These two passages are somewhat ambiguous, for in fact only the single combat between Hector and Ajax is resolved on for the morrow.

"Act III. sc. i. We are back again in Troy. Pandarus requests Paris to excuse Troilus to Priam, should 'the king call for him at supper' (1. 80). In this scene commences an extraordinary entanglement of the plot of the play. It is quite clear that from its position it must represent a portion of the day on which Hector sends his challenge to the Greeks: a day on which there could be no encounter between the hostile forces, and which in fact is but one day of a long-continued truce; yet in this scene Pandarus asks Paris, 'Sweet lord, who's a-field to-day?' Paris replies, 'Hector, Deiphobus, Helenus, Antenor, and all the gallantry of Troy'. Paris himself, it seems, nor Troilus went not. Towards the end of the scene a retreat is sounded, and Paris says:

They're come from the field; let us to Priam's hall

To greet the warriors;

and he begs Helen to come 'help unarm our Hector'.

"Act III. sc. iii. In the Grecian camp. The allusions to the combat which is to come off to-morrow between Hector and Ajax are numerous in this scene, so that we are clearly still in the day on which Hector sent his challenge. But the entanglement of the plot which we noticed in Act III. sc. i. becomes here still more involved.

says:

You have a Trojan prisoner, called Antenor,
Yesterday took;

Calchas

and he requests that Antenor may be changed for his daughter Cressida. The commanders assent, and Diomedes is commissioned to effect the exchange. From this it pears that Antenor, who goes out to fight on this very day (see Act III. sc. i.)-when there is no fighting-was nevertheless taken prisoner the day before, during the longcontinued truce."

For many illustrations of words and for genial co-operation in every way, I have to thank our General Editor, Mr. W. J. Craig; I wish also to thank my old friend, Mr. J. W. Sherer, C.S.I., for interesting information as to the bibliography of the Cressida myth: while to the labours of the Cambridge Editors in the matter of collation my debt, as will be seen in every page, is very large.

To the quotation on III. iii. 95 I should have added that in the Preface to his Studies in Shakespeare Mr. Churton Collins mentions that while the work was passing through the press he discovered that he had been anticipated by Grant White as to the parallel with the First Alcibiades.

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA

CALCHAS, a Trojan Priest, taking part with the Greeks.
PANDARUS, Uncle to Cressida.

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.

2

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA

PROLOGUE

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

2. orgulous] orgillous Ff.

The Prologue, wanting in the Quarto, is generally attributed to some other hand than Shakespeare's. Grant White, judging from the style, thinks that it was probably written by George Chapman, the dramatist, a contemporary and personal friend of our author.

2. orgulous] F.orgueilleux, "proud, surly, swelling, scornful," etc., Cotgrave. The word is found several times in Mallory's King Arthur. Compare Caxton's translation of Reynard the Fox (Arber, The Scholar's Library, p. 36), "he was so prowde and orgillous that he had alle other beestis in despyte which tofore had been his felaws ". Caxton's Destruction of Troy, p. 7: "Then began men . . .

8. immures] emures F 1.

5

to haunt the thorny desarts to fight and destroy the orgillous serpents'

6. crownets] properly a diminutive of "crown "; but, like its fuller form, coronet," often used by Shakespeare as an equivalent to that word. In Henry V. Chorus, ii. 10, we have "crowns imperial, crowns and coronets," i.e. crowns such as are worn by emperors, by inferior sovereigns and by peers. Marlowe, Edward I. 1. i. 62, seems to use the word in the sense of bracelets:

"Crownets of pearl about his naked arms".

8. immures] walls, fortifications. Though the verb is frequent in Shakespeare he has no instance of the substantive. In the New Eng.