CALCHAS, a Trojan Priest, taking part with the Greeks.

PANDARUS, Uncle to Cressida.

MARGARELON, a bastard Son of PRIAM.

AGAMEMNON, the Grecian General.

MENELAUS, his Brother.

THERSITES, a deformed and scurrilous Grecian.

ALEXANDER, Servant to Cressida.

Servant to Troilus; Servant to Paris; Servant to
Diomedes.

HELEN, Wife to Menelaus.

ANDROMACHE, Wife to Hector.

CASSANDRA, Daughter to Priam; a Prophetess.
CRESSIDA, Daughter to Calchas.

Trojan and Greek Soldiers, and Attendants.

SCENE-Troy, and the Grecian Camp before it.

PROLOGUE1.

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 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,

1 This Prologue is wanting in the quarto editions. Steevens thinks that it is not by Shakspeare; and that perhaps the drama itself is not entirely of his construction. It appears to have escaped Heminge and Condell, the editors of the first folio, until the volume was almost printed off; and is thrust in between the tragedies and histories without any enumeration of pages, except on one leaf. There seems to have been a previous play on the same subject by Henry Chettle and Thomas Decker. Entries appear in the accounts of Henslowe of money advanced to them in earnest of Troylles and Cressida, in April and May, 1599.

2 Orgulous, proud, disdainful; orgueilleux, Fr. • Freight.

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 5 and firstlings of those broils,
'Ginning 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.

Sperr or spar, to close, fasten, or bar up; from the Saxon rpannan. A word not yet disused in the northern counties. The bar of a gate or door is called a spar. Thus Spenser :

The other that was entred,
To sperre the gate.'

5 i. e. the avant, what went before.

labour'd fast

F. Q. b. v. c. 10. Thus in Lear;-

'Vaunt couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,'

What is now called the van of an army was formerly called the raunt-guard.

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.

ACT I.

SCENE I. Troy. Before Priam's Palace.

Enter TROILUS armed, and PANDARUS.

Troilus.

CALL 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,

Fierce to their skill, and to their fierceness valiant; But I am weaker than a woman's tear,

1 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 disesteem 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 demprisonement.'

2 i. e. in addition to. This kind of phraseology occurs in Macbeth, Act i. Sc. ii. p. 212; see note there.

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 further. He that will have a cake out of the wheat, must 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?

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

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),

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.

To blench is to shrink, start, or fly off. See Hamlet, Act ii. Sc. 2; and vol. ii. 91. p.