SCENE I.- Troy. A Room in Priam's Palace. guide them; especially to you, fair queen! fair

Pan. You spy! what do you spy?—Come, give cousin Cressida's? me an instrument. Now, sweet queen.

Helen. Let thy song be love: this love will undo From Cupid's shoulder pluck his painted wings,

Tro. 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. Cres. They that have the voice of lions, and the act of hares, are they not monsters?

Tro. 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 8 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? Cres. Will you walk in, my lord?

Re-enter PANDARUS.

Pan. What, blushing still?

Tro. Well know they what they speak, that speak so wisely.

Cres. 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.
Tro. O, that I thought it could be in a woman,
(As, if it can, I will presume in you,)
To feed for aye9 her lamp 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,

Cres. Well, uncle, what folly I commit, I dedi- And simpler than the infancy of truth. cate to you.

Pan. I thank you for that; be true to my lord: if he flinch, chide me for it.

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

Pan. 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.
Cres. Boldness comes to me now, and brings me
heart:

Prince Troilus, I have lov'd you night and day
For many weary months.

Tro. Why was my Cressid then so hard to win?
Cres. 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 lov'd 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.
Tro. And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence.
Pan. Pretty, i' faith.

Cres. 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,
Tro. Your leave, sweet Cressid?
Cres. Pray you, content you.
Tro.

Cres. In that I'll war with you.
Tro.

-

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 tir'd 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 center, -
Yet, after all comparisons of truth,
As truth's authentick author to be cited,
As true as Troilus shall crown up 3 the verse,
And sanctify the numbers.

Cres.

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 have said
false

-as

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.

Pan. 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 inconstant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids, and all brokers-between Pandars! say, amen.

What offends you, lady?

Tro. Amen.
Cres. Amen.
Pan. Amen.

You cannot shun

Cres. Sir, mine own company.
Tro.

Yourself.

1

[Exeunt.

And apprehended here immediately

Made emulous missions 'mongst the gods themselves,
And drave great Mars to faction.
Of this my privacy

But 'gainst your privacy

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 shrinking.

Achil. 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?
Ulyss. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes :.

|

Achil.

I have strong reasons.

Ulyss.

The reasons are more potent and heroical:
'Tis known, Achilles, that you are in love
With one of Priam's daughters. 9

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 commérce that you have had with Troy,
As perfectly is ours, as yours, my lord;

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;

Those scraps are good deeds past: which are de- But our great Ajax bravely beat down him.

vour'd

As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done: Perséverance, 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 fallen 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 out-stretch'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 gawds7,
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,
7 New-fashioned toys,

Farewell, my lord: I as your lover speak;
The fool slides o'er the ice that you should break.

[Exit.

Patr. To this effect, Achilles, have I mov'd you:
A woman impudent and mannish grown
Is not more loath'd 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.
Achil.

Shall Ajax fight with Hector? Patr. Ay; and, perhaps, receive much honour by him.

Achil. I see, my reputation is at stake;
My fame is shrewdly gor'd.

Patr.

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.

Achil. 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. A labour sav'd!

Enter THERSITES.

Ther. A wonder!
Achil. What?

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

Achil. How so?

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

8 The descent of the deities to combat on either side.
9 Polyxena.
1 Friend,