Complete Plays, The

by William Shakespeare

  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