169 And here's a lord,-come knights from east to west, And cull their flower, Ajax shall cope the best. Agam. Go we to council. Let Achilles sleep: Light boats sail swift, though greater hulks draw deep. [Exeunt. Ajax. I will let his humours blood.1 Agam. He'll be the physician, that should be the patient. Ajar. An all men my mind, Weré o' Ulyss. [Aside. Wit would be out of fashion. ACT III. SCENE I. Troy. A Room in Priam's Palace. Pan. Friend! you! pray you, a word: Do not [Aside. [Aside. I : Ajax. I'll knead him, I will make him supple :- Nest. O noble general, do not do so. Here is a man-But 'tis before his face; He is not emulous,3 as Achilles is. Ulyss. Know the whole world, he is as valiant. with us! I would, he were a Trojan! Nest. What a vice If he were proud? Dio. Or covetous of praise? Ay, or surly borne? Praise him that got thee, she that gave thee suck : But he that disciplin'd thy arms to fight, To sinewy Ajax. I will not praise thy wisdom, You should not have the eminence of him, There is a curious collection of Epigrams, Satires, &c. printed in 1600, with this quaint title :- The Letting of Humours Blood in the Head Vaine. A small reimpression was made at Edinburgh in 1815, with a preface and notes by Sir Walter Scott. 2 Force him, that is stuff him: furcir, Fr. In another place of this play we have 'malice forced with wit.' 3 See the preceding scene. 4 To palter is to shuffle, equivocate. 5 The quarto reads: 'Thrice fam'd beyond all thy erudition.' 6 i. e. yield his titles, his celebrity for strength. See Act i. Sc. 2. 7 A bourn is a boundary, and sometimes a rivulet, W Pan. You do depend upon a noble gentleman; must needs praise him. Serv. The lord be praised! Pan. You know me, do you not? Serv. 'Faith, sir, superficially. Pan. Friend, know me better; I am the Lord Pandarus. Serv. I hope, I shall know your honour better." Serv. You are in the state of grace. [Music within. Pan. Grace! not so, friend! honour and lordship are my titles:-What music is this? Serv. I do but partly know, sir; it is music in parts. Pan. Know you the musicians? Serv. Wholly, sir. Pan. Who play they to? Serv. To the hearers, sir. Pan. At whose pleasure, friend? Serv. At mine, sir, and theirs that love music. Pan. Command, I mean, friend. Serv. Who shall I command, sir? Pan. Friend, we understand not one another; I am too courtly, and thou art too cunning: At whose request do these men play? Serv. That's to't, indeed, sir: Marry, sir, at the request of Paris, my lord, who is there in person; with him, the mortal Venus, the heart-blood of beauty, love's invisible soul, Pan. Who, my cousin Cressida ? Serv. No, sir, Helen: Could you not find out that by her attributes? Pan. It should seem, fellow, that thou hast not seen the lady Cressida. I come to speak with Paris from the Prince Troilus: I will make a complimental assault upon him, for my business seeths. Serv. Sodden business! there's a stewed phrase, indeed! Enter PARIS and HELEN, attended. Pan. Fair be to you, my lord, and to all this fair company! fair desires, in all fair measure, fairly guide them! especially to you, fair queen! fair thoughts be your fair pillow! Helen. Dear lord, you are full of fair words. Pan. You speak your fair pleasure, sweet queen.Fair prince, here is good broken music. Par. You have broke it, cousin: and, by my life, you shall make it whole again; you shall piece it out with a piece of your performance :-Nell, he is full of harmony. Pan. Truly, lady, no. dividing one place from another. 9 The servant means to quibble. He hopes Pandarus will become a better man than he is at present. In his next speech he chooses to understand Pandarus as if he had said he wished to grow better; and hence the servant affirms that he is in the state of grace. Helen. O, sir, So dying love lives still : Pan. Rude, in sooth; in good sooth, very rude. Par. Well said, my lord! well, you say so in fits.' Pan. I have business to my lord, dear queen:- Hey 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. Pan. Is this the generation of love? hot blood, Pan. Well, sweet queen, you are pleasant with me. But (marry) thus, my lord,-My dear lord, and most esteemed friend, your brother Troilus- hot thoughts, and hot deeds?-Why, they are viHelen. My Lord Pandarus; honey-sweet lord,pers: Is love a generation of vipers? Sweet lord, Pan. Go to, sweet queen, go to:-commends who's a-field to-day? himself most affectionately to you. Helen. You shall not bob us out of our melody; 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. 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.3 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. all the gallantry of Troy: I would fain have armed Par. Hector, Deiphobus, Helenus, Antenor, and to-night, 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. Pan. Not I, honey-sweet queen.-I long to hear how they sped to-day.-You'll remember your bro ther's excuse? Par. To a hair. Pan. Farewell, sweet queen. Helen. Commend me to your niece. [Exit. [A Retreat sounded. Par. They are come from field; let us to Priam's hall, To greet the warriors. Sweet Helen, I must woo you Helen. "Twill make us proud to be his servant, Paris. Yea, what he shall receive of us in duty, Par. I spy. Pan. You spy! what do you spy?-Come, give me an instrument.-Now, sweet queen.. 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. Pan. He! no, she'll none of him: they two are twain. Helen. Falling in, after falling out, may make them three. Pan. Come, come, I'll hear no more of this; I'll sing you a song now. Helen. Ay, ay, pr'ythee now. By my troth, 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. Yea, overshines ourself. Par. Sweet, above thought I love thee. [Exeunt. SCENE II. The same. Pandarus' Orchard. Enter PANDARUS and a Servant, meeting. Pan. How now? where's thy master? at my cousin Cressida's ? Serv. No, sir; he stays for you to conduct him thither. Enter TROILUS. Pan. O, here he comes.-How now, how now? Pan. Have you seen my cousin? Tro. No, Pandarus: I stalk about her door, Propos'd for the deserver! O gentle Pandarus, Pur. Ay, good now, love, love, nothing but love. And fly with me to Cressid! Love, love, nothing but love, still more! Shoots buck and doe: But tickles still the sore. These lovers cry-Oh! ho! they die! Yet that which seems the wound to kill, Pan. Walk here i' the orchard, I'll bring her That it enchants my sense; What will it be, I fear it much; and I do fear besides, A quibble is intended. A fit was a part or division deposer instead of disposer. Helen, he thinks, may ad. of a song or tune. The equivoque lies between fits, dress herself to Pandarus; and by her deposer, mean starts, or sudden impulses, and fits in its musical ac-that Cressida had deposed her in the affections of Troiceptation. 2 And, my lord,' &c. Ithink with Johnson, that the speech of Pandarus should begin here; and that the former part should be added to that of Helen. 3 You must not know where he sups.' These words in the old copies are erroneously given to Helen. 4 Steevens would give this speech to Helen, and read lus. Disposer appears to have been an equivalent term auciently for steward, or manager. If the speech is to be attributed to Helen, she may mean to call Cressid her hand-maid. 5' ubi jam amborum fuerat confusa voluptas.' Sappho's Epistle to l'haon As doth a battle, when they charge on heaps Re-enter PANDARUS. 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 Pan. She's making her ready, she'll come straight: part of one. They that have the voice of lions, you must be witty now. She does so blush, and aud the act of hares, are they not monsters? fetches her wind so short, as if she were fray'd Tro. Are there such? such are not we: Praise with a sprite; I'll fetch her. It is the prettiest us as we are tasted, allow us as we prove; our villain: she fetches her breath as short as a new-head shall go bare, till merit crown it: no perfec[Exit PANDARUS. tion in reversion shall have a praise in present: we Tro. Even such a passion doth embrace my bosom: will not name desert, before his birth; and, being My heart beats thicker than a feverous pulse; born, his addition shall be humble. Few words And all my powers do their bestowing lose, to fair faith: Troilus shall be such to Cressid, as Like vassalage at unawares encount'ring what envy can say worst, shall be a mock for his The eye of majesty. truth; and what truth can speak truest, not truer than Troilus. ta'en sparrow. Enter PANDARUS and CRESSIDA. Pan. Come, come, what need you blush? shame's a baby. Here she is now; swear the oaths now to her, that you have sworn to me.-What, are you gone again? you must be watched' ere you be made tame, must you? Come your ways, come your ways; an you draw backward, we'll put you the fills.-Why do you not speak to her?Come, draw the curtain, and let's see your picture, Alas the day, how loath you are to offend dayhight! an 'twere dark, you'd close sooner. So, so; rub on, and kiss the mistress. 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 the river; go to, go to. Tro. You have bereft me of all words, lady. Pan. Words pay no debts, give her deeds: but she'll bereave you of 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. [Exit PANDARUS. Cres. Will you walk in, my lord? Tro. O, Cressida, how often have I wished me thus ? Cres. Wished, my lord ?-The gods grant!-0 my lord! Tro. 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. Tre. Fears make devils 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. Tro. O, let my lady apprehend no fear: in all Cupid's pageant there is presented no monster." Cres. Nor nothing monstrous neither? Tro. 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 difficuity 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. 1 Hawks were tamed by keeping them from sleep; an 1 thus Pandarus meant that Cressida should be tamed. See Taming of the Sarew, Activ. Sc. 1. 2. e. the shafts. Pills or fills is the term in the midland counties for the shafts of a cart or wagon. 3 The allusion is to bowling; what is now called the jack was formerly termed the mistress. A bowl that kisses the jack or mistress is in the most advantageous situation. Rub on is a term in the game. See Cymbeline, Act ii. Sc. 1. 4 A kiss in fee-farm' is a kiss of duration, that has Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!' Cres. Will you walk in, my lord? talking yet? Cres. Well, uncle, what folly I commit, I dedi cate to you. of you, you'll give him me: Be true to my lord: word, and my firm faith. kindred, though they be long ere they are wooed, Cres. Boldness comes to me now, and brings me heart: Prince Troilus, I have lov'd you night and day Tro. Why was my Cressid then so hard to win? ; Tro. And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence. Cres. My lord, I do beseech you pardon me; Pan. Leave! an you take leave till to-morrow morning, Cres. Pray you, content you. you, lady? Tro. You cannot shun Yourself Cres. Let me go and try: I have a kind of self resides with you; Cres. Perchance, my lord, I show more that craft And fell so roundly to a large confession, O virtuous fight, As fox to lamb, as wolf to heifer's calf, 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 allPandars; let all constant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids, and all brokers-between Pandars! say, amen. Tro. Amen. Pan. Amen. Whereupon I will show you a chamber and 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, [Exeunt. SCENE III. The Grecian Camp. Enter AGA- Might be affronted with the match and weight 6 As iron to adamant, as earth to the centre,- Cres. Prophet may you be! As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth, Cal. Now, princes, for the service I have done As new into the world, strange, unacquainted: To give me now a little benefit, Out of those many register'd in promise, Agam. What would'st thou of us, Trojan? make 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, 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, Which Steevens thinks may be explained :-'No longer 1 Cressida's meaning appears to be, Perchance I assisting Troy with my advice, I have left it to the dofell too roundly to confession, in order to angle for your minion of love, to the cousequences of the amour of thoughts; but you are not so easily taken in; you are Paris and Helen.' The present reading of the text is too wise, or too indifferent; for to be wise, and love, ex-supported by Johnson and Malone; to which Mason ceeds man's might.' The thought originally belongs to makes this objection:- That it was Juno and not Jore Publius Syrus: Amare et sapere vix Deo conceditur.' that persecuted the Trojans. Jore wished them well, 2 Troilus alludes to the perpetual lamps, which were and though we may abandon a man to his enemies, we supposed to illuminate sepulchres. cannot, with propriety, say that we abandon him to his friends. Some modern editions have the line thus: lasting flames, that burn To light the dead, and warm th' unfruitful urn.' See Pericles, Act ii. Sc. 1. 3 Met with and equalled. See Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 1: That he, as 'twere by accident, may here Affront Ophelia.' 4 Comparisons. 6 In the old copy this line stands : "Wants similes truth tird with iteration." The emendation was proposed by Mr. Tyrwhitt. 6 Plantage is here put for any thing planted, which was thought to depend for its success upon the influence of the moon. The poore husbandman perceiveth that the increase of the moone maketh plants fruitfull; so as in the full moone they are in their best strength; decaieing in the wane; and in the conjunction do utter lie wither and vade.'-Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft. 7 i. e. conclude it. Finis coronat opus. "That through the sight I bear in things to come." Which is an emendation to which I must confess I I incline: for, as Mason observes, the speech of Calchas would have been incomplete, if he had said he abandoned Troy, from the sight he bore of things, without explaining it by adding the words to come. The merit of Calchas did not merely consist in having come over to the Greeks; he also revealed to them the fate of Troy, which depended on their conveying away the palladium, and the horses of Rhesus, before they should drink of the river Xanthus. 10 Into for unto; a common form of expression in old writers. Thus in the Paston Letters, vol. ii. p. 3:— And they that have justed with him into this day, have been as richly beseen,' &c. 11 A wrest is an instrument for tuning harps, &c. by drawing up the strings. Its form may be seen in some 8 Hanmer altered this to inconstant men; but the of the illuminated service-books, where David is reprepoet seems to have been less attentive to make Panda-sented; in the Second Part of Mersenna's Harmonics; rus talk consequentially, than to account for the ideas and in the Syntagmata of Prætorius, vol ii. fig. xix. So actually annexed to the three names in his own time. in King James's Edict against Combats, &c. p. 45:9 The old copies all concur in reading"That through the sight I bear in things to love." This small instrument the tongue, being In change of him: let him be sent, great princes, Agam. [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, Lay negligent and loose regard upon him; I will come last: 'Tis like, he'll question me, out Something not worth in me such rich beholding Now, great Thetis' son? Why such unplausive eyes are bent, why turn'd on As when his virtues shining upon others hiin: If so, I have derision med'cinable, To use between our strangeness and his pride, Nest. Would you, my lord, aught with the ge- The better. [Exeunt AGAMEMNON and NESTOR. Ajar. Achil. Good morrow. Heat them, and they retort that heat again Achil. This is not strange, Ulysses. The beauty that is borne here in the face Till it hath travell'd, and is married there It is familiar; but at the author's drift: The voice again; or like a gate of steel Most abject in regard, and dear in use! How some men creep in skittish fortune's hall, Achil. I do believe it: for they passed by me, 5 Detail of argument. 6 The old copies read who, like an arch, reverberate ; which may mean, They who applaud reverberate. The elliptic mode of expression is in the poet's manner. Rowe made the alteration. 7 i. e. Ajax, who has abilities which were never brought into view or use. 8 The folio reads shrinking. The following passage in the subsequent scene seems to favour the reading of 4 Speculation has here the same meaning as in Mac- the quarto :-beth:- "Thou hast no speculation in those eyes Hark, how Troy roars; how Hecuba cries out; How poor Andromache shrills her dolours forth; And all cry-Hector, Hector's dead.' |