The History of Troilus and Cressida

PROLOGUE

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA

In Troy, there lies the scene. From isles of Greece

The princes orgulous, their high blood chaf’d,

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 war-like fraughtage. Now on Dardan plains

The fresh and yet unbruised Greeks do pitch

Their brave pavilions: Priam’s six-gated city,

Dardan, and Tymbria, Ilias, 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, Troyan 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.

ACT I

SCENE 1. 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 unpractis’d 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 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 suff’rance 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 she is thence?

PANDARUS.

Well, she look’d 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

blackamoor; ’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 starv’d 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 gor’d 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.]

SCENE 2. Troy. A street

[Enter CRESSIDA and her man 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 mov’d.

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 Troyan 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 robb’d many