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?

Tro. 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.

Tro. 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 loved you night and day For many weary months.

Tro. Why was my Cressid, then, so hard to win?
Cres. Hard to seem won; but I was won, my lord,
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 blabbed? who shall be true to us,
When we are so unsecret to ourselves?

But, though I loved you well, I wooed you not;
And yet, good faith, I wished 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 council! Stop my mouth.

Tro. And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence. Pan. Pretty, i' faith.

Cres. My lord, I do beseech you, pardon me; 'Twas not my purpose thus to beg a kiss: I am ashamed;-O, heavens! what have I done? For this time will I take my leave, my lord.

Tro. Your leave, sweet Cressid?

Pan. Leave! an you take leave till to-morrow morning,

Cres. Pray you, content you.
Tro. What offends you, lady?
Cres. Sir, mine own company.
Tro. 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. Where is my wit?
I would be gone. I speak I know not what.
Tro. Well know they what they speak, that
speak so wisely.

Cres. Perchance, my lord, I shew more craft than love;

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.

Tro. O, that I thought it could be in a woman
(As, if it can, I will presume in you)
To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love;
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 winnowed purity in love:
How were I then uplifted! 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.
Tro. 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

Prophet may you be!

Cres. If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,— When time is old and hath forgot itself; When water-drops have worn the stones of Troy, And blind oblivion swallowed cities up, And mighty states charácterless are grated To dusty nothing; yet let memory,

From false to false, among false maids in love, Upbraid my falsehood! when they have saidas false

As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth,
As fox to lamb, as wolf to heifer's calf,
Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son;
Yea, let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood,
"As false as Cressid."

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.

SCENE III.-The Grecian Camp. Enter AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES, DIOMEDES, AJAX, NESTOR, MENELAUS, and CALCHAS.

Cal. Now, princes, for the service I have done you,

The advantage of the time prompts me aloud
To call for recompense. Appear it to your mind,
That, through the sight I bear in things, to Jove
I have abandoned Troy; left my possessions,
Incurred a traitor's name; exposed myself,
From certain and possessed conveniences,
To doubtful fortunes; sequestering 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 registered in promise,
Which, you say, live to come in my behalf.

Agam. What wouldst thou of us, Trojan? make demand.

Cal. You have a Trojan prisoner, called Antenor, Yesterday took: Troy holds him very dear. Oft have you (often have you thanks therefore) Desired 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 negociations 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 answered in his challenge: Ajax is ready. Dio. 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.

Ulys. 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,
Lay negligent and loose regard upon him:
I will come last: 't is like he'll question me,
Why such unplausive eyes are bent, why turned
on him?

If 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 shew 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 looked 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?

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

Achil. No.

Nes. Nothing, my lord.
Agam. The better.

[Exeunt AGAMEMNON and Nestor.

Must fall out with men too: what the declined is,
He shall as soon read in the eyes of others,
As feel in his own fall: for men, like butterflies,
Shew 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, favour,
Prizes of accident as oft as merit:

Which when they fall, as being slippery standers,
The love that leaned 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.—

Writes me, that man-how dearly ever parted,
How much in having, or without, or in-
Cannot make boast to have that which he hath,
Nor feels not what he owes, but by reflection;
As when his virtues, shining upon others,
Heat them, and they retort that heat again
To the first giver.

Achil. This is not strange, Ulysses.
The beauty that is borne here in the face,
The bearer knows not, but commends itself
To others' eyes: nor doth the eye itself
(That most pure spirit of sense) behold itself,
Not going from itself; but eye to eye opposed
Salutes each other with each other's form.
For speculation turns not to itself,

Till it hath travelled, and is married there

Ulys. I do not strain at the position; It is familiar; but at the author's drift: Who, in his circumstance, expressly proves— That no man is the lord of anything

(Though in and of him there be much consisting),
Till he communicate his parts to others:
Nor doth he of himself know them for aught,
Till he behold them formed in the applause
Where they are extended; which, 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 renowned! 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 passed by me As misers do by beggars; neither gave to me Good word, nor look. What, are my deeds forgot?

Ulys. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes :
Those scraps are good deeds past; which are de-
voured

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,
That one by one pursue: if you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an entered tide, they all rush by,
And leave you hindmost ;—

Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O'er-run and trampled on: then what they do
in present,

For time is like a fashionable host,

Farewell, my lord: I as your lover speak;

hand;

And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly, Grasps-in the comer. Welcome ever smiles, And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek

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'er-dusted.

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.

Does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles.
There is a mystery (with whom relation
Durst never meddle) in the soul of state;
Which hath an operation more divine
Than breath or pen can give expressure to:
All the commérce that you have had with Troy,
As perfectly is ours as yours, my lord;
And better would it fit Achilles much,
To throw down Hector than Polyxena:
But it must grieve young Pyrrhus, now at home,
When fame shall in our islands sound her trump,
And all the Greekish girls shall tripping sing,
"Great Hector's sister did Achilles win;

But our great Ajax bravely beat down him."

longing,

An appetite that I am sick withal,

To see great Hector in his weeds of peace; To talk with him, and to behold his visage, Even to my full of view. A labour saved!

Enter THERSITES.

Ther. A wonder!

Achil. What?

Ther. Ajax goes up and down the field, asking for himself.

Achil. How so?

Ther. He must fight singly to-morrow with Hector; and is so prophetically proud of an heroical cudgelling, that he raves in saying nothing.

Achil. How can that be?

Ther. Why, he stalks up and down like a peacock, a stride and a stand: ruminates like an hostess that hath no arithmetic but her brain to set down her reckoning: bites his lip with a politic regard, as who should say, "There were wit in this head, an 't would out:" and so there is; but it lies as coldly in him as fire in a flint, which will not shew without knocking. The man's undone for ever; for if Hector break not his neck i'the combat, he'll break it himself in vain-glory. He knows not me: I said, "Good-morrow, Ajax;"

and he replies, "Thanks, Agamemnon." What think you of this man, that takes me for the general? He is grown a very land-fish, languageless, a monster. A plague of opinion! a man may wear it on both sides, like a leather jerkin.

Achil. Thou must be my ambassador to him, Thersites.

Ther. Who, I? why, he'll answer nobody; he professes not answering; speaking is for beggars; he wears his tongue in his arms. I will put on his presence; let Patroclus make demands to me, you shall see the pageant of Ajax.

Achil. To him, Patroclus: tell him, I humbly desire the valiant Ajax to invite the most valorous Hector to come unarmed to my tent; and to procure safe conduct for his person, of the magnanimous and most illustrious, six-or-seven-times honoured captain-general of the Grecian army, Agamemnon. Do this.

Patr. Jove bless great Ajax!
Ther. Humph!

Patr. I come from the worthy Achilles,-
Ther. Ha!

Patr. Who most humbly desires you to invite Hector to his tent;

Ther. Humph!

Patr. And to procure safe conduct from Aga

memnon.