Troilus and Cressida

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 th’ Athenian bay
Put forth toward Phrygia, and their vow is made
To ransack Troy, within whose strong immures
The ravished Helen, Menelaus’ queen,
With wanton Paris sleeps; and that’s the quarrel.
[…]And hither am I come,
A prologue armed, but not in confidence
Of author’s pens 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 these broils,
Beginning in the middle, starting thence away
To what may be digested in a play.

PANDARUS […] 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’ th’ shell.

PANDARUS I cannot choose but laugh to think ho she tickled his chin. Indeed, she has a marvelous 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 millstones.

PANDARUS And Cassandra laughed—

CRESSIDA […] 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.

AGAMEMNON […] Why then, you princes,
DO you with cheeks abashed behold our works
And call them shames, which are indeed naught 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 […] In the reproof of chance
Lies the true proof of men. The sea being smooth,
How many shallow bauble boats dare sale
Upon her [patient] breast, making their way
With those of nobler bulk!
But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage
The gentil Thetis, and anon behold
The strong-ribbed bark through liquid mountains cut,
Bounding between the two moist elements,
Like Perseus’s horse. Where’s then the saucy boat
Whose weak untimbered sides but even now
Corrivaled greatness? Either to harbor fled
Or made a toast of Neptune. Even so
Doth valor’s show and valor’s worth divide
In storms of Fortune.

AENEAS […] “If there be one among the fair’st of Greece
That holds his honor higher than his ease,
That seeks his praise more than he fears his peril,
That knows his valor 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 couple in his arms
And will tomorrow 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 honor him […]

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 spongey 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 called
The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches
To th’ 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 to be as dear as Heln; I mean, of ours.
If we had 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?

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 th’ air with us?

ULYSSES Things small as nothing, for request’s sake only,
He makes important. Possessed 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 swoll’n and hot discourse
That ’twixt his mental and his active parts
Kingdomed Achilles in commotion rages
And batters himself down. What should I say?
He is so plaguey proud that the death-tokens of it
Cry “no recovery.”

AJAX A paltry, insolent fellow.

NESTOR (aside) How he describes himself!

AJAX Can he not be sociable?

ULYSSES (aside) The raven chides blackness.

AJAX An all men were of my mind—

ULYSSES (aside) Wit would be out of fashion.

AJAX —he should not bear it so; he should eat swords first. Shall pride carry it?

NESTOR (aside) An ’twould, you’d carry half.

ULYSSES (aside) He would have ten shares.

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

NESTOR (aside) He’s not yet through warm. Force him with praises. Pour in, pour in; his ambition is dry.

[…]

ULYSSES (to Ajax) Thank the heavens, lord, thou art of sweet composure.
Praise him that gat thee, she that gave thee suck;
Famed by thy tutor, and thy parts of nature
Thrice famed beyond, beyond thy erudition;
But he that disciplined thine arms to fight,
Let Mars divide eternity in twain
And give him half; and for thy vigor,
Bull-bearing Milo his addition yield
To sinewy Ajax.

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 honor, but honor for those honors
That are without him—as place, riches, favor,
Prizes of accident as oft as merit,
Which, when they fall, as being slippery standers,
The love that leaned on them, as slippery too,
Doth 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.

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 devoured
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done. Perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honor bright. To have done is to hang
Quite out of fashion like a rusty mail
In monumental mock’ry. Take the instant way,
For honor 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 turn aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an entered tide they all ush by
And leave you hindmost;
Or, like a gallant horse fall’n in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O’errun and trampled on.

AENEAS And thou shalt hunt a lion that will fly
With his face backward. In human gentleness,
Welcome to Troy. Now, by Anchises’ life,
Welcome indeed. By Venus’ hand I swear
No an 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 honor let him die
With every joint a wound and that tomorrow.

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.

THERSITES Why, his masculine whore. Now the rotten diseases of the south, the guts-griping, ruptures, catarrhs, loads o’ gravel in the back, lethargies, cold palsies, raw ees, dirt-rotten livers, whissing lungs, bladders full of impostume, sciaticas, limekilns i’ th’ 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 means thou to curse thus?

THERSITES Do I curse thee?

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

THERSITES No? Why art thou then exasperate, thou idle immaterial skein of sleave-silk, thou green sarsenet 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.

HECTOR Begone, I say. The gods have heard me swear.

CASSANDRA The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows.
They are polluted off’rings more abhorred
Than spotted livers in the sacrifice.

ANDROMACHE (to Hector) 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 hold.
Unarm, sweet Hector.

HECTOR Hold you still, I say.
Mine honor keeps the weather of my fate.
Life every man holds dear, but the dear man
Holds honor far more precious-dear than life.

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, hacked and chipped, come to him,
Crying on Hector. Ajax hath lost a friend
And foams at the mouth, and he is armed and at it,
Roaring for Troilus, who hath done today
Mad and fantastic execution,
Engaging himself and redeeming of himself
With such a careless force and forceless care
As if that luck, in spite of very cunning,
Bade him win all.

PANDARUS Why should our endeavor be so loved and the performance so loathed? What verse for it? What instance for it? Let me see:

Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing,
Till he hath lost his honey and his sting;
And being once subdued in 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 panders’ hall,
Your eyes, half out, weep out at Pandar’s fall;
Or if you cannot weep, yet give some groans,
Though not for me, yet for your aching bones.
Brethren and sisters of the hold-door trade,
Some two months hence my will shall here be made.
It should be now, but that my fear is this:
Some galled goose of Winchester would hiss.
Till then I’ll sweat and seek about for eases,
And at that time bequeath you my diseases.