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,

Stir 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.

Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are;

Now good or bad, ’tis but the chance of war.

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.

Will this gear ne’er be mended?

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.

Well, I have told you enough of this; for my part, I’ll not meddle nor

make no farther. He that will have a cake out of the wheat must tarry

the grinding.

Have I not tarried?

Ay, the grinding; but you must tarry the bolting.

Have I not tarried?

Ay, the bolting; but you must tarry the leavening.

Still have I tarried.

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 burn your

lips.

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?

Well, she look’d yesternight fairer than ever I saw her look, or any

woman else.

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.

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—

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.

I speak no more than truth.

Thou dost not speak so much.

Faith, I’ll not meddle in’t. Let her be as she is: if she be fair, ’tis

the better for her; and she be not, she has the mends in her own hands.

Good Pandarus! How now, 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.

What! art thou angry, Pandarus? What! with me?

Because she’s kin to me, therefore she’s not so fair as Helen. And 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 and she were a blackamoor; ’tis all

one to me.

Say I she is not fair?

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.

Pandarus—

Not I.

Sweet Pandarus—

Pray you, speak no more to me: I will leave all as I found it, and

there an end.

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.

How now, Prince Troilus! Wherefore not afield?

Because not there. This woman’s answer sorts,

For womanish it is to be from thence.

What news, Aeneas, from the field today?

That Paris is returned home, and hurt.

By whom, Aeneas?

Troilus, by Menelaus.

Let Paris bleed: ’tis but a scar to scorn;

Paris is gor’d with Menelaus’ horn.

Hark what good sport is out of town today!

Better at home, if ‘would I might’ were ‘may.’

But to the sport abroad. Are you bound thither?

In all swift haste.

Come, go we then together.