Dio. And how his silence drinks up this applause!

[aside. Ajar. If I go to him, with my arm'd fist, I'll Over the face. [bash him

Agam. O, no, you shall not go,

Ajar. An he be proud with me, I'll pheeze his Let me go to him.

[pride: Ulyss. Not for the worth that hangs upon our quarrel.

Ajar. A paltry, insolent fellow,

Nest. How he describes

Himself!

Ajar. Can he not be sociable?

Ulyss. The raven

Chides blackness.

Ajax. I will let his humours blood.

Agam. He'll be physician, that should

He should eat swords first: shall pride carry it?
Nest. An 'twould, you'd carry half.
Ulyss. He'd have ten shares.
Ajax. I'll knead him, I'll make him supple:-
Nest. He's not thorough warm: force him with
praises

[aside. [aside.

:

Pour in, pour in; his ambition is dry. [aside. Ulyss. My lord, you feed too much on this dislike. [to Agamemnon. Nest. O noble general, do not do so. Dio. You must prepare to fight without Achilles. Ulyss. Why, 'tis this naming of him does him harm,

SCENE 1.

Ajax. Shall I call you father?

Nest. Ay, my good son.

Dio. Be rul'd by him, lord Ajax. [Achilles Ulyss. There is no tarrying here; the hart Keeps thicket. Please it our great general To call together all his state of war; Fresh kings are come to Troy: to-morrow, We must with all our main of power stand fast: And here's a lord,-come knights from east to west, And cull their flower, Ajax shall cope the best. Agam. Go we to council. Let Achilles sleep: Light boats sail swift, though greater hulks draw deep. [exeunt.

TROY. A ROOM IN PRIAM'S PALACE.
Enter Pandarus and a Servant.
Pan. Friend! you! pray you, a word: do not
you follow the young lord Paris?

Seru. Ay, sir, when he goes before me.
Pan. You do depend upon him, I mean?
Serv. Sir, I do depend upon the lord.

Pan. You do depend upon a noble gentleman;

I must needs praise him.

Serv. The lord be praised!

Pan. You know me, do you not?
Serv. 'Faith, sir, superficially.

Pan. Friend, know me better; I am the lord
Pandarus.

Serv. I hope, I shall know your honour better.
Pan. I do desire it.

Serv. You are in a state of grace.

[music within. Pan. Grace! not so, friend; honour and lordahip are my titles:What music is this?

Serv. I do but partly know, sir; it is music in parts.

Pan. Know you the musicians?

Serv. Wholly, sir.

Pan. Who play they to?

Serv. To the hearers, sir.

Pan. At whose pleasure, friend?

Serv. At mine, sir, and theirs that love music. Pan. Command, I mean, friend.

Serv. Who shall I command, sir?

Pan. Friend, we understand not one another; I am too courtly, and thou art too cunning: at whose request do these men play?

Serv. That's to't, indeed, sir: marry, sir, at the request of Paris my lord, who is there in person; with him, the mortal Venus, the heartblood of beauty, love's invisible soul,

Pan. Who, my cousin Cressida?

Serv. No, sir, Helen; could you not find out that by her attributes?

SCENE II. THE SAME. PANDA RUS' ORCHARD. Enter Pandarus and a Servant, meeting. Pan. How now? where's thy master? at my cousin Cressida's ?

—In witness whereof the parties interchangeably Come in, come in; I'll go get a fire. [erit Pandarus. Cres. Will you walk in, my lord?

Tro. O Cressida, how often have I wished me

Enter Troilus.

Pan. O, here he comes.-How now, how now? Tro. Sirrah, walk off. [exit Servant. Pan. Have you seen my cousin? Tro. No, Pandarus: I stalk about her door, Like a strange soul upon the Stygian banks, Staying for waftage. O, be thou my Charon, And give me swift transportance to those fields, Where I may wallow in the lily beds Propos'd for the deserver! O gentle Pandarus, From Cupid's shoulder pluck his painted wings, And fly with me to Cressid!

Pan. Walk here i'the orchard, I'll bring her straight. [exit Pandarus.

Tro. I am giddy; expectation whirls me round. The imaginary relish is so sweet,

That it enchants my sense; what will it be,
When that the wat'ry palate tastes indeed
Love's thrice-reputed nectar: death, I fear me;
Swooning destruction; or some joy too fine,
Too subtle-potent, tun'd too sharp in sweetness,
For the capacity of my ruder powers:

I fear it much; and I do fear besides,
That I shall lose distinction in my joys;
As doth a battle, when they charge on heaps
The enemy flying.

Re-enter Pandarus.

Pan. She's making her ready, she'll come straight you must be witty now. She does so blush, and fetches her wind so short, as if she were frayed with a sprite: I'll fetch her. It is the prettiest villain :-she fetches her breath as short as a new-ta'en sparrow. [exit Pand. Tro. Even such a passion doth embrace my

bosom.

My heart beats thicker than a feverous pulse;
And all my powers do their bestowing lose,
Like vassalage at unawares encountering
The eye of majesty.

Enter Pandarus and Cressida.

Pan. Come, come, what need you blush? shame's a baby.-Here she is now: swear the oaths now to her, that you have sworn to me.What, are you gone again? you must be watched ere you be made tame, must you?

Come your ways, come your ways; an you draw backward, we'll put you i'the fills.-Why do you not speak to her? Come, draw this curtain, and let's see your picture. A las the day, how loath you are to offend day-light! an 'twere dark, you'd close sooner. So, so; rub on, and kiss the mistress. How now, a kiss in fee-farm! build there, carpenter; the air is sweet. Nay, you shall fight your hearts out, ere I part you. The falcon as the tercel, for all the ducks i'the river: go to, go

to.

Tro. You have bereft me of all words, lady. Pan. Words pay no debts, give her deeds: but she'll bereave you of the deeds too, if she call your activity in question. What, billing again? Here's

Cres. Wished, my lord?—The gods grant! O, my lord!

Tro. What should they grant? what makes this pretty abruption? What too curious dreg espies my sweet lady in the fountain of our love? Cres. More dregs than water, if my fears have eyes.

Tro. Fears make devils cherubims; they never see truly.

Cres. Blind fear, that seeing reason leads, finds safer footing than blind reason stumbling without fear to fear the worst, oft cures the worst.

Tro. O, let my lady apprehend no fear: in all Cupid's pageant there is presented no monster. Cres. Nor nothing monstrous neither? 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, that the will is infinite, and the execution confined; that the desire is boundless, and the act a slave to limit.

Cres. They say, all lovers swear more performance than they are able, and yet reserve an ability that they never perform; vowing more thau the perfection of ten, and discharging less than the tenth part of one. They that have the voice of lions, and the acts 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 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? have you not done
talking yet?

Cres. Well, uncle, what folly I commit, I dedicate to you.

Pan. I thank you for that; if my lord get a boy of you, you'll give him me: 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. [win?

Tro. Why was my Cressid then so hard to
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: sec, 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 asham'd;-O heavens! what have I done?— For this time will I take my leave, my lord. Tro. Your leave, sweet Cressid?

Pan. Leave! an you take leave till to-morrow morning,

Cres. Pray you, content you. mana
Tro. What offends you, lady?

Cres. Sir, mine own company.
Tro. You cannot shun

Yourself.

Cres. Let me go and try:

I have a kind of self resides with you;
But an unkind self, that itself will leave,
To be another's fool. I would be gone:-
Where is my wit? I know not what I speak.
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,
Excceds 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 aye 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,

And simpler than the infancy of truth.
Cres. In that I'll war with you,

Tro. O virtuous fight,

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 centre,-
Yet, after all comparisons of truth,
As truth's authentic author to be cited,
As true as Troilus shall crown up 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 water-drops have worn the stones of Troy,
And blind oblivion swallow'd cities up,
And mighty states charácterless are grated
To dusty nothing; yet let memory,
From false to false, among false maids in love,
Upbraid my falsehood! when they have said—as
false

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 call'd to the world's end after my name, call them all-Pandars: let all inconstant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids, and all brokersbetween Pandars; say, amen.

Tro. Amen.

Cres. Amen.

Pan. Amen. Whereupon I will show you a chamber and a bed; which bed, because it shall not speak of your pretty encounters, press it to death away.

And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here, Bed, chamber, Pandar, to provide this gear! [exeunt.

SCENE III. THE GRECIAN CAMP.

Enter Agamemnon, Ulysses, Diomedes Nestor,
Ajax, Menelaus, and Culchas.
Cal. Now, princes, for the service I have done

you,

The advantage of the time prompts me aloud
To call for recompense. Appear it to your mind,
That, through the sight I bear in things, to Jove
I have abandon'd Troy, left my possessions.
Incurr'd a traitor's name; expos'd myself,
From certain and possess'd conveniences,
To doubtful fortunes; sequest'ring from me all,
That time, acquaintance, custom, and condition,
Made tame and most familiar to my nature;

And here, to do you service, am become

As new into the world, strange, unacquainted:

I do beseech you, as in way of taste,

To give me now a little benefit,

Out of those many register'd in promise,

right!

True swains in love shall, in the world to come, Approve their truths by Troilus: when their Textorhymes,

Full of protest, and oath, and big compare,

Agam. What would'st thou of us, Trojan? make demand.

an Cal. You have a Trojan prisoner, call'd' Antenu, Yesterday took; Troy holds him very dear, Oft have you (often have you thanks therefore,)