Troilus, farewell! one eye yet looks on thee; [Exit CRESSIDA. THER. A proof of strength she could not publish more 3. Unless she said, My mind is now turn'd whore. TRO. ULYSS. It is. Why stay we then? TRO. To make a recordation to my soul I Troilus, farewell!] The characters of Cressida and Pandarus are more immediately formed from Chaucer than from Lydgate; for though the latter mentions them both characteristically, he does not sufficiently dwell on either to have furnished Shakspeare with many circumstances to be found in this tragedy. Lydgate, speaking of Cressida, says only: "She gave her heart and love to Diomede, "To shew what trust there is in woman kind; "But Troilus was cleane out of her mind, 66 Wherein I cannot guess what she did mean." STLevens. 2 But with my heart, &c.] I think it should be read thus: 66 But my heart with the other eye doth see." JOHNSON. Perhaps, rather: 66 But with the other eye my heart doth see." TYRWHITT. There is surely no need of change; one eye, says Cressida, looks on Troilus: but the other follows Diomed, where my heart is fixed. MALONE. 3 A proof of strength she could not publish more,] She could not publish a stronger proof. JOHNSON. , Of every syllable that here was spoke. Was Cressid here? ULYSS. I cannot conjure, Trojan 5. TRO. She was not sure. · ULYSS. Most sure she was ". TRO. Why, my negation hath no taste of madness. ULYSS. Nor mine, my lord: Cressid was here but now. TRO. Let it not be believ'd for womanhood"! Think, we had mothers; do not give advantage To stubborn criticks-apt, without a theme, For depravation,-to square the general sex By Cressid's rule: rather think this not Cressid. ULYSS. What hath she done, prince, that can soil our mothers? * Quarto, court. 4 That doth invert THE ATTEST of eyes and ears ;] i. e. that turns the very testimony of seeing and hearing against themselves. THEOBALD. 5 I cannot conjure, Trojan.] That is, I cannot raise spirits in the form of Cressida. JOHNSON. 6 Most sure she was.] The present deficiency in the measure induces me to suppose our author wrote: "It is most sure she was." STEEVENS. FOR Womanhood!] i. e. for the sake of womanhood. ་ 8 do not give advantage To stubborn CRITICKS-apt, without a theme, STEEVENS. For depravation,] Critick has here, I think, the significa tion of Cynick. So, in Love's Labour's Lost: "And critick Timon laugh at idle toys." MALONE. TRO. Nothing at all, unless that this were she. THER. Will he swagger himself out on's own eyes ? TRO. This she? no, this is Diomed's Cressida : If beauty have a soul, this is not she; If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimonies, If there be rule in unity itself, This was not she. That cause sets up 2 O madness of discourse, with and against itself 1! where reason can revolt Without perdition, and loss assume all reason Without revolt 3; this is, and is not, Cressid ! Within soul there doth commence a fight * my Of this strange nature, that a thing inseparate 5 4 9 If there be rule in UNITY itself,] May mean-If there be certainty in unity, if there be a rule that one is one. JOHNSON. If it be true that one individual cannot be two distinct persons. M. MASON. The rule alluded to is a very simple one; that one cannot be two. This woman therefore, says Troilus, this false one, cannot be that Cressida that formerly plighted her faith to me. MALONE. against ITSELF!] Thus the quarto. The folio readsagainst thyself. In the preceding line also I have followed the quarto. The folio reads-This is not she. MALONE. I 2 BI-FOLD authority!] This is the reading of the quarto. The folio gives us : By foul authority! 39 There is madness in that disquisition in which a man reasons at once for and against himself upon authority which he knows not to be valid. The quarto is right. JOHNSON. This is one of the passages in which the editor of the folio changed words that he found in the quartos, merely because he did not understand them. MALONE. 3 where reason can revolt Without perdition, and loss assume all reason Without revolt ;] The words loss and perdition are used in their common sense, but they mean the loss or perdition of reason. JOHNSON. 4 Within MY SOUL there doth commence A FIGHT-] So, in Hamlet: Sir, in my heart, there was a kind of fighting." MALONE. Divides more wider than the sky and earth; As Ariachne's broken woof, to enter 7. 5 a thing inseparate] i. e. the plighted troth of lovers. Troilus considers it inseparable, or at least that it ought never to be broken, though he has unfortunately found that it sometimes MALONE. is. 6 MORE wider] Thus the old copies. The modern editions, following Mr. Pope, read-far wider; though we have a similar phraseology with the present in almost every one of these plays. MALONE. So, in Coriolanus: "He bears himself more proudlier." See note on this passage. 7 As Is Arachne's broken woof, to enter.] Is,-the syllable wanting in this verse, the modern editors have supplied. I hope the mistake was not originally the poet's own; yet one of the quartos read with the folio, Ariachna's broken woof, and the other Ariathna's. It is not impossible that Shakspeare might have written Ariadne's broken woof, having confounded the two names, or the stories, in his imagination; or alluding to the clue of thread, by the assistance of which Theseus escaped from the Cretan labyrinth. I do not remember that Ariadne's loom is mentioned by any of the Greek or Roman poets, though I find an allusion to it in Humour out of Breath, a comedy, 1607: 66 instead of these poor weeds, in robes, "Richer than that which Ariadne wrought, "Or Cytherea's airy-moving vest." Again, in The Spanish Tragedy: thy tresses, Ariadne's twines, "Wherewith my liberty thou hast surpriz'd." Again, in Muleasses the Turk, 1610: "Leads the despairing wretch into a maze; "But not an Ariadne in the world "The very maze of horror." Shakspeare, however, might have written-Arachnea; great liberties being taken in spelling proper names, and especially by ancient English writers. Thus we have both Alcmene and Alcumene, Alcmena and Alcumena. STEEVENS. My quarto, which is printed for R. Bonian, 1609, readsAriachna's broken woof; the other, which is said to be undated, reads, as Mr. Steevens says-Ariathna's. The folio-Ariachne's. Mr. Steevens hopes the mistake was not originally the author's, Instance, O instance! strong as Pluto's gates; And with another knot, five-finger-tied, The fractions of her faith, orts of her love, The fragments, scraps, the bits, and greasy reliques Of her o'er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed 9. ULYSS. May worthy Troilus' be half attach'd * Quarto, given. but I think it extremely probable that he pronounced the word as a word of four syllables. MALONE. 8-knot, five-finger-tied,] A knot tied by giving her hand to Diomed. JOHNSON. So, in The Fatal Dowry, by Massinger and Field, 1632: "Your fingers tie my heart-strings with this touch, "In true-love knots, which nought but death shall loose." MALONE. 9 The fractions of her faith, orts of her love, Of her O'ER-EATEN faith, are bound to Diomed.] Vows which she has already swallowed once over. We still say of a faithless man, that he has eaten his words. JOHNSON. The image is not of the most delicate kind. "Her o'er-eaten faith" means, I think, her troth plighted to Troilus, of which she was surfeited, and, like one who has over-eaten himself, had thrown off. All the preceding words, the fragments, scraps, &c. show that this was Shakspeare's meaning. So, in Twelfth-Night: Give me excess of it [musick]; that surfeiting "The appetite may sicken, and so die." Again, more appositely, in King Henry IV. P. II.: "The commonwealth is sick of their own choice; "That thou provok'st thyself to cast him up." Malone. May worthy Troilus-] Can Troilus really feel, on this occasion, half of what he utters? A question suitable to the calm Ulysses. JOHNSON. |