Helen. My Lord Pandarus; honey-sweet lord, Pan. Go to, sweet queen, go to: commends himself most affectionately to you.

72

Helen. You shall not bob us out of our melody: if you do, our melancholy upon your head! Pan. Sweet queen, sweet queen! that's a sweet queen, i' faith.

Helen. And to make a sweet lady sad is a sour offence.

Pan. Nay, that shall not serve your turn; that shall it not, in truth, la! Nay, I care not for such words; no, no. And, my lord, he desires you, that if the king call for him at supper, you will make his excuse.

83

Helen. My Lord Pandarus,—

Pan. What says my sweet queen, my very very sweet queen?

Par. What exploit 's in hand? where sups he to-night?

Helen. Nay, but, my lord,

Pan. What says my sweet queen? My cousin will fall out with you. You must not know where he sups.

92

Pan. He no, she'll none of him; they two are twain.

Helen. Falling in, after falling out, may make them three.

110

Pan. Come, come, I'll hear no more of this. I'll sing you a song now.

Helen. Ay, ay, prithee now. sweet lord, thou hast a fine forehead. Pan. Ay, you may, you may.

Helen. Let thy song be love: this love will undo us all. O Cupid, Cupid, Cupid! Pan. Love! ay, that it shall, i' faith. Par. Ay, good now, love, love, nothing but love.

120

Sings.

Par. I'll lay my life, with my disposer Cressida. Pan. No, no, no such matter; you are wide. Come, your disposer is sick.

Par. Well, I'll make excuse.

Pan. You spy! what do you spy? Come, give me an instrument. Now, sweet queen. 101 Helen. Why, this is kindly done.

Pan. My niece is horribly in love with a thing you have, sweet queen.

Helen. She shall have it, my lord, if it be not my Lord Paris.

By my troth,

Pan. In good troth, it begins so.

Love, love, nothing but love, still more!

For, O love's bow
Shoots buck and doe:
The shaft confounds,
Not that it wounds,
But tickles still the sore.

These lovers cry O! O! they die!

130

Yet that which seems the wound to kill,
Doth turn 0! O! to ha! ha! he!
So dying love lives still :
O! O! a while, but ha! ha! ha!
O! O! groans out for ha ha! ha!
Heigh-ho!

Helen. In love, i' faith, to the very tip of the

nose.

Par. He eats nothing but doves, love; and that breeds hot blood, and hot blood begets hot thoughts, and hot thoughts beget hot deeds, and hot deeds is love.

140

Pan. Is this the generation of love? hot blood, hot thoughts, and hot deeds? Why, they are vipers is love a generation of vipers? Sweet lord, who's a-field to-day?

Par. Hector, Deiphobus, Helenus, Antenor, and all the gallantry of Troy: I would fain have armed to-day, but my Nell would not have it so. How chance my brother Troilus went not? Helen. He hangs the lip at something you know all, Lord Pandarus.

150

Pan. Not I, honey-sweet queen.

I long to hear how they sped to-day. You'll remember your brother's excuse?

To greet the warriors. Sweet Helen, I must
woo you

To help unarm our Hector: his stubborn buckles,
With these your white enchanting fingerstouch'd,
Shall more obey than to the edge of steel

162

Pan. Ay, good my lord. Why should you say Or force of Greekish sinews; you shall do Cressida? no, your poor disposer 's sick.

Par. I spy.

Exit.

A retreat sounded. Par. They're come from field: let us to Priam's hall

more

Than all the island kings,-disarm great Hector.
Helen. "Twill make us proud to be his servant,
Paris;

Yea, what he shall receive of us in duty
Gives us more palm in beauty than we have,
Yea, overshines ourself.

Par. Sweet, above thought I love thee.

Exeunt.

Cres. Hard to seem won; but I was won, my Yet, after all comparisons of truth, lord,

As truth's authentic author to be cited,

As true as Troilus' shall crown up the verse 190
And sanctify the numbers.

130

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. See, 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.

142

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.
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. Where is my wit?
I would be gone.
I speak I know not what.
Tro. Well know they what they speak that
speak so wisely.
Cres. Perchance, my lord, I show more craft
than love,

160

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
Exceeds 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!
When right with right wars who shall be most
right.
180
True swains in love shall in the world to come
Approve their truths by Troilus: when their rimes,
Full of protest, of oath, and big compare,
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,

151

170

Cres.
Prophet may you be !
If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,
When time is old and hath forgot itself,
When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,
And blind oblivion swallow'd cities up,
And mighty states characterless are grated
To dusty nothing, yet let memory,

From false to false, among false maids in love,
Upbraid my falsehood! when they 've 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.'

•

200

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 called to the world's end after my name; call them all Pandars; let all constant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids, and all brokers-between Pandars! say, amen.

213

Tro. Amen.
Cres. Amen.

Pan. Amen. Whereupon I will show you a chamber with 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! 201
Exeunt.

SCENE III.-The Grecian Camp.

Enter AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES, DIOMEDES, NES-
TOR, AJAX, MENELAUS, and CALCHAS.

Cal. Now, princes, for the service I have done
you,

The advantage of the time prompts me alond
To call for recompense. Appear it to your mind
That through the sight I bear in things to come,
I have abandon'd Troy, left my possession,
Incurr'd a traitor's name; expos'd myself,
From certain and possess'd conveniences,
To doubtful fortunes; sequestering 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,
Which, you say, live to come in my behalf.
Agam. What would'st thou of us, Trojan!
make demand.

Cal. You have a Trojan prisoner, call'd Antenor,
Yesterday took: Troy holds him very dear.
Oft have you, often have you thanks therefore.
Desir'd my Cressid in right great exchange, a
Whom Troy hath still denied; but this Antenor
I know is such a wrest in their affairs.
That their negotiations all must slack,
Wanting his manage; and they will almost
Give us a prince of blood, a son of Priam,

In change of him: let him be sent, great princes, | Hath any honour, but honour for those honours And he shall buy my daughter; and her That are without him, as place, riches, and favour,

As if his foot were on brave Hector's breast, 140
And great Troy shrinking.

Achil. I do believe it; for they pass'd by me
As misers do by beggars, neither gave to me
Good word nor look: what! are my deeds forgot?
Ulyss. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-siz'd monster of ingratitudes :

Those scraps are good deeds past; which are Than breath or pen can give expressure to.
All the commerce that you have had with
Troy

devour'd

As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done: perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honour bright: to have done is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery. Take the instant

As perfectly is ours as yours, my lord;
And better would it fit Achilles much
To throw down Hector than Polyxena;
But it must grieve young Pyrrhus now at
home,

210

When fame shall in our islands sound her trump,

And all the Greekish girls shall tripping sing, 'Great Hector's sister did Achilles win, But our great Ajax bravely beat down him.' Farewell, my lord: I as your lover speak ; 160 The fool slides o'er the ice that you should break. Erit.

Patr. To this effect, Achilles, have I mov'd
you.

A woman impudent and mannish grown
Is not more loath'd than an effeminate man
In time of action. I stand condemn'd for
this:

150

way;

For honour travels in a strait so narrow
Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path;
For emulation hath a thousand sons
That one by one pursue: if you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an enter'd tide they all rush by
And leave you hindmost;

Or, like a gallant horse fall'n in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O'errun and trampled on: then what they do in
present,
Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop

yours;

For time is like a fashionable host,
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the
hand,

And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles,
And farewell goes out sighing. O! let not virtue
seek

Remuneration for the thing it was;
For beauty, wit,

High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,
That all with one consent praise new-born gawds,
Though they are made and moulded of things
past,

And give to dust that is a little gilt
More laud than gilt o'er-dusted.

The present eye praises the present object: 180
Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,
That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax;
Since things in motion sooner catch the eye
Than what not stirs. The cry went once on
thee,

And still it might, and yet it may again,
If thou would'st not entomb thyself alive,
And case thy reputation in thy tent;
Whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of
late,
Made emulous missions 'mongst the gods them-
selves,

And drave great Mars to faction.
A chil.

170

Of this my privacy 190

Ulyss. Is that a wonder?

The providence that's in a watchful state

Knows almost every grain of Plutus' gold,
Finds bottom in the uncomprehensive deeps,
Keeps place with thought, and almost, like the
gods,

200

I have strong reasons.
Ulyss.
But 'gainst your privacy
The reasons are more potent and heroical.
"Tis known, Achilles, that you are in love
With one of Priam's daughters.

Achil. Ha! known!

Does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles.
There is a mystery, with whom relation
Durst never meddle, in the soul of state,
Which hath an operation more divine