Cressida
Juno have mercy! how came it cloven?
Pandarus
Why, you know ’tis dimpled: I think his smiling becomes him better than any man in all Phrygia.
Cressida
O, he smiles valiantly.
Pandarus
Does he not?
Cressida
O yes, an ’twere a cloud in autumn.
Pandarus
Why, go to, then: but to prove to you that Helen loves Troilus,—
Cressida
Troilus will stand to the proof, if you’ll prove it so.
Pandarus
Troilus! why, he esteems her no more than I esteem an addle egg.
Cressida
If you love an addle egg as well as you love an idle head, you would eat chickens i’ the shell.
Pandarus
I cannot choose but laugh, to think how she tickled his chin: indeed, she has a marvellous white hand, I must needs confess,—
Cressida
Without the rack.
Pandarus
And she takes upon her to spy a white hair on his chin.
Cressida
Alas, poor chin! many a wart is richer.
Pandarus
But there was such laughing! Queen Hecuba laughed that her eyes ran o’er.
Cressida
With mill-stones.
Pandarus
And Cassandra laughed.
Cressida
But there was more temperate fire under the pot of her eyes: did her eyes run o’er too?
Pandarus
And Hector laughed.
Cressida
At what was all this laughing?
Pandarus
Marry, at the white hair that Helen spied on Troilus’ chin.
Cressida
An’t had been a green hair, I should have laughed too.
Pandarus
They laughed not so much at the hair as at his pretty answer.
Cressida
What was his answer?
Pandarus
Quoth she, ‘Here’s but two and fifty hairs on your chin, and one of them is white.
Cressida
This is her question.
Pandarus
That’s true; make no question of that. ‘Two and fifty hairs’ quoth he, ‘and one white: that white hair is my father, and all the rest are his sons.’ ‘Jupiter!’ quoth she, ‘which of these hairs is Paris, my husband? ‘The forked one,’ quoth he, ‘pluck’t out, and give it him.’ But there was such laughing! and Helen so blushed, an Paris so chafed, and all the rest so laughed, that it passed.
Cressida
So let it now; for it has been while going by.
Pandarus
Well, cousin. I told you a thing yesterday; think on’t.
Cressida
So I do.
Pandarus
I’ll be sworn ’tis true; he will weep you, an ’twere a man born in April.
Cressida
And I’ll spring up in his tears, an ’twere a nettle against May.
A retreat sounded
Pandarus
Hark! they are coming from the field: shall we stand up here, and see them as they pass toward Ilium? good niece, do, sweet niece Cressida.
Cressida
At your pleasure.
Pandarus
Here, here, here’s an excellent place; here we may see most bravely: I’ll tell you them all by their names as they pass by; but mark Troilus above the rest.
Cressida
Speak not so loud.
Aeneas passes
Pandarus
That’s Aeneas: is not that a brave man? he’s one of the flowers of Troy, I can tell you: but mark Troilus; you shall see anon.
Antenor passes
Cressida
Who’s that?
Pandarus
That’s Antenor: he has a shrewd wit, I can tell you; and he’s a man good enough, he’s one o’ the soundest judgments in whosoever, and a proper man of person. When comes Troilus? I’ll show you Troilus anon: if he see me, you shall see him nod at me.
Cressida
Will he give you the nod?
Pandarus
You shall see.
Cressida
If he do, the rich shall have more.
Hector passes
Pandarus
That’s Hector, that, that, look you, that; there’s a fellow! Go thy way, Hector! There’s a brave man, niece. O brave Hector! Look how he looks! there’s a countenance! is’t not a brave man?
Cressida
O, a brave man!
Pandarus
Is a’ not? it does a man’s heart good. Look you what hacks are on his helmet! look you yonder, do you see? look you there: there’s no jesting; there’s laying on, take’t off who will, as they say: there be hacks!
Cressida
Be those with swords?
Pandarus
Swords! any thing, he cares not; an the devil come to him, it’s all one: by God’s lid, it does one’s heart good. Yonder comes Paris, yonder comes Paris.
Paris passes
Look ye yonder, niece; is’t not a gallant man too, is’t not? Why, this is brave now. Who said he came hurt home to-day? he’s not hurt: why, this will do Helen’s heart good now, ha! Would I could see Troilus now! You shall see Troilus anon.
Helenus passes
Cressida
Who’s that?
Pandarus
That’s Helenus. I marvel where Troilus is. That’s
Helenus. I think he went not forth to-day. That’s Helenus.
Cressida
Can Helenus fight, uncle?
Pandarus
Helenus? no. Yes, he’ll fight indifferent well. I marvel where Troilus is. Hark! do you not hear the people cry ‘Troilus’? Helenus is a priest.
Cressida
What sneaking fellow comes yonder?
Troilus passes
Pandarus
Where? yonder? that’s Deiphobus. ’Tis Troilus! there’s a man, niece! Hem! Brave Troilus! the prince of chivalry!
Cressida
Peace, for shame, peace!
Pandarus
Mark him; note him. O brave Troilus! Look well upon him, niece: look you how his sword is bloodied, and his helm more hacked than Hector’s, and how he looks, and how he goes! O admirable youth! he ne’er saw three and twenty. Go thy way, Troilus, go thy way! Had I a sister were a grace, or a daughter a goddess, he should take his choice. O admirable man! Paris? Paris is dirt to him; and, I warrant, Helen, to change, would give an eye to boot.
Cressida
Here come more.
Forces pass
Pandarus
Asses, fools, dolts! chaff and bran, chaff and bran! porridge after meat! I could live and die i’ the eyes of Troilus. Ne’er look, ne’er look: the eagles are gone: crows and daws, crows and daws! I had rather be such a man as Troilus than Agamemnon and all Greece.
Cressida
There is among the Greeks Achilles, a better man than Troilus.
Pandarus
Achilles! a drayman, a porter, a very camel.
Cressida
Well, well.
Pandarus
‘Well, well!’ why, have you any discretion? have you any eyes? Do you know what a man is? Is not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man?
Cressida
Ay, a minced man: and then to be baked with no date in the pie, for then the man’s date’s out.
Pandarus
You are such a woman! one knows not at what ward you lie.
Cressida
Upon my back, to defend my belly; upon my wit, to defend my wiles; upon my secrecy, to defend mine honesty; my mask, to defend my beauty; and you, to defend all these: and at all these wards I lie, at a thousand watches.
Pandarus
Say one of your watches.
; Cressida
Nay, I’ll watch you for that; and that’s one of the chiefest of them too: if I cannot ward what I would not have hit, I can watch you for telling how I took the blow; unless it swell past hiding, and then it’s past watching.
Pandarus
You are such another!
Enter Troilus’s Boy
Boy
Sir, my lord would instantly speak with you.
Pandarus
Where?
Boy
At your own house; there he unarms him.
Pandarus
Good boy, tell him I come.
Exit boy
I doubt he be hurt. Fare ye well, good niece.
Cressida
Adieu, uncle.
Pandarus
I’ll be with you, niece, by and by.
Cressida
To bring, uncle?
Pandarus
Ay, a token from Troilus.
Cressida
By the same token, you are a bawd.
Exit Pandarus
Words, vows, gifts, tears, and love’s full sacrifice,
He offers in another’s enterprise;
But more in Troilus thousand fold I see
Than in the glass of Pandar’s praise may be;
Yet hold I off. Women are angels, wooing:
Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.
That she beloved knows nought that knows not this:
Men prize the thing ungain’d more than it is:
That she was never yet that ever knew
Love got so sweet as when desire did sue.
Therefore this maxim out of love I teach:
Achievement is command; ungain’d, beseech:
Then though my heart’s content firm love doth bear,
Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear.
Exeunt
SCENE III. THE GRECIAN CAMP. BEFORE AGAMEMNON’S TENT.
Sennet. Enter Agamemnon, Nestor, Ulysses, Menelaus, and others
Agamemnon
Princes,
What grief hath set the jaundice on your cheeks?
The ample proposition that hope makes
In all designs begun on earth below
Fails in the promised largeness: cheques and disasters
Grow in the veins of actions highest rear’d,
As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Infect the sound pine and divert his grain
Tortive and errant from his course of growth.
Nor, princes, is it matter new to us
That we come short of our suppose so far
That after seven years’ siege yet Troy walls stand;
Sith every action that hath gone before,
Whereof we have record, trial did draw
Bias and thwart, not answering the aim,
And that unbodied figure of the thought
That gave’t surmised shape. Why then, you princes,
Do you with cheeks abash’d behold our works,
And call them shames? which are indeed nought else
But the protractive trials of great Jove
To find persistive constancy in men:
The fineness of which metal is not found
In fortune’s love; for then the bold and coward,
The wise and fool, the artist and unread,
The hard and soft seem all affined and kin:
But, in the wind and tempest of her frown,
Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan,
Puffing at all, winnows the light away;
And what hath mass or matter, by itself
Lies rich in virtue and unmingled.
Nestor
With due observance of thy godlike seat,
Great Agamemnon, Nestor shall apply
Thy latest words. In the reproof of chance
Lies the true proof of men: the sea being smooth,
How many shallow bauble boats dare sail
Upon her patient breast, making their way
With those of nobler bulk!
But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage
The gentle Thetis, and anon behold
The strong-ribb’d bark through liquid mountains cut,
Bounding between the two moist elements,
Like Perseus’ horse: where’s then the saucy boat
Whose weak untimber’d sides but even now
Co-rivall’d greatness? Either to harbour fled,
Or made a toast for Neptune. Even so
Doth valour’s show and valour’s worth divide
In storms of fortune; for in her ray and brightness
The herd hath more annoyance by the breeze
Than by the tiger; but when the splitting wind
Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks,
And flies fled under shade, why, then the thing of courage
As roused with rage with rage doth sympathize,
And with an accent tuned in selfsame key
Retorts to chiding fortune.
Ulysses
Agamemnon,
Thou great commander, nerve and bone of Greece,
Heart of our numbers, soul and only spirit.
In whom the tempers and the minds of all
Should be shut up, hear what Ulysses speaks.
Besides the applause and approbation To which,
To Agamemnon
most mighty for thy place and sway,
To Nestor
And thou most reverend for thy stretch’d-out life
I give to both your speeches, which were such
As Agamemnon and the hand of Greece
Should hold up high in brass, and such again
As venerable Nestor, hatch’d in silver,
Should with a bond of air, strong as the axle-tree
On which heaven rides, knit all the Greekish ears
To his experienced tongue, yet let it please both,
Thou great, and wise, to hear Ulysses speak.
Agamemnon
Speak, prince of Ithaca; and be’t of less expect
That matter needless, of importless burden,
Divide thy lips, than we are confident,
When rank Thersites opes his mastic jaws,
We shall hear music, wit and oracle.
Ulysses
Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down,
And the great Hector’s sword had lack’d a master,
But for these instances.
The specialty of rule hath been neglected:
And, look, how many Grecian tents do stand
Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions.
When that the general is not like the hive
To whom the foragers shall all repair,
What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded,
The unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.
The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre
Observe degree, priority and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office and custom, in all line of order;
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Amidst the other; whose medicinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts, like the commandment of a king,
Sans cheque to good and bad: but when the planets
In evil mixture to disorder wander,
What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!
What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!
Commotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixure! O, when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,
Then enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable sho
res,
The primogenitive and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead:
Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong,
Between whose endless jar justice resides,
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then every thing includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,
This chaos, when degree is suffocate,
Follows the choking.
And this neglection of degree it is
That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose
It hath to climb. The general’s disdain’d
By him one step below, he by the next,
That next by him beneath; so every step,
Exampled by the first pace that is sick
Of his superior, grows to an envious fever
Of pale and bloodless emulation:
And ’tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,
Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,
Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.
Nestor
Most wisely hath Ulysses here discover’d
The fever whereof all our power is sick.
Agamemnon
The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses,
What is the remedy?
Ulysses
The great Achilles, whom opinion crowns
The sinew and the forehand of our host,
Having his ear full of his airy fame,
Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent
Lies mocking our designs: with him Patroclus
Upon a lazy bed the livelong day
Breaks scurril jests;
And with ridiculous and awkward action,
Which, slanderer, he imitation calls,
He pageants us. Sometime, great Agamemnon,
Thy topless deputation he puts on,
And, like a strutting player, whose conceit
Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich
To hear the wooden dialogue and sound
’Twixt his stretch’d footing and the scaffoldage,—
Such to-be-pitied and o’er-wrested seeming
He acts thy greatness in: and when he speaks,
’Tis like a chime a-mending; with terms unsquared,
Which, from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropp’d
Complete Plays, The Page 77