS	                  Fool's play, by heaven, Hector.

HECTOR	How now! how now!

TROILUS	                  For the love of all the gods,
	Let's leave the hermit pity with our mothers,
	And when we have our armours buckled on,
	The venom'd vengeance ride upon our swords,
	Spur them to ruthful work, rein them from ruth.

HECTOR	Fie, savage, fie!

TROILUS	                  Hector, then 'tis wars.

HECTOR	Troilus, I would not have you fight to-day.

TROILUS	Who should withhold me?
	Not fate, obedience, nor the hand of Mars
	Beckoning with fiery truncheon my retire;
	Not Priamus and Hecuba on knees,
	Their eyes o'ergalled with recourse of tears;
	Not you, my brother, with your true sword drawn,
	Opposed to hinder me, should stop my way,
	But by my ruin.

	[Re-enter CASSANDRA, with PRIAM]

CASSANDRA	Lay hold upon him, Priam, hold him fast:
	He is thy crutch; now if thou lose thy stay,
	Thou on him leaning, and all Troy on thee,
	Fall all together.

PRIAM	                  Come, Hector, come, go back:
	Thy wife hath dream'd; thy mother hath had visions;
	Cassandra doth foresee; and I myself
	Am like a prophet suddenly enrapt
	To tell thee that this day is ominous:
	Therefore, come back.

HECTOR	AEneas is a-field;
	And I do stand engaged to many Greeks,
	Even in the faith of valour, to appear
	This morning to them.

PRIAM	Ay, but thou shalt not go.

HECTOR	I must not break my faith.
	You know me dutiful; therefore, dear sir,
	Let me not shame respect; but give me leave
	To take that course by your consent and voice,
	Which you do here forbid me, royal Priam.

CASSANDRA	O Priam, yield not to him!

ANDROMACHE	Do not, dear father.

HECTOR	Andromache, I am offended with you:
	Upon the love you bear me, get you in.

	[Exit ANDROMACHE]

TROILUS	This foolish, dreaming, superstitious girl
	Makes all these bodements.

CASSANDRA	O, farewell, dear Hector!
	Look, how thou diest! look, how thy eye turns pale!
	Look, how thy wounds do bleed at many vents!
	Hark, how Troy roars! how Hecuba cries out!
	How poor Andromache shrills her dolours forth!
	Behold, distraction, frenzy and amazement,
	Like witless antics, one another meet,
	And all cry, Hector! Hector's dead! O Hector!

TROILUS	Away! away!

CASSANDRA	Farewell: yet, soft! Hector! take my leave:
	Thou dost thyself and all our Troy deceive.

	[Exit]

HECTOR	You are amazed, my liege, at her exclaim:
	Go in and cheer the town: we'll forth and fight,
	Do deeds worth praise and tell you them at night.

PRIAM	Farewell: the gods with safety stand about thee!

	[Exeunt severally PRIAM and HECTOR. Alarums]

TROILUS	They are at it, hark! Proud Diomed, believe,
	I come to lose my arm, or win my sleeve.

	[Enter PANDARUS]

PANDARUS	Do you hear, my lord? do you hear?

TROILUS	What now?

PANDARUS	Here's a letter come from yond poor girl.

TROILUS	Let me read.

PANDARUS	A whoreson tisick, a whoreson rascally tisick so
	troubles me, and the foolish fortune of this girl;
	and what one thing, what another, that I shall
	leave you one o' these days: and I have a rheum
	in mine eyes too, and such an ache in my bones
	that, unless a man were cursed, I cannot tell what
	to think on't. What says she there?

TROILUS	Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart:
	The effect doth operate another way.

	[Tearing the letter]

	Go, wind, to wind, there turn and change together.
	My love with words and errors still she feeds;
	But edifies another with her deeds.

	[Exeunt severally]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT V



SCENE IV	Plains between Troy and the Grecian camp.


	[Alarums: excursions. Enter THERSITES]

THERSITES	Now they are clapper-clawing one another; I'll go
	look on. That dissembling abominable varlets Diomed,
	has got that same scurvy doting foolish young knave's
	sleeve of Troy there in his helm: I would fain see
	them meet; that that same young Trojan ass, that
	loves the whore there, might send that Greekish
	whore-masterly villain, with the sleeve, back to the
	dissembling luxurious drab, of a sleeveless errand.
	O' the t'other side, the policy of those crafty
	swearing rascals, that stale old mouse-eaten dry
	cheese, Nestor, and that same dog-fox, Ulysses, is
	not proved worthy a blackberry: they set me up, in
	policy, that mongrel cur, Ajax, against that dog of
	as bad a kind, Achilles: and now is the cur Ajax
	prouder than the cur Achilles, and will not arm
	to-day; whereupon the Grecians begin to proclaim
	barbarism, and policy grows into an ill opinion.
	Soft! here comes sleeve, and t'other.

	[Enter DIOMEDES, TROILUS following]

TROILUS	Fly not; for shouldst thou take the river Styx,
	I would swim after.

DIOMEDES	Thou dost miscall retire:
	I do not fly, but advantageous care
	Withdrew me from the odds of multitude:
	Have at thee!

THERSITES	Hold thy whore, Grecian!--now for thy whore,
	Trojan!--now the sleeve, now the sleeve!

	[Exeunt TROILUS and DIOMEDES, fighting]

	[Enter HECTOR]

HECTOR	What art thou, Greek? art thou for Hector's match?
	Art thou of blood and honour?

THERSITES	No, no, I am a rascal; a scurvy railing knave:
	a very filthy rogue.

HECTOR	I do believe thee: live.

	[Exit]

THERSITES	God-a-mercy, that thou wilt believe me; but a
	plague break thy neck for frightening me! What's
	become of the wenching rogues? I think they have
	swallowed one another: I would laugh at that
	miracle: yet, in a sort, lechery eats itself.
	I'll seek them.

	[Exit]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT V



SCENE V	Another part of the plains.


	[Enter DIOMEDES and a Servant]

DIOMEDES	Go, go, my servant, take thou Troilus' horse;
	Present the fair steed to my lady Cressid:
	Fellow, commend my service to her beauty;
	Tell her I have chastised the amorous Trojan,
	And am her knight by proof.

Servant	I go, my lord.

	[Exit]

	[Enter AGAMEMNON]

AGAMEMNON	Renew, renew! The fierce Polydamas
	Hath beat down Menon: bastard Margarelon
	Hath Doreus prisoner,
	And stands colossus-wise, waving his beam,
	Upon the pashed corses of the kings
	Epistrophus and Cedius: Polyxenes is slain,
	Amphimachus and Thoas deadly hurt,
	Patroclus ta'en or slain, and Palamedes
	Sore hurt and bruised: the dreadful Sagittary
	Appals our numbers: haste we, Diomed,
	To reinforcement, or we perish all.

	[Enter NESTOR]

NESTOR	Go, bear Patroclus' body to Achilles;
	And bid the snail-paced Ajax arm for shame.
	There is a thousand Hectors in the field:
	Now here he fights on Galathe his horse,
	And there lacks work; anon he's there afoot,
	And there they fly or die, like scaled sculls
	Before the belching whale; then is he yonder,
	And there the strawy Greeks, ripe for his edge,
	Fall down before him, like the mower's swath:
	Here, there, and every where, he leaves and takes,
	Dexterity so obeying appetite
	That what he will he does, and does so much
	That proof is call'd impossibility.

	[Enter ULYSSES]

ULYSSES	O, courage, courage, princes! great Achilles
	Is arming, weeping, cursing, vowing vengeance:
	Patroclus' wounds have roused his drowsy blood,
	Together with his mangled Myrmidons,
	That noseless, handless, hack'd and chipp'd, come to him,
	Crying on Hector. Ajax hath lost a friend
	And foams at mouth, and he is arm'd and at it,
	Roaring for Troilus, who hath done to-day
	Mad and fantastic execution,
	Engaging and redeeming of himself
	With such a careless force and forceless care
	As if that luck, in very spite of cunning,
	Bade him win all.

	[Enter AJAX]

AJAX	Troilus! thou coward Troilus!

	[Exit]

DIOMEDES	Ay, there, there.

NESTOR	So, so, we draw together.

	[Enter ACHILLES]

ACHILLES	Where is this Hector?
	Come, come, thou boy-queller, show thy face;
	Know what it is to meet Achilles angry:
	Hector? where's Hector? I will none but Hector.

	[Exeunt]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT V



SCENE VI	Another part of the plains.


	[Enter AJAX]

AJAX	Troilus, thou coward Troilus, show thy head!

	[Enter DIOMEDES]

DIOMEDES	Troilus, I say! where's Troilus?

AJAX	What wouldst thou?

DIOMEDES	I would correct him.

AJAX	Were I the general, thou shouldst have my office
	Ere that correction. Troilus, I say! what, Troilus!

	[Enter TROILUS]

TROILUS	O traitor Diomed! turn thy false face, thou traitor,
	And pay thy life thou owest me for my horse!

DIOMEDES	Ha, art thou there?

AJAX	I'll fight with him alone: stand, Diomed.

DIOMEDES	He is my prize; I will not look upon.

TROILUS	Come, both you cogging Greeks; have at you both!

	[Exeunt, fighting]

	[Enter HECTOR]

HECTOR	Yea, Troilus? O, well fought, my youngest brother!

	[Enter ACHILLES]

ACHILLES	Now do I see thee, ha! have at thee, Hector!

HECTOR	Pause, if thou wilt.

ACHILLES	I do disdain thy courtesy, proud Trojan:
	Be happy that my arms are out of use:
	My rest and negligence befriends thee now,
	But thou anon shalt hear of me again;
	Till when, go seek thy fortune.

	[Exit]

HECTOR	Fare thee well:
	I would have been much more a fresher man,
	Had I expected thee. How now, my brother!

	[Re-enter TROILUS]

TROILUS	Ajax hath ta'en AEneas: shall it be?
	No, by the flame of yonder glorious heaven,
	He shall not carry him: I'll be ta'en too,
	Or bring him off: fate, hear me what I say!
	I reck not though I end my life to-day.

	[Exit]

	[Enter one in sumptuous armour]

HECTOR	Stand, stand, thou Greek; thou art a goodly mark:
	No? wilt thou not? I like thy armour well;
	I'll frush it and unlock the rivets all,
	But I'll be master of it: wilt thou not,
	beast, abide?
	Why, then fly on, I'll hunt thee for thy hide.

	[Exeunt]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT V



SCENE VII	Another part of the plains.


	[Enter ACHILLES, with Myrmidons]

ACHILLES	Come here about me, you my Myrmidons;
	Mark what I say. Attend me where I wheel:
	Strike not a stroke, but keep yourselves in breath:
	And when I have the bloody Hector found,
	Empale him with your weapons round about;
	In fellest manner execute your aims.
	Follow me, sirs, and my proceedings eye:
	It is decreed Hector the great must die.

	[Exeunt]

	[Enter MENELAUS and PARIS, fighting:
	then THERSITES]

THERSITES	The cuckold and the cuckold-maker are at it. Now,
	bull! now, dog! 'Loo, Paris, 'loo! now my double-
	henned sparrow! 'loo, Paris, 'loo! The bull has the
	game: ware horns, ho!

	[Exeunt PARIS and MENELAUS]

	[Enter MARGARELON]

MARGARELON	Turn, slave, and fight.

THERSITES	What art thou?

MARGARELON	A bastard son of Priam's.

THERSITES	I am a bastard too; I love bastards: I am a bastard
	begot, bastard instructed, bastard in mind, bastard
	in valour, in every thing illegitimate. One bear will
	not bite another, and wherefore should one bastard?
	Take heed, the quarrel's most ominous to us: if the
	son of a whore fight for a whore, he tempts judgment:
	farewell, bastard.

	[Exit]

MARGARELON	The devil take thee, coward!

	[Exit]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT V



SCENE VIII	Another part of the plains.


	[Enter HECTOR]

HECTOR	Most putrefied core, so fair without,
	Thy goodly armour thus hath cost thy life.
	Now is my day's work done; I'll take good breath:
	Rest, sword; thou hast thy fill of blood and death.

	[Puts off his helmet and hangs his shield
	behind him]

	[Enter ACHILLES and Myrmidons]

ACHILLES	Look, Hector, how the sun begins to set;
	How ugly night comes breathing at his heels:
	Even with the vail and darking of the sun,
	To close the day up, Hector's life is done.

HECTOR	I am unarm'd; forego this vantage, Greek.

ACHILLES	Strike, fellows, strike; this is the man I seek.

	[HECTOR falls]

	So, Ilion, fall thou next! now, Troy, sink down!
	Here lies thy heart, thy sinews, and thy bone.
	On, Myrmidons, and cry you all amain,
	'Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain.'

	[A retreat sounded]

	Hark! a retire upon our Grecian part.

MYRMIDONS	The Trojan trumpets sound the like, my lord.

ACHILLES	The dragon wing of night o'erspreads the earth,
	And, stickler-like, the armies separates.
	My half-supp'd sword, that frankly would have fed,
	Pleased with this dainty bait, thus goes to bed.

	[Sheathes his sword]

	Come, tie his body to my horse's tail;
	Along the field I will the Trojan trail.

	[Exeunt]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT V



SCENE IX	Another part of the plains.


	[Enter AGAMEMNON, AJAX, MENELAUS, NESTOR, DIOMEDES,
	and others, marching. Shouts within]

AGAMEMNON	Hark! hark! what shout is that?

NESTOR	Peace, drums!

	[Within]

	Achilles! Achilles! Hector's slain! Achilles.

DIOMEDES	The bruit is, Hector's slain, and by Achilles.

AJAX	If it be so, yet bragless let it be;
	Great Hector was a man as good as he.

AGAMEMNON	March patiently along: let one be sent
	To pray Achilles see us at our tent.
	If in his death the gods have us befriended,
	Great Troy is ours, and our sharp wars are ended.

	[Exeunt, marching]




	TROILUS AND CRESSIDA


ACT V



SCENE X	Another part of the plains.


	[Enter AENEAS and Trojans]

AENEAS	Stand, ho! yet are we masters of the field:
	Never go home; here starve we out the night.

	[Enter TROILUS]

TROILUS	Hector is slain.

ALL	                  Hector! the gods forbid!

TROILUS	He's dead; and at the murderer's horse's tail,
	In beastly sort, dragg'd through the shameful field.
	Frown on, you heavens, effect your rage with speed!
	Sit, gods, upon your thrones, and smile at Troy!
	I say, at once let your brief plagues be mercy,
	And linger not our sure destructions on!

AENEAS	My lord, you do discomfort all the host!

TROILUS	You understand me not that tell me so:
	I do not speak of flight, of fear, of death,
	But dare all imminence that gods and men
	Address their dangers in. Hector is gone:
	Who shall tell Priam so, or Hecuba?
	Let him that will a screech-owl aye be call'd,
	Go in to Troy, and say there, Hector's dead:
	There is a word will Priam turn to stone;
	Make wells and Niobes of the maids and wives,
	Cold statues of the youth, and, in a word,
	Scare Troy out of itself. But, march away:
	Hector is dead; there is no more to say.
	Stay yet. You vile abominable tents,
	Thus proudly pight upon our Phrygian plains,
	Let Titan rise as early as he dare,
	I'll through and through you! and, thou great-sized coward,
	No space of earth shall sunder our two hates:
	I'll haunt thee like a wicked conscience still,
	That mouldeth goblins swift as frenzy's thoughts.
	Strike a free march to Troy! with comfort go:
	Hope of revenge shall hide our inward woe.

	[Exeunt AENEAS and Trojans]

	[As TROILUS is going out, enter, from the other
	side, PANDARUS]

PANDARUS	But hear you, hear you!

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

	[Exit]

PANDARUS	A goodly medicine for my aching bones! O world!
	world! world! thus is the poor agent despised!
	O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set
	a-work, and how ill requited! why should our
	endeavour be so loved and the performance so loathed?
	what verse for it? what instance for it? Let me see:
	Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing,
	Till he hath lost his honey and his sting;
	And being once subdued in armed tail,
	Sweet honey and sweet notes together fail.
	Good traders in the flesh, set this in your
	painted cloths.
	As many as be here of pander's hall,
	Your eyes, half out, weep out at Pandar's fall;
	Or if you cannot weep, yet give some groans,
	Though not for me, yet for your aching bones.
	Brethren and sisters of the hold-door trade,
	Some two months hence my will shall here be made:
	It should be now, but that my fear is this,
	Some galled goose of Winchester would hiss:
	Till then I'll sweat and seek about for eases,
	And at that time bequeathe you my diseases.

	[Exit]
