There remain but certain accessories of the play to be set down to the credit of Caxton and Lydgate. The History of the Destruction of Troy, translated by Caxton from the French of Le Fevre, appeared in 1474. In Shakespeare's time it had been modernized, and was very popular. - The History, Siege, and Destruction of Troy, commonly distinguished as the Troy Book of Lydgate, came from the press in 1513. In Shakespeare's time, however, it was fast sinking out of use, being written in verse, so that it could pass for prose, while the metre was so rude and stumbling that it could not go as verse. I can discover no sure signs of the Poet's having drawn from this source at all; there being, I think, nothing common to him and Lydgate, but what is also common to Lydgate and Caxton. A few particulars due to this source are given in the foot-notes. Perhaps I ought to add, that A proper Ballad, dialogue-wise, between Troilus and Cressida," was entered at the Stationers' in 1581, by Edward White; which may possibly have furnished the Poet a hint for working the story into a play.

The address prefixed to the quarto is as follows:

A NEVER WRITER TO AN EVER READER: NEWS.

ETERNAL reader, you have here a new play, never staled with the stage, never clapper-claw'd with the palms of the vulgar, and yet passing full of the palm comical; for it is a birth of your brain that never undertook any thing comical vainly : and, were but the vain names of comedies changed for the titles of commodities, or of plays for pleas, you should see all those grand censors, that now style them such vanities, flock to them for the main grace of their gravities; especially this author's comedies, that are so framed to the life, that they serve for the most common commentaries of all the actions of our lives, showing such a dexterity and power of wit, that the most displeased with plays are pleased with his comedies. And all such dull and heavy-witted worldlings as were never capable of the wit of a comedy, coming by report of them to his representations, have found that wit there that they never found in themselves, and have parted betterwitted than they came; feeling an edge of wit set upon them,

P

So

more than ever they dreamed they had brain to grind it on. much and such savoured salt of wit is in his comedies, that they seem, for their height of pleasure, to be born in that sea that brought forth Venus. Amongst all there is none more witty than this: and, had I time, I would comment upon it, though I know it needs not, — for so much as will make you think your testern well bestowed, but for so much worth as even poor I know to be stuffed in it. It deserves such a labour, as well as the best comedy in Terence or Plautus: and believe this, that when he is gone, and his comedies out of sale, you will scramble for them, and set up a new English inquisition. Take this for a warning, and, at the peril of your pleasure's loss and judgment's, refuse not, nor like this the less for not being sullied with the smoky breath of the multitude; but thank fortune for the 'scape it hath made amongst you; since, by the grand possessors' wills, I believe you should have prayed for them, rather than been prayed.* And so I leave all such to be prayed for for the states of their wits' healths that will not praise it. Vale.

* Probably them is to be taken as referring not to possessors, but to the comedies for which "a new English inquisition" was to be "set up"; the sense thus being "you should have prayed to get them, rather than have been prayed to buy them."

MARGARELON, a Bastard Son of ALEXANDER, Servant to Cressida.

Priam.

ENEAS,

ANTENOR,

Trojan Commanders.

CALCHAS, a Trojan Priest, taking

part with the Greeks.

PANDARUS, Uncle to Cressida.

AGAMEMNON, the Grecian General.

MENELAUS, his Brother.

Servant to Troilus.

Servant to Paris.

Servant to Diomedes.

HELEN, Wife to Menelaus.
ANDROMACHE, Wife to Hector.

CASSANDRA, Daughter of Priam; a
Prophetess.

THERSITES, a deformed and scurri- CRESSIDA, Daughter of Calchas. lous Grecian.

The princes orgulous,1 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

1 Orgulous is proud, disdainful; from the French orgueilleux.

Their crownets regal, from th' Athenian bay

Put forth toward Phrygia: and their vow is made
To ransack Troy; within whose strong immures 2
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 unbruisèd Greeks do pitch
Their brave pavilions: Priam's six-gated city,
Dardan, and Tymbria, Helias, Chetas, Troien,
And Antenorides,3 with massy staples,
And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts,4
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.

2 Immures is wall-enclosures, fortifications.

3 So Caxton, in his Recuyell of the historyes of Troye: "In this Cyte were sixe pryncipall gates, of whome the one was named dardane, the seconde tymbria, the thirde helyas, the fourthe chetas, the fifthe troyenne, and the sixthe antenorides."

4" Corresponsive and fulfilling bolts' are bolts answering to and filling full their sockets.

5 To sperr or to sparr is to close, fasten, or bar. So in The Faerie Queene, V. 10, 37: "The other which was entred labour'd fast to sperre the gate."

6 Vaunt is an old form of van, and was used to signify the beginning or foremost part of any thing.