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.

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?

TROILUS […] It was thought meet
Paris should do some vengeance on the Greeks.
Your breath with full consent bellied his sails;
The seas and winds, old wranglers, took a truce
And did him service. He touched 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 pale the morning.
Why keep we her? The Grecians keep our aunt.
Is she worth keeping? Why, she is a pearl
Whose price hath launched above a thousand ships
And turned crowned kings to merchants.
If you’ll avouch t’was wisdom Paris went—
[…]
If you’ll confess he brough home a worthy prize—
[…] why do you now
The issue of your proper wisdoms rate
And do a deed that never Fortune did,
Beggar the estimation which you prized
Richer than sea and land?

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.

PARIS Who, in your thoughts, deserves 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 dishonor,
With such a costly loss of wealth and friends.
He, like a puling cuckold, would drink up
The lees and dregs of a flat tamèd 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. […]
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.

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.