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 warlike 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, Trojan,
And Antenorides, with massy staples,
And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts,
Sparr3 up the sons of Troy.

This Prologue is wanting in the quarto editions. That it was spoken by "one in Armour" appears from what he says of himself. Steevens thinks that it is not by Shakespeare; and that perhaps the drama itself is not entirely of his construction. 2 Orgulous, i. e. proud, disdainful; orgueilleux, Fr.

3 Sparr or spar, to close, fasten, or bar up; from the Saxon гpannan. A word not yet disused in the northern counties. The

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.

old copies print erroneously stirre. The emendation is by Theobald. The bar of a gate or door is called a spar.

Thus in Warner's Albion's England:

When chased home into his holdes, there sparred up the gates. 4 i. e. the avant, what went before. Thus in Lear:

"Vaunt couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts." What is now called the van of an army was formerly called the vaunt-guard.

SCENE I. Troy. Before Priam's Palace.
Enter TROILUS armed, and PANDARUS.

Troilus.

ALL here my varlet1, 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.

Pan. Will this geer ne'er be mended?

Tro. The Greeks are strong, and skilful to their strength 2,

This word, which we have from the old French varlet or vadlet, anciently signified a groom, a servant of the meaner sort. Holinshed, speaking of the battle of Agincourt says, "Diverse were releeved by their varlets and conveied out of the field." Cotgrave says, "In old time it was a more honourable title; for all young gentlemen untill they came to be eighteen yeres of age were so tearmed." He says, the term came into dis-esteem in the reign of Francis I. till when the gentlemen of the king's chamber were called valets de chambre. In one of our old statutes, 1 Henry IV. c. 7, anno 1399, are these words:-"Et que nulle vadlet appellé yoman preigne ne use nulle liveree du roi ne de null autre seignour sur peine dem prisonement."

2 i. e. in addition to. This phraseology is common to writers of the time, it occurs in Macbeth, Act i. Sc. 2; see note there.

www

Fierce to their skill, and to their fierceness valiant ;
But I am weaker than a woman's tear,
Tamer than sleep, fonder3 than ignorance;
Less valiant than the virgin in the night,
And skill-less as unpractis'd infancy.

Pan. 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 needs tarry the grinding.

Tro. Have I not tarried?

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

Tro. Have I not tarried?

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

Tro. Still have I tarried.

Pan. 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 to burn your lips.

Tro. Patience herself, what goddess e'er she be, Doth lesser blench at sufferance 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 is she

thence 5?

Pan. Well, she look'd yesternight fairer than ever I saw her look, or any woman else.

3 i. e. more weak or foolish. Dryden has taken this speech as it stands in his alteration of this play, except that he has changed skill-less, in the last line, to artless; which, as Johnson observes, is no improvement.

4 To blench is to shrink, start, or fly off. See Hamlet, Act ii. Sc. 2; and Measure for Measure, Act iv. Sc. 5, note 1.

5 The old copies have "So, traitor, then she comes, when she is thence." Rowe corrected it.

Tro. 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 6), 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.

Pan. 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

Tro. 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 7!

The old copies have scorn. Rowe made the correction. 1 Handlest is here used metaphorically, with an allusion, at the same time, to its literal meaning. The same play on the words is in Titus Andronicus:

"O handle not the theme, to talk of hands,

Lest we remember still that we have none!"

Steevens remarks that the beauty of a female hand seems to have made a strong impression on the poet's mind. Antony cannot endure that the hand of Cleopatra should be touched. In Romeo and Juliet we have:

"The white wonder of dear Juliet's hand."

And, in The Winter's Tale, Florizel thus beautifully descants on that of his mistress :

"I take thy hand; this hand

As soft as dove's down, and as white as it;

Or Ethiopian's tooth; or the fann'd snow
That's bolted by the northern blasts twice o'er."