a

to her?-Come, draw this curtain, and let's see your picture. Alas the day, how loth you are to offend day-light! an 't were dark, you'd close sooner. So, so; rub on, and kiss the mistress.(1) 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. TROIL. You have bereft me of all words, lady. PAN. Words pay no debts, give her deeds: but she'll bereave you o' the deeds too, if she call your activity in question. What, billing again? Here's -In witness whereof the parties interchangeably -Come in, come in; I'll go get a fire. CRES. Will you walk in, my lord?

my

[Exit.

TROIL. O, Cressida, how often have I wish'd me thus?

CRES. Wished, my lord ?-the gods grant !-0, lord!

TROIL. 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.

TROIL. Fears make devils of cherubins; 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.

TROIL. O, let my lady apprehend no fear: in all Cupid's pageant there is presented no monster. CRES. Nor nothing monstrous neither? TROIL. 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 than the perfection of ten, and discharging less than the tenth part of one. They that have the voice of lions and the act of hares, are they not monsters?

TROIL. 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. TROIL. 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.

TROIL. Why was my Cressid, then, so hard to win? [lord, CRES. Hard to seem won; but I was won, my 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 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. TROIL. And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence.

PAN. Pretty, i' faith.

not;

CRES. My lord, I do beseech you, pardon me; 'Twas not my purpose thus to beg a kiss:

CRES. Sir, mine own company. TROIL.

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. TROIL. Well know they what they speak, that speak so wisely. [than love;

CRES. Perchance, my lord, I show more craft 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. TROIL. O, that I thought it could be in a

woman,

b

(As, if it can, I will presume in you,)
To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love ;(2)
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 unlifted! 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.
TROIL.

O, virtuous fight, When right with right wars who shall be most right!

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

I would be gone :-
Where is my wit?]

The folio transposes these sentences.

b Or else you love not;]" Or, in other words, you love not." Such is the simple and obvious meaning, though the commentators have all overlooked it. See the notes ad l. in the Variorum Shakespeare, and in more recent editions.

eas plantage to the moon,-] The belief in the influence of the moon upon vegetation was universally prevalent in Shakespeare's day. Farmer has illustrated this by an apt quotation from Scot's "Discovery of Witchcraft," 1584,-"The poore husbandman perceiveth that the increase of the moone maketh plants and living creatures frutefull: so as in the full moone they are in best

291

As air, as water, wind, or* sandy earth,
As fox to lamb, as wolf to heifer's calf,
Pard to the hind, or step-dame to her son;
Yea, let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood,
As false as Cressid. (3)

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.

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; 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,
Which, you say, live to come in my behalf.(4)
AGAM. What wouldst thou of us, Trojan?
make demand.

CAL. You have a Trojan prisoner, call'd An-
tenor,

Yesterday took; Troy holds him very dear.
Oft have you (often have you thanks therefore)
Desir'd my Cressid in right great exchange,
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,
And he shall buy my daughter; and her presence
Shall quite strike off all service I have done,
In most accepted pain.

AGAM.

Let Diomedes bear him, And bring us Cressid hither; Calchas shall have What he requests of us.-Good Diomed, Furnish you fairly for this interchange: Withal, bring word if Hector will to-morrow Be answer'd in his challenge: Ajax is ready. Dro. This shall I undertake; and 'tis a burden Which I am proud to bear.

[Exeunt DIOMEDES and CALCHAS.

Enter ACHILLES and PATROCLUS, before their Tent.

ULYSS. Achilles stands i' the entrance of his tent:

Please it our general to pass strangely by him,
As if he were forgot ;-and, princes all,

a That, through the sight I bear in things from Jove, &c.] The old copies read, " to Jove," or, "- to love," "-it being difficult to determine whether the latter word is intended for "Jove" or "love." Rowe printed,

"That, through the sight I bear in things to come," &c. Mr. Collier's annotator reads,

Appeal it to your mind,

"That through the sight I bear in things above," &c. The substitution of "from" for "to," which we have taken the liberty to make, supposing the compositor misread "fro" as to, receives some support from the passage in Chapman's "Iliads of Homer." Book I., where Chaleas is sent for to discover why Apollo has struck the Greeks with the plague,

I will come last. 'Tis like he'll question me

Why such unplausive eyes are bent, why turn'd on

If

him: d

so, I have derision med'cinable,

To use between your strangeness and his pride,
Which his own will shall have desire to drink:
It may do good: pride hath no other glass
To show itself but pride; for supple knees
Feed arrogance, and are the proud man's fees.
AGAM. We'll execute your purpose, and put on
A form of strangeness as we pass along ;-
So do each lord; and either greet him not,
Or else disdainfully, which shall shake him more
Than if not look'd on. I will lead the way.

ACHIL. What, comes the general to speak with me?

You know my mind, I'll fight no more 'gainst Troy.

AGAM. What says Achilles? would he aught with us?

NEST. Would you, my lord, aught with the general?

ACHIL. No.

AJAX. Ay, and good next day too. [Exit. ACHIL. What mean these fellows? know they not Achilles?

PATR. They pass by strangely: they were us'd to bend,

To send their smiles before them to Achilles ;
To come as humbly as they us'd to creep
To holy altars.
ACHIL. What, am I poor of late?
'Tis certain, greatness, once fall'n out with fortune,
Must fall out with men too: what the declin'd is,
He shall as soon read in the eyes of others,
As feel in his own fall: for men, like butterflies,

"Let us aske, some Prophet, Priest, or prove Some dreame interpreter (for dreanes, are often sent from Jove)," &c.

b

- a wrest-] See note (a), p. 273.

c In most accepted pain.] Hanmer and Warburton read,"In most accepted pay."

d Why such unplausive eyes are bent, why turn'd on him:] "If the eyes were bent on him, they were turn'd on him. This tautology, therefore, together with the redundancy of the line, plainly show that we ought to read, with Sir Thomas Hanmer,—

'Why such unplausive eyes are bent on him.""

STEEVENS.

Show not their mealy wings but to the summer; And not a man, for being simply man,

Hath any honour; but honour for those honours
That are without him, as place, riches and favour,
Prizes of accident as oft as merit:

Which when they fall, as being slippery standers,
The love that lean'd on them as slippery too,
Do one pluck down another, and together
Die in the fall. But 'tis not so with me:
Fortune and I are friends; I do enjoy
At ample point all that I did possess,

Save these men's looks; who do, methinks, find out
Something not worth in me such rich beholding
As they have often given.-Here is Ulysses;
I'll interrupt his reading.-

How now, Ulysses!

ULYSS.

Now, great Thetis' son! ACHIL. What are you reading?

(*) First folio, honour'd.

how dearly ever parted,-] That is, however richly endowed. b To others' eyes: &c.] This and the next line are omitted in the folio.

c and is mirror'd there-] A correction made both by Mr.

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 ;

Till he communicate his parts to others:

Nor doth he of himself know them for aught
Till he behold them form'd in the applause

Where they're extended; who, like an arch, reverberates

The voice again; or like a gate of steel
Fronting the sun, receives and renders back

His figure and his heat. I was much rapt in this;
And apprehended here immediately
The unknown Ajax.

Heavens, what a man is there! a very horse; That has he knows not what. Nature, what things there are,

Most abject in regard, and dear in use!
What things again most dear in the esteem,
And poor in worth! Now shall we see to-morrow,
An act that very chance doth throw upon him,
Ajax renown'd. O, heavens, what some men do,
While some men leave to do!

How some men creep in skittish Fortune's hall,
Whiles others play the idiots in her eyes!
How one man eats into another's pride,
While pride is fasting in his wantonness!
To see these Grecian lords !-why, even already
They clap the lubber Ajax on the shoulder;
As if his foot were on brave Hector's breast,
And great Troy shrieking.

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 devour'd as fast as they are made,
Forgot as soon as done: perséverance, 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 way;
For honour travels in a strait so narrow,
Where one but goes abreast: keep, then, the path;
For emulation hath a thousand sons,

Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,* O'er-run 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, [hand;
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the
And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly,
Grasps-in the comer: the 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'erdusted.

The present eye praises the present object:
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 wouldst 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.

Of this my privacy

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.

the doubtful expression and the limping measure of the line instruct us to suspect some error lurks under the word "cradles," which, indeed, we once believed a misprint for oracles. Mr. Collier's annotator proposes to restore the sense and rhythm by reading,— "Does thoughts unveil in their dumb crudities,"

and Mr. Collier actually adopts "crudities," and terms it a valuable emendation !