AARON. Why, what a caterwauling dost thou keep!
What dost thou wrap and fumble in thy arms?
NURSE. O, that which I would hide from heaven's eye:
Our Empress' shame and stately Rome's disgrace!
She is delivered, lord; she is delivered.
AARON. To whom?
NURSE. I mean she is brought a-bed.
AARON. Well, God give her good rest! What hath he sent her?
NURSE. A devil.
AARON. Why, then she is the devil's dam;
A joyful issue.
NURSE. A joyless, dismal, black, and sorrowful issue!
Here is the babe, as loathsome as a toad
Amongst the fair-fac'd breeders of our clime;
The Empress sends it thee, thy stamp, thy seal,
And bids thee christen it with thy dagger's point.
AARON. Zounds, ye whore! Is black so base a hue?

DEMETRIUS. Villain, what hast thou done?
AARON. That which thou canst not undo.
CHIRON. Thou hast undone our mother.
AARON. Villain, I have done thy mother.
DEMETRIUS. And therein, hellish dog, thou hast undone her.
Woe to her chance, and damn'd her loathed choice!
Accurs'd the offspring of so foul a fiend!
CHIRON. It shall not live.
AARON. It shall not die.
NURSE. Aaron, it must; the mother wills it so.
AARON. What, must it, nurse? Then let no man but I
Do execution on my flesh and blood.
DEMETRIUS. I'll broach the tadpole on my rapier's point.
Nurse, give it me; my sword shall soon dispatch it.
AARON. Sooner this sword shall plough thy bowels up.

Now, by the burning tapers of the sky
That shone so brightly when this boy was got,
He dies upon my scimitar's sharp point
That touches this my first-born son and heir.

What, what, ye sanguine, shallow-hearted boys!
Ye white-lim'd walls! ye alehouse painted signs!
Coal-black is better than another hue
In that it scorns to bear another hue;
For all the water in the ocean
Can never turn the swan's black legs to white,
Although she lave them hourly in the flood.
Tell the Empress from me I am of age
To keep mine own- excuse it how she can.
DEMETRIUS. Wilt thou betray thy noble mistress thus?
AARON. My mistress is my mistress: this my self,
The vigour and the picture of my youth.
This before all the world do I prefer;
This maugre all the world will I keep safe,
Or some of you shall smoke for it in Rome.
DEMETRIUS.
CHIRON. Rome will despise her for this foul escape.
NURSE. The Emperor in his rage will doom her death.
CHIRON. I blush to think upon this ignomy.
AARON. Why, there's the privilege your beauty bears:
Fie, treacherous hue, that will betray with blushing
The close enacts and counsels of thy heart!
Here's a young lad fram'd of another leer.
Look how the black slave smiles upon the father,
As who should say 'Old lad, I am thine own.'
He is your brother, lords, sensibly fed
Of that self-blood that first gave life to you;
And from your womb where you imprisoned were
He is enfranchised and come to light.

NURSE. Aaron, what shall I say unto the Empress?
DEMETRIUS. Advise thee, Aaron, what is to be done,
And we will all subscribe to thy advice.
Save thou the child, so we may all be safe.
AARON. Then sit we down and let us all consult.
My son and I will have the wind of you:
Keep there; now talk at pleasure of your safety.
[They sit]
DEMETRIUS. How many women saw this child of his?
AARON. Why, so, brave lords! When we join in league
I am a lamb; but if you brave the Moor,
The chafed boar, the mountain lioness,
The ocean swells not so as Aaron storms.
But say, again, how many saw the child?
NURSE. Cornelia the midwife and myself;
And no one else but the delivered Empress.
AARON. The Emperess, the midwife, and yourself.
Two may keep counsel when the third's away:
Go to the Empress, tell her this I said. [He kills her]
Weeke weeke!

DEMETRIUS. What mean'st thou, Aaron? Wherefore didst thou this?
AARON. O Lord, sir, 'tis a deed of policy.
Shall she live to betray this guilt of ours-
A long-tongu'd babbling gossip? No, lords, no.
And now be it known to you my full intent:
Not far, one Muliteus, my countryman-
His wife but yesternight was brought to bed;
His child is like to her, fair as you are.
Go pack with him, and give the mother gold,
And tell them both the circumstance of all,
And how by this their child shall be advanc'd,
And be received for the Emperor's heir
And substituted in the place of mine,
To calm this tempest whirling in the court;
And let the Emperor dandle him for his own.
Hark ye, lords. You see I have given her physic,
[Pointing to the NURSE]
And you must needs bestow her funeral;
The fields are near, and you are gallant grooms.
This done, see that you take no longer days,
But send the midwife presently to me.
The midwife and the nurse well made away,
Then let the ladies tattle what they please.
CHIRON. Aaron, I see thou wilt not trust the air
With secrets.
DEMETRIUS. For this care of Tamora,
Herself and hers are highly bound to thee.
Exeunt DEMETRIUS and CHIRON, bearing off the dead NURSE
AARON. Now to the Goths, as swift as swallow flies,
There to dispose this treasure in mine arms,
And secretly to greet the Empress' friends.

Exit with the CHILD
Enter TITUS, bearing arrows with letters on the ends of them; with him MARCUS, YOUNG LUCIUS, and other gentlemen, PUBLIUS, SEMPRONIUS, and CAIUS, with bows
TITUS. Come, Marcus, come; kinsmen, this is the way.
Sir boy, let me see your archery;
Look ye draw home enough, and 'tis there straight.

Sirs, take you to your tools. You, cousins, shall
Go sound the ocean and cast your nets;
Happily you may catch her in the sea;
Yet there's as little justice as at land.
No; Publius and Sempronius, you must do it;
'Tis you must dig with mattock and with spade,
And pierce the inmost centre of the earth;
Then, when you come to Pluto's region,
I pray you deliver him this petition.
Tell him it is for justice and for aid,
And that it comes from old Andronicus,
Shaken with sorrows in ungrateful Rome.
Ah, Rome! Well, well, I made thee miserable
What time I threw the people's suffrages
On him that thus doth tyrannize o'er me.

This wicked Emperor may have shipp'd her hence;
And, kinsmen, then we may go pipe for justice.
MARCUS. O Publius, is not this a heavy case,
To see thy noble uncle thus distract?
PUBLIUS. Therefore, my lords, it highly us concerns
By day and night t' attend him carefully,
And feed his humour kindly as we may
Till time beget some careful remedy.
MARCUS. Kinsmen, his sorrows are past remedy.
Join with the Goths, and with revengeful war
Take wreak on Rome for this ingratitude,
And vengeance on the traitor Saturnine.
TITUS. Publius, how now? How now, my masters?
What, have you met with her?
PUBLIUS. No, my good lord; but Pluto sends you word,
If you will have Revenge from hell, you shall.
Marry, for Justice, she is so employ'd,
He thinks, with Jove in heaven, or somewhere else,
So that perforce you must needs stay a time.
TITUS. He doth me wrong to feed me with delays.
I'll dive into the burning lake below
And pull her out of Acheron by the heels.
Marcus, we are but shrubs, no cedars we,
No big-bon'd men fram'd of the Cyclops' size;
But metal, Marcus, steel to the very back,
Yet wrung with wrongs more than our backs can bear;
And, sith there's no justice in earth nor hell,
We will solicit heaven, and move the gods
To send down justice for to wreak our wrongs.
Come, to this gear.
[He gives them the arrows]
'Ad Jovem' that's for you; here 'Ad Apollinem.'
'Ad Martem' that's for myself.
Here, boy, 'To Pallas'; here 'To Mercury.'
'To Saturn,' Caius- not to Saturnine:
You were as good to shoot against the wind.
To it, boy. Marcus, loose when I bid.
Of my word, I have written to effect;
There's not a god left unsolicited.
MARCUS. Kinsmen, shoot all your shafts into the court;
We will afflict the Emperor in his pride.
TITUS. Now, masters, draw. [They shoot] O, well said, Lucius!
Good boy, in Virgo's lap! Give it Pallas.
MARCUS. My lord, I aim a mile beyond the moon;
Your letter is with Jupiter by this.
TITUS. Ha! ha!
Publius, Publius, hast thou done?
See, see, thou hast shot off one of Taurus' horns.
MARCUS. This was the sport, my lord: when Publius shot,
The Bull, being gall'd, gave Aries such a knock
That down fell both the Ram's horns in the court;
And who should find them but the Empress' villain?
She laugh'd, and told the Moor he should not choose
But give them to his master for a present.
TITUS. Why, there it goes! God give his lordship joy!
Enter the CLOWN, with a basket and two pigeons in it
News, news from heaven! Marcus, the post is come.
Sirrah, what tidings? Have you any letters?
Shall I have justice? What says Jupiter?
CLOWN. Ho, the gibbet-maker? He says that he hath taken them down
again, for the man must not be hang'd till the next week.
TITUS. But what says Jupiter, I ask thee?
CLOWN. Alas, sir, I know not Jupiter; I never drank with him in all
my life.
TITUS. Why, villain, art not thou the carrier?
CLOWN. Ay, of my pigeons, sir; nothing else.
TITUS. Why, didst thou not come from heaven?
CLOWN. From heaven! Alas, sir, I never came there. God forbid I
should be so bold to press to heaven in my young days. Why, I am
going with my pigeons to the Tribunal Plebs, to take up a matter
of brawl betwixt my uncle and one of the Emperal's men.
MARCUS. Why, sir, that is as fit as can be to serve for your
oration; and let him deliver the pigeons to the Emperor from you.
TITUS. Tell me, can you deliver an oration to the Emperor with a
grace?
CLOWN. Nay, truly, sir, I could never say grace in all my life.
TITUS. Sirrah, come hither. Make no more ado,
But give your pigeons to the Emperor;
By me thou shalt have justice at his hands.
Hold, hold! Meanwhile here's money for thy charges.
Give me pen and ink. Sirrah, can you with a grace deliver up a
supplication?
CLOWN. Ay, sir.
TITUS. Then here is a supplication for you. And when you come to
him, at the first approach you must kneel; then kiss his foot;
then deliver up your pigeons; and then look for your reward. I'll
be at hand, sir; see you do it bravely.
CLOWN. I warrant you, sir; let me alone.
TITUS. Sirrah, hast thou a knife? Come let me see it.
Here, Marcus, fold it in the oration;
For thou hast made it like a humble suppliant.
And when thou hast given it to the Emperor,
Knock at my door, and tell me what he says.
CLOWN. God be with you, sir; I will.
TITUS. Come, Marcus, let us go. Publius, follow me. Exeunt
Enter the EMPEROR, and the EMPRESS and her two sons, DEMETRIUS and CHIRON; LORDS and others. The EMPEROR brings the arrows in his hand that TITUS shot at him
SATURNINUS. Why, lords, what wrongs are these! Was ever seen
An emperor in Rome thus overborne,
Troubled, confronted thus; and, for the extent
Of egal justice, us'd in such contempt?
My lords, you know, as know the mightful gods,
However these disturbers of our peace
Buzz in the people's ears, there nought hath pass'd
But even with law against the wilful sons
Of old Andronicus. And what an if
His sorrows have so overwhelm'd his wits,
Shall we be thus afflicted in his wreaks,
His fits, his frenzy, and his bitterness?
And now he writes to heaven for his redress.
See, here's 'To Jove' and this 'To Mercury';
This 'To Apollo'; this 'To the God of War'-
Sweet scrolls to fly about the streets of Rome!
What's this but libelling against the Senate,
And blazoning our unjustice every where?
A goodly humour, is it not, my lords?
As who would say in Rome no justice were.
But if I live, his feigned ecstasies
Shall be no shelter to these outrages;
But he and his shall know that justice lives
In Saturninus' health; whom, if she sleep,
He'll so awake as he in fury shall
Cut off the proud'st conspirator that lives.
TAMORA. My gracious lord, my lovely Saturnine,
Lord of my life, commander of my thoughts,
Calm thee, and bear the faults of Titus' age,
Th' effects of sorrow for his valiant sons
Whose loss hath pierc'd him deep and scarr'd his heart;
And rather comfort his distressed plight
Than prosecute the meanest or the best
For these contempts. [Aside] Why, thus it shall become
High-witted Tamora to gloze with all.
But, Titus, I have touch'd thee to the quick,
Thy life-blood out; if Aaron now be wise,
Then is all safe, the anchor in the port.
Enter CLOWN
How now, good fellow! Wouldst thou speak with us?
CLOWN. Yes, forsooth, an your mistriship be Emperial.
TAMORA. Empress I am, but yonder sits the Emperor.
CLOWN. 'Tis he.- God and Saint Stephen give you godden. I have
brought you a letter and a couple of pigeons here.
[SATURNINUS reads the letter]
SATURNINUS. Go take him away, and hang him presently.
CLOWN. How much money must I have?
TAMORA. Come, sirrah, you must be hang'd.
CLOWN. Hang'd! by'r lady, then I have brought up a neck to a fair
end. [Exit guarded]
SATURNINUS. Despiteful and intolerable wrongs!
Shall I endure this monstrous villainy?
I know from whence this same device proceeds.
May this be borne- as if his traitorous sons
That died by law for murder of our brother
Have by my means been butchered wrongfully?
Go drag the villain hither by the hair;
Nor age nor honour shall shape privilege.
For this proud mock I'll be thy slaughterman,
Sly frantic wretch, that holp'st to make me great,
In hope thyself should govern Rome and me.
Enter NUNTIUS AEMILIUS
What news with thee, Aemilius?
AEMILIUS. Arm, my lords! Rome never had more cause.
The Goths have gathered head; and with a power
Of high resolved men, bent to the spoil,
They hither march amain, under conduct
Of Lucius, son to old Andronicus;
Who threats in course of this revenge to do
As much as ever Coriolanus did.
SATURNINUS. Is warlike Lucius general of the Goths?
These tidings nip me, and I hang the head
As flowers with frost, or grass beat down with storms.
Ay, now begins our sorrows to approach.
'Tis he the common people love so much;
Myself hath often heard them say-
When I have walked like a private man-
That Lucius' banishment was wrongfully,
And they have wish'd that Lucius were their emperor.
TAMORA. Why should you fear? Is not your city strong?
SATURNINUS. Ay, but the citizens favour Lucius,
And will revolt from me to succour him.
TAMORA. King, be thy thoughts imperious like thy name!
Is the sun dimm'd, that gnats do fly in it?
The eagle suffers little birds to sing,
And is not careful what they mean thereby,
Knowing that with the shadow of his wings
He can at pleasure stint their melody;
Even so mayest thou the giddy men of Rome.
Then cheer thy spirit; for know thou, Emperor,
I will enchant the old Andronicus
With words more sweet, and yet more dangerous,
Than baits to fish or honey-stalks to sheep,
When as the one is wounded with the bait,
The other rotted with delicious feed.
SATURNINUS. But he will not entreat his son for us.
TAMORA. If Tamora entreat him, then he will;
For I can smooth and fill his aged ears
With golden promises, that, were his heart
Almost impregnable, his old ears deaf,
Yet should both ear and heart obey my tongue.
[To AEMILIUS] Go thou before to be our ambassador;
Say that the Emperor requests a parley
Of warlike Lucius, and appoint the meeting
Even at his father's house, the old Andronicus.
SATURNINUS. Aemilius, do this message honourably;
And if he stand on hostage for his safety,
Bid him demand what pledge will please him best.
AEMILIUS. Your bidding shall I do effectually. Exit
TAMORA. Now will I to that old Andronicus,
And temper him with all the art I have,
To pluck proud Lucius from the warlike Goths.
And now, sweet Emperor, be blithe again,
And bury all thy fear in my devices.
SATURNINUS. Then go successantly, and plead to him.
Exeunt
Enter LUCIUS with an army of GOTHS with drums and colours
LUCIUS. Approved warriors and my faithful friends,
I have received letters from great Rome
Which signifies what hate they bear their Emperor
And how desirous of our sight they are.

FIRST GOTH. Brave slip, sprung from the great Andronicus,
Whose name was once our terror, now our comfort,
Whose high exploits and honourable deeds
Ingrateful Rome requites with foul contempt,
Be bold in us: we'll follow where thou lead'st,
Like stinging bees in hottest summer's day,
Led by their master to the flow'red fields,
And be aveng'd on cursed Tamora.
ALL THE GOTHS. And as he saith, so say we all with him.
LUCIUS. I humbly thank him, and I thank you all.
But who comes here, led by a lusty Goth?
Enter a GOTH, leading AARON with his CHILD in his arms
SECOND GOTH. Renowned Lucius, from our troops I stray'd
To gaze upon a ruinous monastery;
And as I earnestly did fix mine eye
Upon the wasted building, suddenly
I heard a child cry underneath a wall.
I made unto the noise, when soon I heard
The crying babe controll'd with this discourse:
'Peace, tawny slave, half me and half thy dam!
Did not thy hue bewray whose brat thou art,
Had nature lent thee but thy mother's look,
Villain, thou mightst have been an emperor;
But where the bull and cow are both milk-white,
They never do beget a coal-black calf.
Peace, villain, peace!'- even thus he rates the babe-
'For I must bear thee to a trusty Goth,
Who, when he knows thou art the Empress' babe,
Will hold thee dearly for thy mother's sake.'
With this, my weapon drawn, I rush'd upon him,
Surpris'd him suddenly, and brought him hither
To use as you think needful of the man.
LUCIUS. O worthy Goth, this is the incarnate devil
That robb'd Andronicus of his good hand;
This is the pearl that pleas'd your Empress' eye;
And here's the base fruit of her burning lust.
Say, wall-ey'd slave, whither wouldst thou convey
This growing image of thy fiend-like face?
Why dost not speak? What, deaf? Not a word?
A halter, soldiers! Hang him on this tree,
And by his side his fruit of bastardy.
AARON. Touch not the boy, he is of royal blood.
LUCIUS. Too like the sire for ever being good.
First hang the child, that he may see it sprawl-
A sight to vex the father's soul withal.
Get me a ladder.
[A ladder brought, which AARON is made to climb]
AARON. Lucius, save the child,
And bear it from me to the Emperess.
If thou do this, I'll show thee wondrous things
That highly may advantage thee to hear;
If thou wilt not, befall what may befall,
I'll speak no more but 'Vengeance rot you all!'
LUCIUS. Say on; an if it please me which thou speak'st,
Thy child shall live, and I will see it nourish'd.
AARON. An if it please thee! Why, assure thee, Lucius,
'Twill vex thy soul to hear what I shall speak;
For I must talk of murders, rapes, and massacres,
Acts of black night, abominable deeds,
Complots of mischief, treason, villainies,
Ruthful to hear, yet piteously perform'd;
And this shall all be buried in my death,
Unless thou swear to me my child shall live.
LUCIUS. Tell on thy mind; I say thy child shall live.
AARON. Swear that he shall, and then I will begin.
LUCIUS. Who should I swear by? Thou believest no god;
That granted, how canst thou believe an oath?
AARON. What if I do not? as indeed I do not;
Yet, for I know thou art religious
And hast a thing within thee called conscience,
With twenty popish tricks and ceremonies
Which I have seen thee careful to observe,
Therefore I urge thy oath.  Therefore thou shalt vow
By that same god- what god soe'er it be
That thou adorest and hast in reverence-
To save my boy, to nourish and bring him up;
Or else I will discover nought to thee.
LUCIUS. Even by my god I swear to thee I will.
AARON. First know thou, I begot him on the Empress.
LUCIUS. O most insatiate and luxurious woman!
AARON. Tut, Lucius, this was but a deed of charity
To that which thou shalt hear of me anon.
'Twas her two sons that murdered Bassianus;
They cut thy sister's tongue, and ravish'd her,
And cut her hands, and trimm'd her as thou sawest.
LUCIUS. O detestable villain! Call'st thou that trimming?
AARON. Why, she was wash'd, and cut, and trimm'd, and 'twas
Trim sport for them which had the doing of it.
LUCIUS. O barbarous beastly villains like thyself!
AARON. Indeed, I was their tutor to instruct them.

Well, let my deeds be witness of my worth.
I train'd thy brethren to that guileful hole
Where the dead corpse of Bassianus lay;
I wrote the letter that thy father found,
And hid the gold within that letter mention'd,
Confederate with the Queen and her two sons;
And what not done, that thou hast cause to rue,
Wherein I had no stroke of mischief in it?
I play'd the cheater for thy father's hand,
And, when I had it, drew myself apart
And almost broke my heart with extreme laughter.
I pried me through the crevice of a wall,
When, for his hand, he had his two sons' heads;
Beheld his tears, and laugh'd so heartily
That both mine eyes were rainy like to his;
And when I told the Empress of this sport,
She swooned almost at my pleasing tale,
And for my tidings gave me twenty kisses.
GOTH. What, canst thou say all this and never blush?
AARON. Ay, like a black dog, as the saying is.
LUCIUS. Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?
AARON. Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.

Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,
And set them upright at their dear friends' door
Even when their sorrows almost was forgot,
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters
'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.'
Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things
As willingly as one would kill a fly;
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
But that I cannot do ten thousand more.
LUCIUS. Bring down the devil, for he must not die
So sweet a death as hanging presently.
AARON.
LUCIUS. Sirs, stop his mouth, and let him speak no more.
Enter AEMILIUS
GOTH. My lord, there is a messenger from Rome
Desires to be admitted to your presence.
LUCIUS. Let him come near.
Welcome, Aemilius. What's the news from Rome?
AEMILIUS.
FIRST GOTH. What says our general?
LUCIUS. Aemilius, let the Emperor give his pledges
Unto my father and my uncle Marcus.
And we will come. March away. Exeunt
Enter TAMORA, and her two sons, DEMETRIUS and CHIRON, disguised
TAMORA. Thus, in this strange and sad habiliment,
I will encounter with Andronicus,
And say I am Revenge, sent from below
To join with him and right his heinous wrongs.
Knock at his study, where they say he keeps
To ruminate strange plots of dire revenge;
Tell him Revenge is come to join with him,
And work confusion on his enemies.
They knock and TITUS opens his study door, above
TITUS. Who doth molest my contemplation?
Is it your trick to make me ope the door,
That so my sad decrees may fly away
And all my study be to no effect?

TAMORA. Titus, I am come to talk with thee.
TITUS. No, not a word. How can I grace my talk,
Wanting a hand to give it that accord?
Thou hast the odds of me; therefore no more.
TAMORA. If thou didst know me, thou wouldst talk with me.
TITUS. I am not mad, I know thee well enough:
Witness this wretched stump, witness these crimson lines;
Witness these trenches made by grief and care;
Witness the tiring day and heavy night;
Witness all sorrow that I know thee well
For our proud Empress, mighty Tamora.
Is not thy coming for my other hand?
TAMORA. Know thou, sad man, I am not Tamora:
She is thy enemy and I thy friend.
I am Revenge, sent from th' infernal kingdom
To ease the gnawing vulture of thy mind
By working wreakful vengeance on thy foes.
Come down and welcome me to this world's light;
Confer with me of murder and of death;
There's not a hollow cave or lurking-place,
No vast obscurity or misty vale,
Where bloody murder or detested rape
Can couch for fear but I will find them out;
And in their ears tell them my dreadful name-
Revenge, which makes the foul offender quake.
TITUS. Art thou Revenge? and art thou sent to me
To be a torment to mine enemies?
TAMORA. I am; therefore come down and welcome me.
TITUS. Do me some service ere I come to thee.
Lo, by thy side where Rape and Murder stands;
Now give some surance that thou art Revenge-
Stab them, or tear them on thy chariot wheels;
And then I'll come and be thy waggoner
And whirl along with thee about the globes.
Provide thee two proper palfreys, black as jet,
To hale thy vengeful waggon swift away,
And find out murderers in their guilty caves;
And when thy car is loaden with their heads,
I will dismount, and by thy waggon wheel
Trot, like a servile footman, all day long,
Even from Hyperion's rising in the east
Until his very downfall in the sea.
And day by day I'll do this heavy task,
So thou destroy Rapine and Murder there.
TAMORA. These are my ministers, and come with me.
TITUS. Are they thy ministers? What are they call'd?
TAMORA. Rape and Murder; therefore called so
'Cause they take vengeance of such kind of men.
TITUS. Good Lord, how like the Empress' sons they are!
And you the Empress! But we worldly men
Have miserable, mad, mistaking eyes.
O sweet Revenge, now do I come to thee;
And, if one arm's embracement will content thee,
I will embrace thee in it by and by.
TAMORA. This closing with him fits his lunacy.
Whate'er I forge to feed his brain-sick humours,
Do you uphold and maintain in your speeches,
For now he firmly takes me for Revenge;
And, being credulous in this mad thought,
I'll make him send for Lucius his son,
And whilst I at a banquet hold him sure,
I'll find some cunning practice out of hand
To scatter and disperse the giddy Goths,
Or, at the least, make them his enemies.
See, here he comes, and I must ply my theme.
Enter TITUS, below
TITUS. Long have I been forlorn, and all for thee.
Welcome, dread Fury, to my woeful house.
Rapine and Murder, you are welcome too.
How like the Empress and her sons you are!
Well are you fitted, had you but a Moor.

For well I wot the Empress never wags
But in her company there is a Moor;
And, would you represent our queen aright,
It were convenient you had such a devil.
But welcome as you are. What shall we do?
TAMORA. What wouldst thou have us do, Andronicus?
DEMETRIUS. Show me a murderer, I'll deal with him.
CHIRON. Show me a villain that hath done a rape,
And I am sent to be reveng'd on him.
TAMORA. Show me a thousand that hath done thee wrong,
And I will be revenged on them all.
TITUS. Look round about the wicked streets of Rome,
And when thou find'st a man that's like thyself,
Good Murder, stab him; he's a murderer.

Go thou with them; and in the Emperor's court
There is a queen, attended by a Moor;
Well shalt thou know her by thine own proportion,
For up and down she doth resemble thee.
I pray thee, do on them some violent death;
They have been violent to me and mine.
TAMORA. Well hast thou lesson'd us; this shall we do.
But would it please thee, good Andronicus,
To send for Lucius, thy thrice-valiant son,
Who leads towards Rome a band of warlike Goths,
And bid him come and banquet at thy house;
When he is here, even at thy solemn feast,
I will bring in the Empress and her sons,
The Emperor himself, and all thy foes;
And at thy mercy shall they stoop and kneel,
And on them shalt thou ease thy angry heart.
What says Andronicus to this device?
TITUS. Marcus, my brother! 'Tis sad Titus calls.
Enter MARCUS
Go, gentle Marcus, to thy nephew Lucius;
Thou shalt inquire him out among the Goths.
Bid him repair to me, and bring with him
Some of the chiefest princes of the Goths;
Bid him encamp his soldiers where they are.
Tell him the Emperor and the Empress too
Feast at my house, and he shall feast with them.
This do thou for my love; and so let him,
As he regards his aged father's life.
MARCUS. This will I do, and soon return again. Exit
TAMORA. Now will I hence about thy business,
And take my ministers along with me.
TITUS. Nay, nay, let Rape and Murder stay with me,
Or else I'll call my brother back again,
And cleave to no revenge but Lucius.
TAMORA. [Aside to her sons] What say you, boys? Will you abide
with him,
Whiles I go tell my lord the Emperor
How I have govern'd our determin'd jest?
Yield to his humour, smooth and speak him fair,
And tarry with him till I turn again.
TITUS.
DEMETRIUS. Madam, depart at pleasure; leave us here.
TAMORA. Farewell, Andronicus, Revenge now goes
To lay a complot to betray thy foes.
TITUS. I know thou dost; and, sweet Revenge, farewell.
Exit TAMORA
CHIRON. Tell us, old man, how shall we be employ'd?
TITUS. Tut, I have work enough for you to do.
Publius, come hither, Caius, and Valentine.
Enter PUBLIUS, CAIUS, and VALENTINE
PUBLIUS. What is your will?
TITUS. Know you these two?
PUBLIUS. The Empress' sons, I take them: Chiron, Demetrius.
TITUS. Fie, Publius, fie! thou art too much deceiv'd.
The one is Murder, and Rape is the other's name;
And therefore bind them, gentle Publius-
Caius and Valentine, lay hands on them.
Oft have you heard me wish for such an hour,
And now I find it; therefore bind them sure,
And stop their mouths if they begin to cry. Exit
[They lay hold on CHIRON and DEMETRIUS]
CHIRON. Villains, forbear! we are the Empress' sons.
PUBLIUS. And therefore do we what we are commanded.
Stop close their mouths, let them not speak a word.
Is he sure bound? Look that you bind them fast.
Re-enter TITUS ANDRONICUS
with a knife, and LAVINIA, with a basin
TITUS. Come, come, Lavinia; look, thy foes are bound.
Sirs, stop their mouths, let them not speak to me;
But let them hear what fearful words I utter.
O villains, Chiron and Demetrius!
Here stands the spring whom you have stain'd with mud;
This goodly summer with your winter mix'd.

What would you say, if I should let you speak?
Villains, for shame you could not beg for grace.
Hark, wretches! how I mean to martyr you.
This one hand yet is left to cut your throats,
Whiles that Lavinia 'tween her stumps doth hold
The basin that receives your guilty blood.

Hark, villains! I will grind your bones to dust,
And with your blood and it I'll make a paste;
And of the paste a coffin I will rear,
And make two pasties of your shameful heads;
And bid that strumpet, your unhallowed dam,
Like to the earth, swallow her own increase.

And now prepare your throats.
Come, come, be every one officious
To make this banquet, which I wish may prove
More stern and bloody than the Centaurs' feast.
[He cuts their throats]
So.

Exeunt, bearing the dead bodies
Enter Lucius, MARCUS, and the GOTHS, with AARON prisoner, and his CHILD in the arms of an attendant
LUCIUS. Uncle Marcus, since 'tis my father's mind
That I repair to Rome, I am content.
FIRST GOTH. And ours with thine, befall what fortune will.
LUCIUS. Good uncle, take you in this barbarous Moor,
This ravenous tiger, this accursed devil;
Let him receive no sust'nance, fetter him,
Till he be brought unto the Empress' face
For testimony of her foul proceedings.
And see the ambush of our friends be strong;
I fear the Emperor means no good to us.
AARON. Some devil whisper curses in my ear,
And prompt me that my tongue may utter forth
The venomous malice of my swelling heart!
LUCIUS. Away, inhuman dog, unhallowed slave!
Sirs, help our uncle to convey him in.
Exeunt GOTHS with AARON. Flourish within
The trumpets show the Emperor is at hand.
Sound trumpets. Enter SATURNINUS and
TAMORA, with AEMILIUS, TRIBUNES, SENATORS, and others
SATURNINUS. What, hath the firmament more suns than one?
LUCIUS. What boots it thee to can thyself a sun?
MARCUS. Rome's Emperor, and nephew, break the parle;
These quarrels must be quietly debated.
The feast is ready which the careful Titus
Hath ordain'd to an honourable end,
For peace, for love, for league, and good to Rome.
Please you, therefore, draw nigh and take your places.
SATURNINUS. Marcus, we will.
[A table brought in. The company sit down]
Trumpets sounding, enter TITUS
like a cook, placing the dishes, and LAVINIA
with a veil over her face; also YOUNG LUCIUS, and others
TITUS. Welcome, my lord; welcome, dread Queen;
Welcome, ye warlike Goths; welcome, Lucius;
And welcome all. Although the cheer be poor,
'Twill fill your stomachs; please you eat of it.
SATURNINUS. Why art thou thus attir'd, Andronicus?
TITUS. Because I would be sure to have all well
To entertain your Highness and your Empress.
TAMORA. We are beholding to you, good Andronicus.
TITUS. An if your Highness knew my heart, you were.
My lord the Emperor, resolve me this:
Was it well done of rash Virginius
To slay his daughter with his own right hand,
Because she was enforc'd, stain'd, and deflower'd?
SATURNINUS. It was, Andronicus.
TITUS. Your reason, mighty lord.
SATURNINUS. Because the girl should not survive her shame,
And by her presence still renew his sorrows.
TITUS. A reason mighty, strong, and effectual;
A pattern, precedent, and lively warrant
For me, most wretched, to perform the like.

SATURNINUS. What hast thou done, unnatural and unkind?
TITUS. Kill'd her for whom my tears have made me blind.
I am as woeful as Virginius was,
And have a thousand times more cause than he
To do this outrage; and it now is done.
SATURNINUS. What, was she ravish'd? Tell who did the deed.
TITUS. Will't please you eat? Will't please your Highness feed?
TAMORA. Why hast thou slain thine only daughter thus?
TITUS. Not I; 'twas Chiron and Demetrius.
They ravish'd her, and cut away her tongue;
And they, 'twas they, that did her all this wrong.
SATURNINUS. Go, fetch them hither to us presently.
TITUS. Why, there they are, both baked in this pie,
Whereof their mother daintily hath fed,
Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred.
'Tis true, 'tis true: witness my knife's sharp point.
[He stabs the EMPRESS]
SATURNINUS. Die, frantic wretch, for this accursed deed!
[He stabs TITUS]
LUCIUS. Can the son's eye behold his father bleed?
There's meed for meed, death for a deadly deed.
[He stabs SATURNINUS. A great tumult. LUCIUS,
MARCUS, and their friends go up into the balcony]
MARCUS. You sad-fac'd men, people and sons of Rome,
By uproars sever'd, as a flight of fowl
Scatter'd by winds and high tempestuous gusts?
O, let me teach you how to knit again
This scattered corn into one mutual sheaf,
These broken limbs again into one body;
Lest Rome herself be bane unto herself,
And she whom mighty kingdoms curtsy to,
Like a forlorn and desperate castaway,
Do shameful execution on herself.
But if my frosty signs and chaps of age,
Grave witnesses of true experience,
Cannot induce you to attend my words,
[To Lucius] Speak, Rome's dear friend, as erst our ancestor,
When with his solemn tongue he did discourse
To love-sick Dido's sad attending ear
The story of that baleful burning night,
When subtle Greeks surpris'd King Priam's Troy.
Tell us what Sinon hath bewitch'd our ears,
Or who hath brought the fatal engine in
That gives our Troy, our Rome, the civil wound.
My heart is not compact of flint nor steel;
Nor can I utter all our bitter grief,
But floods of tears will drown my oratory
And break my utt'rance, even in the time
When it should move ye to attend me most,
And force you to commiseration.
Here's Rome's young Captain, let him tell the tale;
While I stand by and weep to hear him speak.
LUCIUS. Then, gracious auditory, be it known to you
That Chiron and the damn'd Demetrius
Were they that murd'red our Emperor's brother;
And they it were that ravished our sister.
For their fell faults our brothers were beheaded,
Our father's tears despis'd, and basely cozen'd
Of that true hand that fought Rome's quarrel out
And sent her enemies unto the grave.
Lastly, myself unkindly banished,
The gates shut on me, and turn'd weeping out,
To beg relief among Rome's enemies;
Who drown'd their enmity in my true tears,
And op'd their arms to embrace me as a friend.
I am the turned forth, be it known to you,
That have preserv'd her welfare in my blood
And from her bosom took the enemy's point,
Sheathing the steel in my advent'rous body.

But, soft! methinks I do digress too much,
Citing my worthless praise. O, pardon me!
For when no friends are by, men praise themselves.
MARCUS. Now is my turn to speak. Behold the child.
[Pointing to the CHILD in an attendant's arms]
Of this was Tamora delivered,
The issue of an irreligious Moor,
Chief architect and plotter of these woes.
The villain is alive in Titus' house,
Damn'd as he is, to witness this is true.
Now judge what cause had Titus to revenge
These wrongs unspeakable, past patience,
Or more than any living man could bear.
Now have you heard the truth: what say you, Romans?
Have we done aught amiss, show us wherein,
And, from the place where you behold us pleading,
The poor remainder of Andronici
Will, hand in hand, all headlong hurl ourselves,
And on the ragged stones beat forth our souls,
And make a mutual closure of our house.
Speak, Romans, speak; and if you say we shall,
Lo, hand in hand, Lucius and I will fall.
AEMILIUS. Come, come, thou reverend man of Rome,
And bring our Emperor gently in thy hand,
Lucius our Emperor; for well I know
The common voice do cry it shall be so.
ALL. Lucius, all hail, Rome's royal Emperor!
MARCUS. Go, go into old Titus' sorrowful house,
And hither hale that misbelieving Moor
To be adjudg'd some direful slaught'ring death,
As punishment for his most wicked life. Exeunt some
attendants. LUCIUS, MARCUS, and the others descend
ALL. Lucius, all hail, Rome's gracious governor!
LUCIUS. Thanks, gentle Romans! May I govern so
To heal Rome's harms and wipe away her woe!
But, gentle people, give me aim awhile,
For nature puts me to a heavy task.
Stand all aloof; but, uncle, draw you near
To shed obsequious tears upon this trunk.
O, take this warm kiss on thy pale cold lips. [Kisses TITUS]
These sorrowful drops upon thy blood-stain'd face,
The last true duties of thy noble son!
MARCUS. Tear for tear and loving kiss for kiss
Thy brother Marcus tenders on thy lips.
O, were the sum of these that I should pay
Countless and infinite, yet would I pay them!
LUCIUS. Come hither, boy; come, come, come, and learn of us
To melt in showers. Thy grandsire lov'd thee well;
Many a time he danc'd thee on his knee,
Sung thee asleep, his loving breast thy pillow;
Many a story hath he told to thee,
And bid thee bear his pretty tales in mind
And talk of them when he was dead and gone.
MARCUS. How many thousand times hath these poor lips,
When they were living, warm'd themselves on thine!
O, now, sweet boy, give them their latest kiss!

O Lord, I cannot speak to him for weeping;
My tears will choke me, if I ope my mouth.
Re-enter attendants with AARON
A ROMAN. You sad Andronici, have done with woes;
Give sentence on the execrable wretch
That hath been breeder of these dire events.
LUCIUS. Set him breast-deep in earth, and famish him;
There let him stand and rave and cry for food.
If any one relieves or pities him,
For the offence he dies. This is our doom.
Some stay to see him fast'ned in the earth.
AARON. Ah, why should wrath be mute and fury dumb?
I am no baby, I, that with base prayers
I should repent the evils I have done;
Ten thousand worse than ever yet I did
Would I perform, if I might have my will.
If one good deed in all my life I did,
I do repent it from my very soul.
LUCIUS. Some loving friends convey the Emperor hence,
And give him burial in his father's grave.
My father and Lavinia shall forthwith
Be closed in our household's monument.
As for that ravenous tiger, Tamora,
No funeral rite, nor man in mourning weed,
No mournful bell shall ring her burial;
But throw her forth to beasts and birds to prey.
Her life was beastly and devoid of pity,
And being dead, let birds on her take pity. Exeunt
1602
ACT I
Prologue.
Scene I.
Troy. Before PRIAM’S palace.
Scene II.
Troy. A street.
Scene III.
The Grecian camp. Before AGAMEMNON’S tent.
ACT II
Scene I.
The Grecian camp.
Scene II.
Troy. PRIAM’S palace.
Scene III.
The Grecian camp. Before the tent of ACHILLES.
ACT III
Scene I.
Troy. PRIAM’S palace.
Scene II.
Troy. PANDARUS’ orchard.
Scene III.
The Greek camp.
ACT IV
Scene I.
Troy. A street.
Scene II.
Troy. The court of PANDARUS’ house.
Scene III.
Troy. A street before PANDARUS’ house.
Scene IV.
Troy. PANDARUS’ house.
Scene V.
The Grecian camp. Lists set out.
ACT V
Scene I.
The Grecian camp. Before the tent of ACHILLES.
Scene II.
The Grecian camp. Before CALCHAS’ tent.
Scene III.
Troy. Before PRIAM’S palace.
Scene IV.
The plain between Troy and the Grecian camp.
Scene V.
Another part of the plain.
Scene VI.
Another part of the plain.
Scene VII.
Another part of the plain.
Scene VIII.
Another part of the plain.
Scene IX.
Another part of the plain.
Scene X.
Another part of the plain.
 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
The ravish’d Helen, Menelaus’ queen,
With wanton Paris sleeps—and that’s the quarrel.
To Tenedos they come,
And the deep-drawing barks do there disgorge
Their war-like fraughtage. Now on Dardan plains
The fresh and yet unbruised Greeks do pitch
Their brave pavilions: Priam’s six-gated city,
Dardan, and Tymbria, Ilias, Chetas, Troien,
And Antenorides, with massy staples
And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts,
Stir up the sons of Troy.
Now expectation, tickling skittish spirits
On one and other side, Trojan and Greek,
Sets all on hazard. And hither am I come
A prologue arm’d, but not in confidence
Of author’s pen or actor’s voice, but suited
In like conditions as our argument,
To tell you, fair beholders, that our play
Leaps o’er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils,
Beginning in the middle; starting thence away,
To what may be digested in a play.
Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are;
Now good or bad, ’tis but the chance of war.
Enter Troilus armed, and Pandarus.
TROILUS.
Call here my varlet; I’ll unarm again.
Why should I war without the walls of Troy
That find such cruel battle here within?
Each Trojan that is master of his heart,
Let him to field; Troilus, alas! hath none.
PANDARUS.
Will this gear ne’er be mended?
TROILUS.
The Greeks are strong, and skilful to their strength,
Fierce to their skill, and to their fierceness valiant;
But I am weaker than a woman’s tear,
Tamer than sleep, fonder than ignorance,
Less valiant than the virgin in the night,
And skilless as unpractis’d infancy.
PANDARUS.
Well, I have told you enough of this; for my part, I’ll not meddle nor make no
farther. He that will have a cake out of the wheat must tarry the grinding.
TROILUS.
Have I not tarried?
PANDARUS.
Ay, the grinding; but you must tarry the bolting.
TROILUS.
Have I not tarried?
PANDARUS.
Ay, the bolting; but you must tarry the leavening.
TROILUS.
Still have I tarried.
PANDARUS.
Ay, to the leavening; but here’s yet in the word ‘hereafter’ the
kneading, the making of the cake, the heating of the oven, and the baking; nay, you must
stay the cooling too, or you may chance burn your lips.
TROILUS.
Patience herself, what goddess e’er she be,
Doth lesser blench at suff’rance than I do.
At Priam’s royal table do I sit;
And when fair Cressid comes into my thoughts,
So, traitor! ‘when she comes’! when she is thence?
PANDARUS.
Well, she look’d yesternight fairer than ever I saw her look, or any woman else.
TROILUS.
I was about to tell thee: when my heart,
As wedged with a sigh, would rive in twain,
Lest Hector or my father should perceive me,
I have, as when the sun doth light a storm,
Buried this sigh in wrinkle of a smile.
But sorrow that is couch’d in seeming gladness
Is like that mirth fate turns to sudden sadness.
PANDARUS.
An her hair were not somewhat darker than Helen’s, well, go to, there were no more
comparison between the women. But, for my part, she is my kinswoman; I would not, as they
term it, praise her, but I would somebody had heard her talk yesterday, as I did. I will
not dispraise your sister Cassandra’s wit; but—
TROILUS.
O Pandarus! I tell thee, Pandarus,
When I do tell thee there my hopes lie drown’d,
Reply not in how many fathoms deep
They lie indrench’d. I tell thee I am mad
In Cressid’s love. Thou answer’st ‘She is fair’;
Pour’st in the open ulcer of my heart
Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice,
Handlest in thy discourse. O! that her hand,
In whose comparison all whites are ink
Writing their own reproach; to whose soft seizure
The cygnet’s down is harsh, and spirit of sense
Hard as the palm of ploughman! This thou tell’st me,
As true thou tell’st me, when I say I love her;
But, saying thus, instead of oil and balm,
Thou lay’st in every gash that love hath given me
The knife that made it.
PANDARUS.
I speak no more than truth.
TROILUS.
Thou dost not speak so much.
PANDARUS.
Faith, I’ll not meddle in’t. Let her be as she is: if she be fair, ’tis
the better for her; and she be not, she has the mends in her own hands.
TROILUS.
Good Pandarus! How now, Pandarus!
PANDARUS.
I have had my labour for my travail, ill thought on of her and ill thought on of you; gone
between and between, but small thanks for my labour.
TROILUS.
What! art thou angry, Pandarus? What! with me?
PANDARUS.
Because she’s kin to me, therefore she’s not so fair as Helen. And she were
not kin to me, she would be as fair on Friday as Helen is on Sunday. But what care I? I
care not and she were a blackamoor; ’tis all one to me.
TROILUS.
Say I she is not fair?
PANDARUS.
I do not care whether you do or no. She’s a fool to stay behind her father. Let her
to the Greeks; and so I’ll tell her the next time I see her. For my part, I’ll
meddle nor make no more i’ the matter.
TROILUS.
Pandarus—
PANDARUS.
Not I.
TROILUS.
Sweet Pandarus—
PANDARUS.
Pray you, speak no more to me: I will leave all as I found it, and there an end.
[Exit Pandarus. An alarum.]
TROILUS.
Peace, you ungracious clamours! Peace, rude sounds!
Fools on both sides! Helen must needs be fair,
When with your blood you daily paint her thus.
I cannot fight upon this argument;
It is too starv’d a subject for my sword.
But Pandarus, O gods! how do you plague me!
I cannot come to Cressid but by Pandar;
And he’s as tetchy to be woo’d to woo
As she is stubborn-chaste against all suit.
Tell me, Apollo, for thy Daphne’s love,
What Cressid is, what Pandar, and what we?
Her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl;
Between our Ilium and where she resides
Let it be call’d the wild and wandering flood;
Ourself the merchant, and this sailing Pandar
Our doubtful hope, our convoy, and our bark.
Alarum. Enter Aeneas.
AENEAS.
How now, Prince Troilus! Wherefore not afield?
TROILUS.
Because not there. This woman’s answer sorts,
For womanish it is to be from thence.
What news, Aeneas, from the field today?
AENEAS.
That Paris is returned home, and hurt.
TROILUS.
By whom, Aeneas?
AENEAS.
Troilus, by Menelaus.
TROILUS.
Let Paris bleed: ’tis but a scar to scorn;
Paris is gor’d with Menelaus’ horn.
[Alarum.]
AENEAS.
Hark what good sport is out of town today!
TROILUS.
Better at home, if ‘would I might’ were ‘may.’
But to the sport abroad. Are you bound thither?
AENEAS.
In all swift haste.
TROILUS.
Come, go we then together.
[Exeunt.]
Enter Cressida and her man Alexander.
CRESSIDA.
Who were those went by?
ALEXANDER.
Queen Hecuba and Helen.
CRESSIDA.
And whither go they?
ALEXANDER.
Up to the eastern tower,
Whose height commands as subject all the vale,
To see the battle. Hector, whose patience
Is as a virtue fix’d, today was mov’d.
He chid Andromache, and struck his armourer;
And, like as there were husbandry in war,
Before the sun rose he was harness’d light,
And to the field goes he; where every flower
Did as a prophet weep what it foresaw
In Hector’s wrath.
CRESSIDA.
What was his cause of anger?
ALEXANDER.
The noise goes, this: there is among the Greeks
A lord of Trojan blood, nephew to Hector;
They call him Ajax.
CRESSIDA.
Good; and what of him?
ALEXANDER.
They say he is a very man per se
And stands alone.
CRESSIDA.
So do all men, unless they are drunk, sick, or have no legs.
ALEXANDER.
This man, lady, hath robb’d many beasts of their particular additions: he is as
valiant as the lion, churlish as the bear, slow as the elephant—a man into whom nature
hath so crowded humours that his valour is crush’d into folly, his folly sauced with
discretion. There is no man hath a virtue that he hath not a glimpse of, nor any man an
attaint but he carries some stain of it; he is melancholy without cause and merry against
the hair; he hath the joints of everything; but everything so out of joint that he is a
gouty Briareus, many hands and no use, or purblind Argus, all eyes and no sight.
CRESSIDA.
But how should this man, that makes me smile, make Hector angry?
ALEXANDER.
They say he yesterday cop’d Hector in the battle and struck him down, the disdain
and shame whereof hath ever since kept Hector fasting and waking.
Enter Pandarus.
CRESSIDA.
Who comes here?
ALEXANDER.
Madam, your uncle Pandarus.
CRESSIDA.
Hector’s a gallant man.
ALEXANDER.
As may be in the world, lady.
PANDARUS.
What’s that? What’s that?
CRESSIDA.
Good morrow, uncle Pandarus.
PANDARUS.
Good morrow, cousin Cressid. What do you talk of?—Good morrow, Alexander.—How do you,
cousin? When were you at Ilium?
CRESSIDA.
This morning, uncle.
PANDARUS.
What were you talking of when I came? Was Hector arm’d and gone ere you came to
Ilium? Helen was not up, was she?
CRESSIDA.
Hector was gone; but Helen was not up.
PANDARUS.
E’en so. Hector was stirring early.
CRESSIDA.
That were we talking of, and of his anger.
PANDARUS.
Was he angry?
CRESSIDA.
So he says here.
PANDARUS.
True, he was so; I know the cause too; he’ll lay about him today, I can tell them
that. And there’s Troilus will not come far behind him; let them take heed of
Troilus, I can tell them that too.
CRESSIDA.
What, is he angry too?
PANDARUS.
Who, Troilus? Troilus is the better man of the two.
CRESSIDA.
O Jupiter! there’s no comparison.
PANDARUS.
What, not between Troilus and Hector? Do you know a man if you see him?
CRESSIDA.
Ay, if I ever saw him before and knew him.
PANDARUS.
Well, I say Troilus is Troilus.
CRESSIDA.
Then you say as I say, for I am sure he is not Hector.
PANDARUS.
No, nor Hector is not Troilus in some degrees.
CRESSIDA.
’Tis just to each of them: he is himself.
PANDARUS.
Himself! Alas, poor Troilus! I would he were!
CRESSIDA.
So he is.
PANDARUS.
Condition I had gone barefoot to India.
CRESSIDA.
He is not Hector.
PANDARUS.
Himself! no, he’s not himself. Would a’ were himself! Well, the gods are
above; time must friend or end. Well, Troilus, well! I would my heart were in her body!
No, Hector is not a better man than Troilus.
CRESSIDA.
Excuse me.
PANDARUS.
He is elder.
CRESSIDA.
Pardon me, pardon me.
PANDARUS.
Th’other’s not come to’t; you shall tell me another tale
when th’other’s come to’t. Hector shall not have his wit this year.
CRESSIDA.
He shall not need it if he have his own.
ANDARUS.
Nor his qualities.
CRESSIDA.
No matter.
PANDARUS.
Nor his beauty.
CRESSIDA.
’Twould not become him: his own’s better.
PANDARUS.
You have no judgement, niece. Helen herself swore th’other day that Troilus, for a
brown favour, for so ’tis, I must confess—not brown neither—
CRESSIDA.
No, but brown.
PANDARUS.
Faith, to say truth, brown and not brown.
CRESSIDA.
To say the truth, true and not true.
PANDARUS.
She prais’d his complexion above Paris.
CRESSIDA.
Why, Paris hath colour enough.
PANDARUS.
So he has.
CRESSIDA.
Then Troilus should have too much. If she prais’d him above, his complexion is
higher than his; he having colour enough, and the other higher, is too flaming a praise
for a good complexion. I had as lief Helen’s golden tongue had commended Troilus for
a copper nose.
PANDARUS.
I swear to you I think Helen loves him better than Paris.
CRESSIDA.
Then she’s a merry Greek indeed.
PANDARUS.
Nay, I am sure she does. She came to him th’other day into the compass’d
window—and you know he has not past three or four hairs on his chin—
CRESSIDA.
Indeed a tapster’s arithmetic may soon bring his particulars therein to a total.
PANDARUS.
Why, he is very young, and yet will he within three pound lift as much as his brother
Hector.
CRESSIDA.
Is he so young a man and so old a lifter?
PANDARUS.

Juno have mercy! How came it cloven?
PANDARUS.
Why, you know, ’tis dimpled. I think his smiling becomes him better than any man in
all Phrygia.
CRESSIDA.
O, he smiles valiantly!
PANDARUS.
Does he not?
CRESSIDA.
O yes, an ’twere a cloud in autumn!
PANDARUS.
Why, go to, then! But to prove to you that Helen loves Troilus—
CRESSIDA.
Troilus will stand to the proof, if you’ll prove it so.
PANDARUS.
Troilus! Why, he esteems her no more than I esteem an addle egg.
CRESSIDA.

PANDARUS.
I cannot choose but laugh to think how she tickled his chin. Indeed, she has a
marvell’s white hand, I must needs confess.
CRESSIDA.
Without the rack.
PANDARUS.
And she takes upon her to spy a white hair on his chin.
CRESSIDA.
Alas, poor chin! Many a wart is richer.
PANDARUS.
But there was such laughing! Queen Hecuba laugh’d that her eyes ran o’er.
CRESSIDA.
With millstones.
PANDARUS.
And Cassandra laugh’d.
CRESSIDA.
But there was a more temperate fire under the pot of her eyes. Did her eyes run o’er
too?
PANDARUS.
And Hector laugh’d.
CRESSIDA.
At what was all this laughing?
PANDARUS.
Marry, at the white hair that Helen spied on Troilus’ chin.
CRESSIDA.
And’t had been a green hair I should have laugh’d too.
PANDARUS.
They laugh’d not so much at the hair as at his pretty answer.
CRESSIDA.
What was his answer?
PANDARUS.
Quoth she ‘Here’s but two and fifty hairs on your chin, and one of them is
white.’
CRESSIDA.
This is her question.
PANDARUS.
That’s true; make no question of that. ‘Two and fifty hairs,’ quoth he
‘and one white. That white hair is my father, and all the rest are his sons.’
‘Jupiter!’ quoth she ‘which of these hairs is Paris my husband?’
‘The forked one,’ quoth he, ’pluck’t out and give it him.’
But there was such laughing! and Helen so blush’d, and Paris so chaf’d; and
all the rest so laugh’d that it pass’d.
CRESSIDA.
So let it now; for it has been a great while going by.
PANDARUS.
Well, cousin, I told you a thing yesterday; think on’t.
CRESSIDA.
So I do.
PANDARUS.
I’ll be sworn ’tis true; he will weep you, and ’twere a man born in
April.
CRESSIDA.
And I’ll spring up in his tears, an ’twere a nettle against May.
[Sound a retreat.]
PANDARUS.
Hark! they are coming from the field. Shall we stand up here and see them as they pass
toward Ilium? Good niece, do, sweet niece Cressida.
CRESSIDA.
At your pleasure.
PANDARUS.
Here, here, here’s an excellent place; here we may see most bravely. I’ll tell
you them all by their names as they pass by; but mark Troilus above the rest.
[Aeneas passes.]
CRESSIDA.
Speak not so loud.
PANDARUS.
That’s Aeneas. Is not that a brave man? He’s one of the flowers of Troy, I can
tell you. But mark Troilus; you shall see anon.
[Antenor passes.]
CRESSIDA.
Who’s that?
PANDARUS.
That’s Antenor. He has a shrewd wit, I can tell you; and he’s a man good
enough; he’s one o’ th’ soundest judgements in Troy, whosoever, and a
proper man of person. When comes Troilus? I’ll show you Troilus anon. If he see me,
you shall see him nod at me.
CRESSIDA.
Will he give you the nod?
PANDARUS.
You shall see.
CRESSIDA.
If he do, the rich shall have more.
[Hector passes.]
PANDARUS.
That’s Hector, that, that, look you, that; there’s a fellow! Go thy way,
Hector! There’s a brave man, niece. O brave Hector! Look how he looks. There’s
a countenance! Is’t not a brave man?
CRESSIDA.
O, a brave man!
PANDARUS.
Is a’ not? It does a man’s heart good.
 Look you there. There’s no jesting; there’s
laying on; take’t off who will, as they say. There be hacks.
CRESSIDA.
Be those with swords?
PANDARUS.
Swords! anything, he cares not; and the devil come to him, it’s all one. By
God’s lid, it does one’s heart good. Yonder comes Paris, yonder comes
Paris.
[Paris passes.]
Look ye yonder, niece; is’t not a gallant man too, is’t not? Why, this is brave now. Who said he came hurt home today? He’s not hurt. Why, this will do Helen’s heart good now, ha! Would I could see Troilus now! You shall see Troilus anon.
[Helenus passes.]
CRESSIDA.
Who’s that?
PANDARUS.
That’s Helenus. I marvel where Troilus is. That’s
Helenus. I think he went not forth today. That’s Helenus.
CRESSIDA.
Can Helenus fight, uncle?
PANDARUS.
Helenus! no. Yes, he’ll fight indifferent well. I marvel where Troilus is. Hark! do
you not hear the people cry ‘Troilus’?—Helenus is a priest.
CRESSIDA.
What sneaking fellow comes yonder?
[Troilus passes.]
PANDARUS.
Where? yonder? That’s Deiphobus. ’Tis Troilus. There’s a man, niece.
Hem! Brave Troilus, the prince of chivalry!
CRESSIDA.
Peace, for shame, peace!
PANDARUS.
Mark him; note him. O brave Troilus! Look well upon him, niece; look you how his sword is
bloodied, and his helm more hack’d than Hector’s; and how he looks, and how he
goes! O admirable youth! he never saw three and twenty. Go thy way, Troilus, go thy way.
Had I a sister were a grace or a daughter a goddess, he should take his choice. O
admirable man! Paris? Paris is dirt to him; and, I warrant, Helen, to change, would give
an eye to boot.
CRESSIDA.
Here comes more.
[Common soldiers pass.]
PANDARUS.
Asses, fools, dolts! chaff and bran, chaff and bran! porridge after meat!  Ne’er look, ne’er look; the eagles are gone. Crows
and daws, crows and daws! I had rather be such a man as Troilus than Agamemnon and all
Greece.
CRESSIDA.
There is amongst the Greeks Achilles, a better man than Troilus.
PANDARUS.
Achilles? A drayman, a porter, a very camel!
CRESSIDA.
Well, well.
PANDARUS.
Well, well! Why, have you any discretion? Have you any eyes? Do you know what a man is? Is
not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth,
liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man?
CRESSIDA.
Ay, a minc’d man; and then to be bak’d with no date in the pie, for then the
man’s date is out.
PANDARUS.
 A man knows not at what ward you lie.
CRESSIDA.
Upon my back, to defend my belly; upon my wit, to defend my wiles; upon my secrecy, to
defend mine honesty; my mask, to defend my beauty; and you, to defend all these; and at
all these wards I lie, at a thousand watches.
PANDARUS.
Say one of your watches.
CRESSIDA.
Nay, I’ll watch you for that; and that’s one of the chiefest of them too. If I
cannot ward what I would not have hit, I can watch you for telling how I took the blow;
unless it swell past hiding, and then it’s past watching.
PANDARUS.

Enter Troilus' Boy.
BOY.
Sir, my lord would instantly speak with you.
PANDARUS.
Where?
BOY.
At your own house; there he unarms him.
PANDARUS.
Good boy, tell him I come. [Exit Boy.]
I doubt he be hurt. Fare ye well, good niece.
CRESSIDA.
Adieu, uncle.
PANDARUS.
I will be with you, niece, by and by.
CRESSIDA.
To bring, uncle.
PANDARUS.
Ay, a token from Troilus.
[Exit Pandarus.]
CRESSIDA.

Words, vows, gifts, tears, and love’s full sacrifice,
He offers in another’s enterprise;
But more in Troilus thousand-fold I see
Than in the glass of Pandar’s praise may be,
Yet hold I off. Women are angels, wooing:
Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.
That she belov’d knows naught that knows not this:
Men prize the thing ungain’d more than it is.
That she was never yet that ever knew
Love got so sweet as when desire did sue;
Therefore this maxim out of love I teach:
‘Achievement is command; ungain’d, beseech.’
Then though my heart’s content firm love doth bear,
Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear.
[Exit.]
Sennet. Enter Agamemnon, Nestor, Ulysses, Diomedes, Menelaus and others.
AGAMEMNON.
Princes,
What grief hath set these jaundies o’er your cheeks?
The ample proposition that hope makes
In all designs begun on earth below
Fails in the promis’d largeness; checks and disasters
Grow in the veins of actions highest rear’d,
As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Infects the sound pine, and diverts his grain
Tortive and errant from his course of growth.
Nor, princes, is it matter new to us
That we come short of our suppose so far
That after seven years’ siege yet Troy walls stand;
Sith every action that hath gone before,
Whereof we have record, trial did draw
Bias and thwart, not answering the aim,
And that unbodied figure of the thought
That gave’t surmised shape. Why then, you princes,
Do you with cheeks abash’d behold our works
And call them shames, which are, indeed, naught else
But the protractive trials of great Jove
To find persistive constancy in men;
The fineness of which metal is not found
In fortune’s love? For then the bold and coward,
The wise and fool, the artist and unread,
The hard and soft, seem all affin’d and kin.
But in the wind and tempest of her frown
Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan,
Puffing at all, winnows the light away;
And what hath mass or matter by itself
Lies rich in virtue and unmingled.
NESTOR.
With due observance of thy godlike seat,
Great Agamemnon, Nestor shall apply
Thy latest words. In the reproof of chance
Lies the true proof of men. The sea being smooth,
How many shallow bauble boats dare sail
Upon her patient breast, making their way
With those of nobler bulk!
But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage
The gentle Thetis, and anon behold
The strong-ribb’d bark through liquid mountains cut,
Bounding between the two moist elements
Like Perseus’ horse. Where’s then the saucy boat,
Whose weak untimber’d sides but even now
Co-rivall’d greatness? Either to harbour fled
Or made a toast for Neptune. Even so
Doth valour’s show and valour’s worth divide
In storms of fortune; for in her ray and brightness
The herd hath more annoyance by the breeze
Than by the tiger; but when the splitting wind
Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks,
And flies fled under shade—why, then the thing of courage,
As rous’d with rage, with rage doth sympathise,
And with an accent tun’d in self-same key
Retorts to chiding fortune.
ULYSSES.
Agamemnon,
Thou great commander, nerve and bone of Greece,
Heart of our numbers, soul and only spirit
In whom the tempers and the minds of all
Should be shut up—hear what Ulysses speaks.
Besides th’applause and approbation
The which, [To Agamemnon] most mighty, for thy place and sway,
[To Nestor] And, thou most reverend, for thy stretch’d-out life,
I give to both your speeches—which were such
As Agamemnon and the hand of Greece
Should hold up high in brass; and such again
As venerable Nestor, hatch’d in silver,
Should with a bond of air, strong as the axle-tree
On which heaven rides, knit all the Greekish ears
To his experienc’d tongue—yet let it please both,
Thou great, and wise, to hear Ulysses speak.
AGAMEMNON.
Speak, Prince of Ithaca; and be’t of less expect
That matter needless, of importless burden,
Divide thy lips than we are confident,
When rank Thersites opes his mastic jaws,
We shall hear music, wit, and oracle.
ULYSSES.
Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down,
And the great Hector’s sword had lack’d a master,
But for these instances:
The specialty of rule hath been neglected;
And look how many Grecian tents do stand
Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions.
When that the general is not like the hive,
To whom the foragers shall all repair,
What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded,
Th’unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre,
Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, in all line of order;
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
In noble eminence enthron’d and spher’d
Amidst the other, whose med’cinable eye
Corrects the influence of evil planets,
And posts, like the commandment of a king,
Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets
In evil mixture to disorder wander,
What plagues and what portents, what mutiny,
What raging of the sea, shaking of earth,
Commotion in the winds! Frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate,
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixture! O, when degree is shak’d,
Which is the ladder of all high designs,
The enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenity and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And hark what discord follows! Each thing melts
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe;
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead;
Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong—
Between whose endless jar justice resides—
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,
This chaos, when degree is suffocate,
Follows the choking.
And this neglection of degree it is
That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose
It hath to climb. The general’s disdain’d
By him one step below, he by the next,
That next by him beneath; so every step,
Exampl’d by the first pace that is sick
Of his superior, grows to an envious fever
Of pale and bloodless emulation.
And ’tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,
Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,
Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.
NESTOR.
Most wisely hath Ulysses here discover’d
The fever whereof all our power is sick.
AGAMEMNON.
The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses,
What is the remedy?
ULYSSES.
 Sometime, great Agamemnon,
Thy topless deputation he puts on;
And like a strutting player whose conceit
Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich
To hear the wooden dialogue and sound
’Twixt his stretch’d footing and the scaffoldage—
Such to-be-pitied and o’er-wrested seeming
He acts thy greatness in; and when he speaks
’Tis like a chime a-mending; with terms unsquar’d,
Which, from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropp’d,
Would seem hyperboles. At this fusty stuff
The large Achilles, on his press’d bed lolling,
From his deep chest laughs out a loud applause;
Cries ‘Excellent! ’Tis Agamemnon right!
Now play me Nestor; hem, and stroke thy beard,
As he being drest to some oration.’
That’s done—as near as the extremest ends
Of parallels, as like as Vulcan and his wife;
Yet god Achilles still cries ‘Excellent!
’Tis Nestor right. Now play him me, Patroclus,
Arming to answer in a night alarm.’
And then, forsooth, the faint defects of age
Must be the scene of mirth: to cough and spit
And, with a palsy fumbling on his gorget,
Shake in and out the rivet. And at this sport
Sir Valour dies; cries ‘O, enough, Patroclus;
Or give me ribs of steel! I shall split all
In pleasure of my spleen.’ And in this fashion
All our abilities, gifts, natures, shapes,
Severals and generals of grace exact,
Achievements, plots, orders, preventions,
Excitements to the field or speech for truce,
Success or loss, what is or is not, serves
As stuff for these two to make paradoxes.
NESTOR.
And in the imitation of these twain—
Who, as Ulysses says, opinion crowns
With an imperial voice—many are infect.

ULYSSES.
They tax our policy and call it cowardice,
Count wisdom as no member of the war,
Forestall prescience, and esteem no act
But that of hand. The still and mental parts
That do contrive how many hands shall strike
When fitness calls them on, and know, by measure
Of their observant toil, the enemies’ weight—
Why, this hath not a finger’s dignity:
They call this bed-work, mapp’ry, closet-war;
So that the ram that batters down the wall,
For the great swinge and rudeness of his poise,
They place before his hand that made the engine,
Or those that with the fineness of their souls
By reason guide his execution.
NESTOR.
Let this be granted, and Achilles’ horse
Makes many Thetis’ sons.
[Tucket.]
AGAMEMNON.
What trumpet? Look, Menelaus.
MENELAUS.
From Troy.
Enter Aeneas.
AGAMEMNON.
What would you fore our tent?
AENEAS.
Is this great Agamemnon’s tent, I pray you?
AGAMEMNON.
Even this.
AENEAS.
May one that is a herald and a prince
Do a fair message to his kingly eyes?
AGAMEMNON.
With surety stronger than Achilles’ arm
Fore all the Greekish heads, which with one voice
Call Agamemnon head and general.
AENEAS.
Fair leave and large security. How may
A stranger to those most imperial looks
Know them from eyes of other mortals?
AGAMEMNON.
How?
AENEAS.
Ay;
I ask, that I might waken reverence,
And bid the cheek be ready with a blush
Modest as morning when she coldly eyes
The youthful Phoebus.
Which is that god in office, guiding men?
Which is the high and mighty Agamemnon?
AGAMEMNON.
This Trojan scorns us, or the men of Troy
Are ceremonious courtiers.
AENEAS.
Courtiers as free, as debonair, unarm’d,
As bending angels; that’s their fame in peace.
But when they would seem soldiers, they have galls,
Good arms, strong joints, true swords; and, Jove’s accord,
Nothing so full of heart. But peace, Aeneas,
Peace, Trojan; lay thy finger on thy lips.
The worthiness of praise distains his worth,
If that the prais’d himself bring the praise forth;
But what the repining enemy commends,
That breath fame blows; that praise, sole pure, transcends.
AGAMEMNON.
Sir, you of Troy, call you yourself Aeneas?
AENEAS.
Ay, Greek, that is my name.
AGAMEMNON.
What’s your affairs, I pray you?
AENEAS.
Sir, pardon; ’tis for Agamemnon’s ears.
AGAMEMNON
He hears naught privately that comes from Troy.
AENEAS.
Nor I from Troy come not to whisper with him;
I bring a trumpet to awake his ear,
To set his sense on the attentive bent,
And then to speak.
AGAMEMNON.
Speak frankly as the wind;
It is not Agamemnon’s sleeping hour.
That thou shalt know, Trojan, he is awake,
He tells thee so himself.
AENEAS.

[Sound trumpet.]
We have, great Agamemnon, here in Troy
A prince called Hector—Priam is his father—
Who in this dull and long-continued truce
Is resty grown; he bade me take a trumpet
And to this purpose speak: Kings, princes, lords!
If there be one among the fair’st of Greece
That holds his honour higher than his ease,
That feeds his praise more than he fears his peril,
That knows his valour and knows not his fear,
That loves his mistress more than in confession
With truant vows to her own lips he loves,
And dare avow her beauty and her worth
In other arms than hers—to him this challenge.
Hector, in view of Trojans and of Greeks,
Shall make it good or do his best to do it:
He hath a lady wiser, fairer, truer,
Than ever Greek did couple in his arms;
And will tomorrow with his trumpet call
Mid-way between your tents and walls of Troy
To rouse a Grecian that is true in love.
If any come, Hector shall honour him;
If none, he’ll say in Troy, when he retires,
The Grecian dames are sunburnt and not worth
The splinter of a lance. Even so much.
AGAMEMNON.
This shall be told our lovers, Lord Aeneas.
If none of them have soul in such a kind,
We left them all at home. But we are soldiers;
And may that soldier a mere recreant prove
That means not, hath not, or is not in love.
If then one is, or hath, or means to be,
That one meets Hector; if none else, I am he.
NESTOR.
Tell him of Nestor, one that was a man
When Hector’s grandsire suck’d. He is old now;
But if there be not in our Grecian host
A noble man that hath one spark of fire
To answer for his love, tell him from me
I’ll hide my silver beard in a gold beaver,
And in my vambrace put this wither’d brawns,
And meeting him, will tell him that my lady
Was fairer than his grandam, and as chaste
As may be in the world. His youth in flood,
I’ll prove this troth with my three drops of blood.
AENEAS.
Now heavens forfend such scarcity of youth!
ULYSSES.
Amen.
AGAMEMNON.
Fair Lord Aeneas, let me touch your hand;
To our pavilion shall I lead you, sir.
Achilles shall have word of this intent;
So shall each lord of Greece, from tent to tent.
Yourself shall feast with us before you go,
And find the welcome of a noble foe.
[Exeunt all but Ulysses and Nestor.]
ULYSSES.
Nestor!
NESTOR.
What says Ulysses?
ULYSSES.
I have a young conception in my brain;
Be you my time to bring it to some shape.
NESTOR.
What is’t?
ULYSSES.
This ’tis:
Blunt wedges rive hard knots. The seeded pride
That hath to this maturity blown up
In rank Achilles must or now be cropp’d
Or, shedding, breed a nursery of like evil
To overbulk us all.
NESTOR.
Well, and how?
ULYSSES.
This challenge that the gallant Hector sends,
However it is spread in general name,
Relates in purpose only to Achilles.
NESTOR.
True. The purpose is perspicuous even as substance
Whose grossness little characters sum up;
And, in the publication, make no strain
But that Achilles, were his brain as barren
As banks of Libya—though, Apollo knows,
’Tis dry enough—will with great speed of judgement,
Ay, with celerity, find Hector’s purpose
Pointing on him.
ULYSSES.
And wake him to the answer, think you?
NESTOR.
Why, ’tis most meet. Who may you else oppose
That can from Hector bring those honours off,
If not Achilles? Though ’t be a sportful combat,
Yet in this trial much opinion dwells
For here the Trojans taste our dear’st repute
With their fin’st palate; and trust to me, Ulysses,
Our imputation shall be oddly pois’d
In this vile action; for the success,
Although particular, shall give a scantling
Of good or bad unto the general;
And in such indexes, although small pricks
To their subsequent volumes, there is seen
The baby figure of the giant mass
Of things to come at large. It is suppos’d
He that meets Hector issues from our choice;
And choice, being mutual act of all our souls,
Makes merit her election, and doth boil,
As ’twere from forth us all, a man distill’d
Out of our virtues; who miscarrying,
What heart receives from hence a conquering part,
To steel a strong opinion to themselves?
Which entertain’d, limbs are his instruments,
In no less working than are swords and bows
Directive by the limbs.
ULYSSES.
Give pardon to my speech. Therefore ’tis meet
Achilles meet not Hector. Let us, like merchants,
First show foul wares, and think perchance they’ll sell;
If not, the lustre of the better shall exceed
By showing the worse first. Do not consent
That ever Hector and Achilles meet;
For both our honour and our shame in this
Are dogg’d with two strange followers.
NESTOR.
I see them not with my old eyes. What are they?
ULYSSES.
What glory our Achilles shares from Hector,
Were he not proud, we all should share with him;
But he already is too insolent;
And it were better parch in Afric sun
Than in the pride and salt scorn of his eyes,
Should he scape Hector fair. If he were foil’d,
Why, then we do our main opinion crush
In taint of our best man. No, make a lott’ry;
And, by device, let blockish Ajax draw
The sort to fight with Hector. Among ourselves
Give him allowance for the better man;
For that will physic the great Myrmidon,
Who broils in loud applause, and make him fall
His crest, that prouder than blue Iris bends.
If the dull brainless Ajax come safe off,
We’ll dress him up in voices; if he fail,
Yet go we under our opinion still
That we have better men. But, hit or miss,
Our project’s life this shape of sense assumes—
Ajax employ’d plucks down Achilles’ plumes.
NESTOR.
 Go we to him straight.
Two curs shall tame each other: pride alone
Must tarre the mastiffs on, as ’twere their bone.
[Exeunt.]
Enter Ajax and Thersites.
AJAX.
Thersites!
THERSITES.
Agamemnon—how if he had boils, full, all over, generally?
AJAX.
Thersites!
THERSITES.
And those boils did run—say so. Did not the general run then? Were not that a botchy
core?
AJAX.
Dog!
THERSITES.
Then there would come some matter from him;
I see none now.
AJAX.
Thou bitch-wolf’s son, canst thou not hear? Feel, then.
[Strikes him.]
THERSITES.
The plague of Greece upon thee, thou mongrel beef-witted lord!
AJAX.
Speak, then, thou unsalted leaven, speak. I will beat thee into handsomeness.
THERSITES.
I shall sooner rail thee into wit and holiness; but I think thy horse will sooner con an
oration than thou learn a prayer without book. Thou canst strike, canst thou? A red
murrain o’ thy jade’s tricks!
AJAX.
Toadstool, learn me the proclamation.
THERSITES.
Dost thou think I have no sense, thou strikest me thus?
AJAX.
The proclamation!
THERSITES.
Thou art proclaim’d fool, I think.
AJAX.
Do not, porpentine, do not; my fingers itch.
THERSITES.
I would thou didst itch from head to foot and I had the scratching of thee; I would make
thee the loathsomest scab in Greece. When thou art forth in the incursions, thou strikest
as slow as another.
AJAX.
I say, the proclamation.
THERSITES.
Thou grumblest and railest every hour on Achilles; and thou art as full of envy at his
greatness as Cerberus is at Proserpina’s beauty—ay, that thou bark’st at him.
AJAX.
Mistress Thersites!
THERSITES.
Thou shouldst strike him.
AJAX.
Cobloaf!
THERSITES.
He would pun thee into shivers with his fist, as a sailor breaks a biscuit.
AJAX.
You whoreson cur!
[Strikes him.]
THERSITES.
Do, do.
AJAX.
Thou stool for a witch!
THERSITES.
Ay, do, do; thou sodden-witted lord! Thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows;
an asinico may tutor thee.  Thou art here but to thrash Trojans,
and thou art bought and sold among those of any wit like a barbarian slave. If thou use to
beat me, I will begin at thy heel and tell what thou art by inches, thou thing of no
bowels, thou!
AJAX.
You dog!
THERSITES.
You scurvy lord!
AJAX.
You cur!
[Strikes him.]
THERSITES.
 Do, rudeness; do, camel; do, do.
Enter Achilles and Patroclus.
ACHILLES.
Why, how now, Ajax! Wherefore do ye thus?
How now, Thersites! What’s the matter, man?
THERSITES.
You see him there, do you?
ACHILLES.
Ay; what’s the matter?
THERSITES.
Nay, look upon him.
ACHILLES.
So I do. What’s the matter?
THERSITES.
Nay, but regard him well.
ACHILLES.
Well! why, so I do.
THERSITES.
But yet you look not well upon him; for whosomever you take him to be, he is Ajax.
ACHILLES.

THERSITES.
Ay, but that fool knows not himself.
AJAX.
Therefore I beat thee.
THERSITES.
Lo, lo, lo, lo, what modicums of wit he utters! His evasions have ears thus long. I have
bobb’d his brain more than he has beat my bones. I will buy nine sparrows for a
penny, and his pia mater is not worth the ninth part of a sparrow.
ACHILLES.
What?
THERSITES.
I say this Ajax—
[Ajax offers to strike him.]
ACHILLES.
Nay, good Ajax.
THERSITES.
Has not so much wit—
ACHILLES.
Nay, I must hold you.
THERSITES.
As will stop the eye of Helen’s needle, for whom he comes to fight.
ACHILLES.

THERSITES.
I would have peace and quietness, but the fool will not—
he there; that he; look you there.
AJAX.
O thou damned cur! I shall—
ACHILLES.
Will you set your wit to a fool’s?
THERSITES.
No, I warrant you, the fool’s will shame it.
PATROCLUS.
Good words, Thersites.
ACHILLES.
What’s the quarrel?
AJAX.
I bade the vile owl go learn me the tenour of the proclamation, and he rails upon me.
THERSITES.
I serve thee not.
AJAX.
Well, go to, go to.
THERSITES.
I serve here voluntary.
ACHILLES.
Your last service was suff’rance; ’twas not voluntary. No man is beaten
voluntary. Ajax was here the voluntary, and you as under an impress.
THERSITES.

Hector shall have a great catch and knock out either of your brains: a’ were as good
crack a fusty nut with no kernel.
ACHILLES.
What, with me too, Thersites?
THERSITES.

ACHILLES.
What, what?
THERSITES.
Yes, good sooth. To Achilles, to Ajax, to—
AJAX.
I shall cut out your tongue.
THERSITES.
’Tis no matter; I shall speak as much as thou afterwards.
PATROCLUS.
No more words, Thersites; peace!
THERSITES.
I will hold my peace when Achilles’ brach bids me, shall I?
ACHILLES.
There’s for you, Patroclus.
THERSITES.
I will see you hang’d like clotpoles ere I come any more to your tents. I will keep
where there is wit stirring, and leave the faction of fools.
[Exit.]
PATROCLUS.
A good riddance.
ACHILLES.
Marry, this, sir, is proclaim’d through all our host,
That Hector, by the fifth hour of the sun,
Will with a trumpet ’twixt our tents and Troy,
Tomorrow morning, call some knight to arms
That hath a stomach; and such a one that dare
Maintain I know not what; ’tis trash. Farewell.
AJAX.
Farewell. Who shall answer him?
ACHILLES.
I know not; ’tis put to lott’ry, otherwise,
He knew his man.
AJAX.
O, meaning you? I will go learn more of it.
[Exeunt.]
Enter Priam, Hector, Troilus, Paris and Helenus.
PRIAM.
After so many hours, lives, speeches spent,
Thus once again says Nestor from the Greeks:
‘Deliver Helen, and all damage else—
As honour, loss of time, travail, expense,
Wounds, friends, and what else dear that is consum’d
In hot digestion of this cormorant war—
Shall be struck off.’ Hector, what say you to’t?
HECTOR.

Than Hector is. The wound of peace is surety,
Surety secure; but modest doubt is call’d
The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches
To th’ bottom of the worst. Let Helen go.
Since the first sword was drawn about this question,
Every tithe soul ’mongst many thousand dismes
Hath been as dear as Helen—I mean, of ours.
If we have lost so many tenths of ours
To guard a thing not ours, nor worth to us,
Had it our name, the value of one ten,
What merit’s in that reason which denies
The yielding of her up?
TROILUS.
Fie, fie, my brother!
Weigh you the worth and honour of a king,
So great as our dread father’s, in a scale
Of common ounces? Will you with counters sum
The past-proportion of his infinite,
And buckle in a waist most fathomless
With spans and inches so diminutive
As fears and reasons? Fie, for godly shame!
HELENUS.
No marvel though you bite so sharp of reasons,
You are so empty of them. Should not our father
Bear the great sway of his affairs with reason,
Because your speech hath none that tells him so?
TROILUS.
You are for dreams and slumbers, brother priest;
You fur your gloves with reason. Here are your reasons:
You know an enemy intends you harm;
You know a sword employ’d is perilous,
And reason flies the object of all harm.
Who marvels, then, when Helenus beholds
A Grecian and his sword, if he do set
The very wings of reason to his heels
And fly like chidden Mercury from Jove,
Or like a star disorb’d?  Manhood and honour
Should have hare hearts, would they but fat their thoughts
With this cramm’d reason. Reason and respect
Make livers pale and lustihood deject.
HECTOR.
Brother, she is not worth what she doth cost the keeping.
TROILUS.
What’s aught but as ’tis valued?
HECTOR.
But value dwells not in particular will:
It holds his estimate and dignity
As well wherein ’tis precious of itself
As in the prizer. ’Tis mad idolatry
To make the service greater than the god,
And the will dotes that is attributive
To what infectiously itself affects,
Without some image of th’affected merit.
TROILUS.
I take today a wife, and my election
Is led on in the conduct of my will;
My will enkindled by mine eyes and ears,
Two traded pilots ’twixt the dangerous shores
Of will and judgement: how may I avoid,
Although my will distaste what it elected,
The wife I chose? There can be no evasion
To blench from this and to stand firm by honour.
We turn not back the silks upon the merchant
When we have soil’d them; nor the remainder viands
We do not throw in unrespective sieve,
Because we now are full. It was thought meet
Paris should do some vengeance on the Greeks;
Your breath with full consent bellied his sails;
The seas and winds, old wranglers, took a truce,
And did him service. He touch’d the ports desir’d;
And for an old aunt whom the Greeks held captive
He brought a Grecian queen, whose youth and freshness
Wrinkles Apollo’s, and makes stale the morning.
Why keep we her? The Grecians keep our aunt.
Is she worth keeping? Why, she is a pearl
Whose price hath launch’d above a thousand ships,
And turn’d crown’d kings to merchants.
If you’ll avouch ’twas wisdom Paris went—
As you must needs, for you all cried ‘Go, go’—
If you’ll confess he brought home worthy prize—
As you must needs, for you all clapp’d your hands,
And cried ‘Inestimable!’—why do you now
The issue of your proper wisdoms rate,
And do a deed that never Fortune did—
Beggar the estimation which you priz’d
Richer than sea and land? O theft most base,
That we have stol’n what we do fear to keep!
But thieves unworthy of a thing so stol’n
That in their country did them that disgrace
We fear to warrant in our native place!
CASSANDRA.
[Within.] Cry, Trojans, cry.
PRIAM.
What noise, what shriek is this?
TROILUS.
’Tis our mad sister; I do know her voice.
CASSANDRA.
[Within.] Cry, Trojans.
HECTOR.
It is Cassandra.
Enter Cassandra, raving.
CASSANDRA.
Cry, Trojans, cry. Lend me ten thousand eyes,
And I will fill them with prophetic tears.
HECTOR.
Peace, sister, peace.
CASSANDRA.
Virgins and boys, mid-age and wrinkled eld,
Soft infancy, that nothing canst but cry,
Add to my clamours. Let us pay betimes
A moiety of that mass of moan to come.
Cry, Trojans, cry. Practise your eyes with tears.
Troy must not be, nor goodly Ilion stand;
Our firebrand brother, Paris, burns us all.
Cry, Trojans, cry, A Helen and a woe!
Cry, cry. Troy burns, or else let Helen go.
[Exit.]
HECTOR.
Now, youthful Troilus, do not these high strains
Of divination in our sister work
Some touches of remorse? Or is your blood
So madly hot, that no discourse of reason,
Nor fear of bad success in a bad cause,
Can qualify the same?
TROILUS.
Why, brother Hector,
We may not think the justness of each act
Such and no other than event doth form it;
Nor once deject the courage of our minds
Because Cassandra’s mad. Her brain-sick raptures
Cannot distaste the goodness of a quarrel
Which hath our several honours all engag’d
To make it gracious. For my private part,
I am no more touch’d than all Priam’s sons;
And Jove forbid there should be done amongst us
Such things as might offend the weakest spleen
To fight for and maintain.
PARIS.
Else might the world convince of levity
As well my undertakings as your counsels;
But I attest the gods, your full consent
Gave wings to my propension, and cut off
All fears attending on so dire a project.
For what, alas, can these my single arms?
What propugnation is in one man’s valour
To stand the push and enmity of those
This quarrel would excite? Yet I protest,
Were I alone to pass the difficulties,
And had as ample power as I have will,
Paris should ne’er retract what he hath done,
Nor faint in the pursuit.
PRIAM.
Paris, you speak
Like one besotted on your sweet delights.
You have the honey still, but these the gall;
So to be valiant is no praise at all.
PARIS.
Sir, I propose not merely to myself
The pleasures such a beauty brings with it;
But I would have the soil of her fair rape
Wip’d off in honourable keeping her.
What treason were it to the ransack’d queen,
Disgrace to your great worths, and shame to me,
Now to deliver her possession up
On terms of base compulsion! Can it be,
That so degenerate a strain as this
Should once set footing in your generous bosoms?
There’s not the meanest spirit on our party
Without a heart to dare or sword to draw
When Helen is defended; nor none so noble
Whose life were ill bestow’d or death unfam’d,
Where Helen is the subject. Then, I say,
Well may we fight for her whom we know well
The world’s large spaces cannot parallel.
HECTOR.
Paris and Troilus, you have both said well;
And on the cause and question now in hand
Have gloz’d, but superficially; not much
Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought
Unfit to hear moral philosophy.
The reasons you allege do more conduce
To the hot passion of distemp’red blood
Than to make up a free determination
’Twixt right and wrong; for pleasure and revenge
Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice
Of any true decision. Nature craves
All dues be rend’red to their owners. Now,
What nearer debt in all humanity
Than wife is to the husband? If this law
Of nature be corrupted through affection;
And that great minds, of partial indulgence
To their benumbed wills, resist the same;
There is a law in each well-order’d nation
To curb those raging appetites that are
Most disobedient and refractory.
If Helen, then, be wife to Sparta’s king—
As it is known she is—these moral laws
Of nature and of nations speak aloud
To have her back return’d. Thus to persist
In doing wrong extenuates not wrong,
But makes it much more heavy. Hector’s opinion
Is this, in way of truth. Yet, ne’ertheless,
My spritely brethren, I propend to you
In resolution to keep Helen still;
For ’tis a cause that hath no mean dependence
Upon our joint and several dignities.
TROILUS.
Why, there you touch’d the life of our design.
Were it not glory that we more affected
Than the performance of our heaving spleens,
I would not wish a drop of Trojan blood
Spent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector,
She is a theme of honour and renown,
A spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds,
Whose present courage may beat down our foes,
And fame in time to come canonize us;
For I presume brave Hector would not lose
So rich advantage of a promis’d glory
As smiles upon the forehead of this action
For the wide world’s revenue.
HECTOR.
I am yours,
You valiant offspring of great Priamus.
I have a roisting challenge sent amongst
The dull and factious nobles of the Greeks
Will strike amazement to their drowsy spirits.
I was advertis’d their great general slept,
Whilst emulation in the army crept.
This, I presume, will wake him.
[Exeunt.]
Enter Thersites, solus.
THERSITES.
How now, Thersites! What, lost in the labyrinth of thy fury? Shall the elephant Ajax carry
it thus? He beats me, and I rail at him. O worthy satisfaction! Would it were otherwise:
that I could beat him, whilst he rail’d at me! ‘Sfoot, I’ll learn to
conjure and raise devils, but I’ll see some issue of my spiteful execrations. Then
there’s Achilles, a rare engineer! If Troy be not taken till these two undermine it,
the walls will stand till they fall of themselves. O thou great thunder-darter of Olympus,
forget that thou art Jove, the king of gods, and, Mercury, lose all the serpentine craft
of thy caduceus, if ye take not that little little less than little wit from them that
they have! which short-arm’d ignorance itself knows is so abundant scarce, it will
not in circumvention deliver a fly from a spider without drawing their massy irons and
cutting the web. After this, the vengeance on the whole camp! or, rather, the Neapolitan
bone-ache! for that, methinks, is the curse depending on those that war for a placket. I
have said my prayers; and devil Envy say ‘Amen.’ What ho! my Lord
Achilles!
Enter Patroclus.
PATROCLUS.
Who’s there? Thersites! Good Thersites, come in and rail.
THERSITES.
If I could a’ rememb’red a gilt counterfeit, thou wouldst not have
slipp’d out of my contemplation; but it is no matter; thyself upon thyself! The
common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance, be thine in great revenue! Heaven bless thee
from a tutor, and discipline come not near thee! Let thy blood be thy direction till thy
death. Then if she that lays thee out says thou art a fair corse, I’ll be sworn and
sworn upon’t she never shrouded any but lazars. Amen. Where’s Achilles?
PATROCLUS.
What, art thou devout? Wast thou in prayer?
THERSITES.
Ay, the heavens hear me!
PATROCLUS.
Amen.
Enter Achilles.
ACHILLES.
Who’s there?
PATROCLUS.
Thersites, my lord.
ACHILLES.
Where, where? O, where? Art thou come? Why, my cheese, my digestion, why hast thou not
served thyself in to my table so many meals? Come, what’s Agamemnon?
THERSITES.
Thy commander, Achilles. Then tell me, Patroclus, what’s Achilles?
PATROCLUS.
Thy lord, Thersites. Then tell me, I pray thee, what’s Thersites?
THERSITES.
Thy knower, Patroclus. Then tell me, Patroclus, what art thou?
PATROCLUS.
Thou must tell that knowest.
ACHILLES.
O, tell, tell,
THERSITES.
I’ll decline the whole question.
PATROCLUS.
You rascal!
THERSITES.
Peace, fool! I have not done.
ACHILLES.
He is a privileg’d man. Proceed, Thersites.
THERSITES.

ACHILLES.
Derive this; come.
THERSITES.

PATROCLUS.
Why am I a fool?
THERSITES.
Make that demand of the Creator. It suffices me thou art. Look you, who comes here?
Enter Agamemnon, Ulysses, Nestor, Diomedes, Ajax and Calchas.
ACHILLES.
Come, Patroclus, I’ll speak with nobody. Come in with me, Thersites.
[Exit.]
THERSITES.
Here is such patchery, such juggling, and such knavery.  Now the dry
serpigo on the subject, and war and lechery confound all!
[Exit.]
AGAMEMNON.
Where is Achilles?
PATROCLUS.
Within his tent; but ill-dispos’d, my lord.
AGAMEMNON.
Let it be known to him that we are here.
He sate our messengers; and we lay by
Our appertainings, visiting of him.
Let him be told so; lest, perchance, he think
We dare not move the question of our place
Or know not what we are.
PATROCLUS.
I shall say so to him.
[Exit.]
ULYSSES.
We saw him at the opening of his tent.
He is not sick.
AJAX.
 You may call it melancholy, if you will favour the
man; but, by my head, ’tis pride. But why, why? Let him show us a cause. A word, my
lord.
[Takes Agamemnon aside.]
NESTOR.
What moves Ajax thus to bay at him?
ULYSSES.
Achilles hath inveigled his fool from him.
NESTOR.
Who, Thersites?
ULYSSES.
He.
NESTOR.
Then will Ajax lack matter, if he have lost his argument.
ULYSSES.
No; you see he is his argument that has his argument, Achilles.
NESTOR.
All the better; their fraction is more our wish than their faction. But it was a strong
composure a fool could disunite!
ULYSSES.
The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie.
Re-enter Patroclus.
Here comes Patroclus.
NESTOR.
No Achilles with him.
ULYSSES.
The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy; his legs are legs for necessity, not for
flexure.
PATROCLUS.
Achilles bids me say he is much sorry
If any thing more than your sport and pleasure
Did move your greatness and this noble state
To call upon him; he hopes it is no other
But for your health and your digestion sake,
An after-dinner’s breath.
AGAMEMNON.
Hear you, Patroclus.
We are too well acquainted with these answers;
But his evasion, wing’d thus swift with scorn,
Cannot outfly our apprehensions.
Much attribute he hath, and much the reason
Why we ascribe it to him. Yet all his virtues,
Not virtuously on his own part beheld,
Do in our eyes begin to lose their gloss;
Yea, like fair fruit in an unwholesome dish,
Are like to rot untasted. Go and tell him
We come to speak with him; and you shall not sin
If you do say we think him over-proud
And under-honest, in self-assumption greater
Than in the note of judgement; and worthier than himself
Here tend the savage strangeness he puts on,
Disguise the holy strength of their command,
And underwrite in an observing kind
His humorous predominance; yea, watch
His course and time, his ebbs and flows, as if
The passage and whole stream of this commencement
Rode on his tide. Go tell him this, and add
That if he overhold his price so much
We’ll none of him, but let him, like an engine
Not portable, lie under this report:
Bring action hither; this cannot go to war.
A stirring dwarf we do allowance give
Before a sleeping giant. Tell him so.
PATROCLUS.
I shall, and bring his answer presently.
[Exit.]
AGAMEMNON.
In second voice we’ll not be satisfied;
We come to speak with him. Ulysses, enter you.
[Exit Ulysses.]
AJAX.
What is he more than another?
AGAMEMNON.
No more than what he thinks he is.
AJAX.
Is he so much? Do you not think he thinks himself a better man than I am?
AGAMEMNON.
No question.
AJAX.
Will you subscribe his thought and say he is?
AGAMEMNON.
No, noble Ajax; you are as strong, as valiant, as wise, no less noble, much more gentle,
and altogether more tractable.
AJAX.
Why should a man be proud? How doth pride grow? I know not what pride is.
AGAMEMNON.
 He that is proud eats up
himself. Pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle; and whatever praises
itself but in the deed devours the deed in the praise.
Re-enter Ulysses.
AJAX.

NESTOR.
[Aside.] And yet he loves himself: is’t not strange?
ULYSSES.
Achilles will not to the field tomorrow.
AGAMEMNON.
What’s his excuse?
ULYSSES.
He doth rely on none;
But carries on the stream of his dispose,
Without observance or respect of any,
In will peculiar and in self-admission.
AGAMEMNON.
Why will he not, upon our fair request,
Untent his person and share th’air with us?
ULYSSES.
Things small as nothing, for request’s sake only,
He makes important; possess’d he is with greatness,
And speaks not to himself but with a pride
That quarrels at self-breath. Imagin’d worth
Holds in his blood such swol’n and hot discourse
That ’twixt his mental and his active parts
Kingdom’d Achilles in commotion rages,
And batters down himself. What should I say?
He is so plaguy proud that the death tokens of it
Cry ‘No recovery.’
AGAMEMNON.
Let Ajax go to him.

’Tis said he holds you well; and will be led
At your request a little from himself.
ULYSSES.
O Agamemnon, let it not be so!
We’ll consecrate the steps that Ajax makes
When they go from Achilles. Shall the proud lord
That bastes his arrogance with his own seam
And never suffers matter of the world
Enter his thoughts, save such as doth revolve
And ruminate himself—shall he be worshipp’d
Of that we hold an idol more than he?
No, this thrice worthy and right valiant lord
Shall not so stale his palm, nobly acquir’d,
Nor, by my will, assubjugate his merit,
As amply titled as Achilles is,
By going to Achilles.
That were to enlard his fat-already pride,
And add more coals to Cancer when he burns
With entertaining great Hyperion.
This lord go to him! Jupiter forbid,
And say in thunder ‘Achilles go to him.’
NESTOR.
[Aside.] O, this is well! He rubs the vein of him.
DIOMEDES.
[Aside.] And how his silence drinks up this applause!
AJAX.

AGAMEMNON.
O, no, you shall not go.
AJAX.
An a’ be proud with me I’ll pheeze his pride.
Let me go to him.
ULYSSES.
Not for the worth that hangs upon our quarrel.
AJAX.
A paltry, insolent fellow!
NESTOR.
[Aside.] How he describes himself!
AJAX.
Can he not be sociable?
ULYSSES.
[Aside.] The raven chides blackness.
AJAX.
I’ll let his humours blood.
AGAMEMNON.
[Aside.] He will be the physician that should be the patient.
AJAX.
And all men were o’ my mind—
ULYSSES.
[Aside.] Wit would be out of fashion.
AJAX.
A’ should not bear it so, a’ should eat’s words first.
Shall pride carry it?
NESTOR.
[Aside.] And ’twould, you’d carry half.
ULYSSES.
[Aside.] A’ would have ten shares.
AJAX.
I will knead him, I’ll make him supple.
NESTOR.
[Aside.] He’s not yet through warm. Force him with praises; pour in, pour in;
his ambition is dry.
ULYSSES.
[To Agamemnon.] My lord, you feed too much on this dislike.
NESTOR.
Our noble general, do not do so.
DIOMEDES.
You must prepare to fight without Achilles.
ULYSSES.
Why ’tis this naming of him does him harm.
Here is a man—but ’tis before his face;
I will be silent.
NESTOR.
Wherefore should you so?
He is not emulous, as Achilles is.
ULYSSES.
Know the whole world, he is as valiant.
AJAX.
A whoreson dog, that shall palter with us thus!
Would he were a Trojan!
NESTOR.
What a vice were it in Ajax now—
ULYSSES.
If he were proud.
DIOMEDES.
Or covetous of praise.
ULYSSES.
Ay, or surly borne.
DIOMEDES.
Or strange, or self-affected.
ULYSSES.
Thank the heavens, lord, thou art of sweet composure
Praise him that gat thee, she that gave thee suck;
Fam’d be thy tutor, and thy parts of nature
Thrice fam’d beyond, beyond all erudition;
But he that disciplin’d thine arms to fight—
Let Mars divide eternity in twain
And give him half; and, for thy vigour,
Bull-bearing Milo his addition yield
To sinewy Ajax. I will not praise thy wisdom,
Which, like a bourn, a pale, a shore, confines
Thy spacious and dilated parts. Here’s Nestor,
Instructed by the antiquary times—
He must, he is, he cannot but be wise;
But pardon, father Nestor, were your days
As green as Ajax’ and your brain so temper’d,
You should not have the eminence of him,
But be as Ajax.
AJAX.
Shall I call you father?
NESTOR.
Ay, my good son.
DIOMEDES.
Be rul’d by him, Lord Ajax.
ULYSSES.
There is no tarrying here; the hart Achilles
Keeps thicket. Please it our great general
To call together all his state of war;
Fresh kings are come to Troy. Tomorrow
We must with all our main of power stand fast;
And here’s a lord—come knights from east to west
And cull their flower, Ajax shall cope the best.
AGAMEMNON.
Go we to council. Let Achilles sleep.
Light boats sail swift, though greater hulks draw deep.
[Exeunt.]
Music sounds within. Enter Pandarus and a Servant.
PANDARUS.
Friend, you—pray you, a word. Do you not follow the young Lord Paris?
SERVANT.
Ay, sir, when he goes before me.
PANDARUS.
You depend upon him, I mean?
SERVANT.
Sir, I do depend upon the Lord.
PANDARUS.
You depend upon a notable gentleman; I must needs praise him.
SERVANT.
The Lord be praised!
PANDARUS.
You know me, do you not?
SERVANT.
Faith, sir, superficially.
PANDARUS.
Friend, know me better: I am the Lord Pandarus.
SERVANT.
I hope I shall know your honour better.
PANDARUS.
I do desire it.
SERVANT.
You are in the state of grace?
PANDARUS.
Grace? Not so, friend; honour and lordship are my titles. What music is this?
SERVANT.
I do but partly know, sir; it is music in parts.
PANDARUS.
Know you the musicians?
SERVANT.
Wholly, sir.
PANDARUS.
Who play they to?
SERVANT.
To the hearers, sir.
PANDARUS.
At whose pleasure, friend?
SERVANT.
At mine, sir, and theirs that love music.
PANDARUS.
Command, I mean, friend.
SERVANT.
Who shall I command, sir?
PANDARUS.
Friend, we understand not one another: I am too courtly, and thou art too cunning. At
whose request do these men play?
SERVANT.
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—
PANDARUS.
Who, my cousin, Cressida?
SERVANT.
No, sir, Helen. Could not you find out that by her attributes?
PANDARUS.
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 seethes.
SERVANT.
Sodden business! There’s a stew’d phrase indeed!
Enter Paris and Helen, attended.
PANDARUS.
 Fair desires, in all fair measure,
fairly guide them—especially to you, fair queen! Fair thoughts be your fair pillow.
HELEN.

PANDARUS.
You speak your fair pleasure, sweet queen. Fair prince, here is good broken music.
PARIS.

HELEN.

PANDARUS.
Truly, lady, no.
HELEN.
O, sir—
PANDARUS.
Rude, in sooth; in good sooth, very rude.
PARIS.
Well said, my lord. Well, you say so in fits.
PANDARUS.
I have business to my lord, dear queen. My lord, will you vouchsafe me a word?
HELEN.
Nay, this shall not hedge us out. We’ll hear you sing, certainly—
PANDARUS.
Well sweet queen, you are pleasant with me. But, marry, thus, my lord: my dear lord and
most esteemed friend, your brother Troilus—
HELEN.
My Lord Pandarus, honey-sweet lord—
PANDARUS.

You shall not bob us out of our melody. If you do, our melancholy upon your head!
PANDARUS.
Sweet queen, sweet queen; that’s a sweet queen, i’ faith.
HELEN.
And to make a sweet lady sad is a sour offence.
PANDARUS.
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!
PANDARUS.
What says my sweet queen, my very very sweet queen?
PARIS.
What exploit’s in hand? Where sups he tonight?
HELEN.
Nay, but, my lord—
PANDARUS.
What says my sweet queen?—My cousin will fall out with you.
HELEN.
You must not know where he sups.
PARIS.

PANDARUS.
No, no, no such matter; you are wide. Come, your disposer is sick.
PARIS.
Well, I’ll make’s excuse.
PANDARUS.
Ay, good my lord. Why should you say Cressida?
No, your poor disposer’s sick.
PARIS.
I spy.
PANDARUS.
You spy! What do you spy?—Come, give me an instrument. Now, sweet queen.
HELEN.
Why, this is kindly done.
PANDARUS.
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.
PANDARUS.
He? No, she’ll none of him; they two are twain.
HELEN.
Falling in, after falling out, may make them three.
PANDARUS.
Come, come. I’ll hear no more of this; I’ll sing you a song now.
HELEN.
Ay, ay, prithee now. By my troth, sweet lord, thou hast a fine forehead.
PANDARUS.
Ay, you may, you may.
HELEN.
Let thy song be love. This love will undo us all. O Cupid, Cupid, Cupid!
PANDARUS.
Love! Ay, that it shall, i’ faith.
PARIS.
Ay, good now, love, love, nothing but love.
PANDARUS.
In good troth, it begins so.
[Sings.]
Love, love, nothing but love, still love, still more!
For, oh, love’s bow
Shoots buck and doe;
The shaft confounds
Not that it wounds,
But tickles still the sore.

Yet that which seems the wound to kill
Doth turn O ho! to ha! ha! he!
So dying love lives still.
O ho! a while, but ha! ha! ha!
O ho! groans out for ha! ha! ha!—hey ho!
HELEN.
In love, i’ faith, to the very tip of the nose.
PARIS.

PANDARUS.
Is this the generation of love: hot blood, hot thoughts, and hot deeds? Why, they are
vipers. Is love a generation of vipers? Sweet lord, who’s a-field today?
PARIS.
Hector, Deiphobus, Helenus, Antenor, and all the gallantry of Troy. I would fain have
arm’d today, 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.
PANDARUS.
Not I, honey-sweet queen. I long to hear how they spend today. You’ll remember your
brother’s excuse?
PARIS.
To a hair.
PANDARUS.
Farewell, sweet queen.
HELEN.
Commend me to your niece.
PANDARUS.
I will, sweet queen.
[Exit. Sound a retreat.]
PARIS.
They’re come from the field. Let us to Priam’s hall
To greet the warriors. Sweet Helen, I must woo you
To help unarm our Hector. His stubborn buckles,
With these your white enchanting fingers touch’d,
Shall more obey than to the edge of steel
Or force of Greekish sinews; you shall do more
Than all the island kings—disarm great Hector.
HELEN.
’Twill make us proud to be his servant, Paris;
Yea, what he shall receive of us in duty
Gives us more palm in beauty than we have,
Yea, overshines ourself.
PARIS.
Sweet, above thought I love thee.
[Exeunt.]
Enter Pandarus and Troilus’ Boy, meeting.
PANDARUS.
How now! Where’s thy master? At my cousin Cressida’s?
BOY.
No, sir; he stays for you to conduct him thither.
Enter Troilus.
PANDARUS.
O, here he comes. How now, how now?
TROILUS.

[Exit Boy.]
PANDARUS.
Have you seen my cousin?
TROILUS.
No, Pandarus. I stalk about her door
Like a strange soul upon the Stygian banks
Staying for waftage. O, be thou my Charon,
And give me swift transportance to these fields
Where I may wallow in the lily beds
Propos’d for the deserver! O gentle Pandar,
from Cupid’s shoulder pluck his painted wings,
and fly with me to Cressid!
PANDARUS.
Walk here i’ th’ orchard, I’ll bring her straight.
[Exit.]
TROILUS.
I am giddy; expectation whirls me round.
Th’imaginary relish is so sweet
That it enchants my sense; what will it be
When that the wat’ry palate tastes indeed
Love’s thrice-repured nectar? Death, I fear me;
Sounding destruction; or some joy too fine,
Too subtle-potent, tun’d too sharp in sweetness,
For the capacity of my ruder powers.
I fear it much; and I do fear besides
That I shall lose distinction in my joys;
As doth a battle, when they charge on heaps
The enemy flying.
Re-enter Pandarus.
PANDARUS.
She’s making her ready, she’ll come straight; you must be witty now. She does
so blush, and fetches her wind so short, as if she were fray’d with a sprite.
I’ll fetch her. It is the prettiest villain; she fetches her breath as short as a
new-ta’en sparrow.
[Exit.]
TROILUS.
Even such a passion doth embrace my bosom.
My heart beats thicker than a feverous pulse,
And all my powers do their bestowing lose,
Like vassalage at unawares encount’ring
The eye of majesty.
Re-enter Pandarus with Cressida.
PANDARUS.
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 watch’d
ere you be made tame, must you?  Why do you not speak to her? Come, draw this
curtain and let’s see your picture.  And ’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.  The falcon as the tercel, for all the ducks
i’ th’ river. Go to, go to.
TROILUS.
You have bereft me of all words, lady.
PANDARUS.
Words pay no debts, give her deeds; but she’ll bereave you o’ th’ deeds
too, if she call your activity in question. What, billing again? Here’s ‘In
witness whereof the parties interchangeably.’
[Exit.]
CRESSIDA.
Will you walk in, my lord?
TROILUS.
O Cressid, how often have I wish’d me thus!
CRESSIDA.
Wish’d, my lord! The gods grant—O my lord!
TROILUS.
What should they grant? What makes this pretty abruption? What too curious dreg espies my
sweet lady in the fountain of our love?
CRESSIDA.

TROILUS.
Fears make devils of cherubins; they never see truly.
CRESSIDA.
Blind fear, that seeing reason leads, finds safer footing than blind reason stumbling
without fear. To fear the worst oft cures the worse.
TROILUS.
O, let my lady apprehend no fear! In all Cupid’s pageant there is presented no
monster.
CRESSIDA.
Nor nothing monstrous neither?
TROILUS.
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 confin’d; that the desire is boundless, and the act a
slave to limit.
CRESSIDA.
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?
TROILUS.
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.
CRESSIDA.
Will you walk in, my lord?
Re-enter Pandarus.
PANDARUS.
What, blushing still? Have you not done talking yet?
CRESSIDA.
Well, uncle, what folly I commit, I dedicate to you.
PANDARUS.
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.
TROILUS.
You know now your hostages: your uncle’s word and my firm faith.
PANDARUS.
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.
CRESSIDA.
Boldness comes to me now and brings me heart.
Prince Troilus, I have lov’d you night and day
For many weary months.
TROILUS.
Why was my Cressid then so hard to win?
CRESSIDA.
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 till now not so much
But I might master it.  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 not;
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.
TROILUS.
And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence.
PANDARUS.
Pretty, i’ faith.
CRESSIDA.
My lord, I do beseech you, pardon me;
’Twas not my purpose thus to beg a kiss.
I am asham’d. O heavens! what have I done?
For this time will I take my leave, my lord.
TROILUS.
Your leave, sweet Cressid!
PANDARUS.
Leave! And you take leave till tomorrow morning—
CRESSIDA.
Pray you, content you.
TROILUS.
What offends you, lady?
CRESSIDA.
Sir, mine own company.
TROILUS.
You cannot shun yourself.
CRESSIDA.
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.
TROILUS.
Well know they what they speak that speak so wisely.
CRESSIDA.
Perchance, my lord, I show 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.
TROILUS.
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.
CRESSIDA.
In that I’ll war with you.
TROILUS.
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 truth by Troilus, when their rhymes,
Full of protest, of oath, and big compare,
Want similes, truth tir’d with iteration—
As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,
As sun to day, as turtle to her mate,
As iron to adamant, as earth to th’ centre—
Yet, after all comparisons of truth,
As truth’s authentic author to be cited,
‘As true as Troilus’ shall crown up the verse
And sanctify the numbers.
CRESSIDA.
Prophet may you be!
If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,
When time is old and hath forgot itself,
When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,
And blind oblivion swallow’d cities up,
And mighty states characterless are grated
To dusty nothing—yet let memory
From false to false, among false maids in love,
Upbraid my falsehood when th’ have said ‘As false
As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth,
As fox to lamb, or 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.’
PANDARUS.
 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 call’d 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.’
TROILUS.
Amen.
CRESSIDA.
Amen.
PANDARUS.
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!
[Exeunt Troilus and Cressida.]
And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here,
Bed, chamber, pander, to provide this gear!
[Exit.]
Flourish. Enter Agamemnon, Ulysses, Diomedes, Nestor, Ajax, Menelaus and Calchas.
CALCHAS.
Now, Princes, for the service I have done,
Th’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 come,
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 regist’red in promise,
Which you say live to come in my behalf.
AGAMEMNON.
What wouldst thou of us, Trojan? Make demand.
CALCHAS.
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,
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.
AGAMEMNON.
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 tomorrow
Be answer’d in his challenge. Ajax is ready.
DIOMEDES.
This shall I undertake; and ’tis a burden
Which I am proud to bear.
[Exeunt Diomedes and Calchas.]
[Achilles and Patroclus stand in their tent.]
ULYSSES.
Achilles stands i’ th’entrance of his tent.
Please it our general pass strangely by him,
As if he were forgot; and, Princes all,
Lay negligent and loose regard upon him.
I will come last. ’Tis like he’ll question me
Why such unplausive eyes are bent, why turn’d 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 show itself but pride; for supple knees
Feed arrogance and are the proud man’s fees.
AGAMEMNON.
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.
ACHILLES.
What comes the general to speak with me?
You know my mind. I’ll fight no more ’gainst Troy.
AGAMEMNON.
What says Achilles? Would he aught with us?
NESTOR.
Would you, my lord, aught with the general?
ACHILLES.
No.
NESTOR.
Nothing, my lord.
AGAMEMNON.
The better.
[Exeunt Agamemnon and Nestor.]
ACHILLES.
Good day, good day.
MENELAUS.
How do you? How do you?
[Exit.]
ACHILLES.
What, does the cuckold scorn me?
AJAX.
How now, Patroclus?
ACHILLES.
Good morrow, Ajax.
AJAX.
Ha?
ACHILLES.
Good morrow.
AJAX.
Ay, and good next day too.
[Exit.]
ACHILLES.
What mean these fellows? Know they not Achilles?
PATROCLUS.
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.
ACHILLES.
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,
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,
Doth 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!
ULYSSES.
Now, great Thetis’ son!
ACHILLES.
What are you reading?
ULYSSES.
A strange fellow here
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.
ACHILLES.
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 travell’d, and is mirror’d there
Where it may see itself. This is not strange at all.
ULYSSES.
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 th’are extended; who, like an arch, reverb’rate
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
Th’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 tomorrow—
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 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.
ACHILLES.
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?
ULYSSES.
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. Perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honour bright. To have done is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mock’ry. 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 ent’red tide they all rush by
And leave you hindmost;
Or, like a gallant horse fall’n in first rank,
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,
That slightly shakes his parting guest by th’hand;
And with his arms out-stretch’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 gauds,
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 stirs not. 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 themselves,
And drave great Mars to faction.
ACHILLES.
Of this my privacy
I have strong reasons.
ULYSSES.
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.
ACHILLES.
Ha! known!
ULYSSES.
Is that a wonder?
The providence that’s in a watchful state
Knows almost every grain of Plutus’ gold;
Finds bottom in th’uncomprehensive deeps;
Keeps place with thought, and almost, like the gods,
Do 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 commerce 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 island 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.’
Farewell, my lord. I as your lover speak.
The fool slides o’er the ice that you should break.
[Exit.]
PATROCLUS.
To this effect, Achilles, have I mov’d you.
A woman impudent and mannish grown
Is not more loath’d than an effeminate man
In time of action.
Sweet, rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid
Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold,
And, like a dew-drop from the lion’s mane,
Be shook to air.
ACHILLES.
Shall Ajax fight with Hector?
PATROCLUS.
Ay, and perhaps receive much honour by him.
ACHILLES.
I see my reputation is at stake;
My fame is shrewdly gor’d.
PATROCLUS.
O, then, beware:
Those wounds heal ill that men do give themselves;
Omission to do what is necessary
Seals a commission to a blank of danger;
And danger, like an ague, subtly taints
Even then when they sit idly in the sun.
ACHILLES.

I’ll send the fool to Ajax, and desire him
T’invite the Trojan lords, after the combat,
To see us here unarm’d. I have a woman’s 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.
Enter Thersites.
A labour sav’d!
THERSITES.
A wonder!
ACHILLES.
What?
THERSITES.
Ajax goes up and down the field asking for himself.
ACHILLES.
How so?
THERSITES.
He must fight singly tomorrow with Hector, and is so prophetically proud of an heroical
cudgelling that he raves in saying nothing.
ACHILLES.
How can that be?
THERSITES.
Why, a’ 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, and
’twould out’; and so there is; but it lies as coldly in him as fire in a
flint, which will not show without knocking. The man’s undone for ever; for if
Hector break not his neck i’ th’ combat, he’ll break’t himself in
vainglory. 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’s grown a very land fish, languageless, a monster. A plague of opinion! A man may
wear it on both sides, like leather jerkin.
ACHILLES.
Thou must be my ambassador to him, Thersites.
THERSITES.
Who, I? Why, he’ll answer nobody; he professes not answering.  I will put on his presence. Let Patroclus
make his demands to me, you shall see the pageant of Ajax.
ACHILLES.
To him, Patroclus. Tell him I humbly desire the valiant Ajax to invite the most valorous
Hector to come unarm’d to my tent; and to procure safe conduct for his person of the
magnanimous and most illustrious six-or-seven-times-honour’d Captain General of the
Grecian army, Agamemnon. Do this.
PATROCLUS.
Jove bless great Ajax!
THERSITES.
Hum!
PATROCLUS.
I come from the worthy Achilles—
THERSITES.
Ha!
PATROCLUS.
Who most humbly desires you to invite Hector to his tent—
THERSITES.
Hum!
PATROCLUS.
And to procure safe conduct from Agamemnon.
THERSITES.
Agamemnon?
PATROCLUS.
Ay, my lord.
THERSITES.
Ha!
PATROCLUS.
What you say to’t?
THERSITES.

PATROCLUS.
Your answer, sir.
THERSITES.
If tomorrow be a fair day, by eleven of the clock it will go one way or other. Howsoever,
he shall pay for me ere he has me.
PATROCLUS.
Your answer, sir.
THERSITES.
Fare ye well, with all my heart.
ACHILLES.
Why, but he is not in this tune, is he?
THERSITES.
No, but out of tune thus. What music will be in him when Hector has knock’d out his
brains, I know not; but, I am sure, none; unless the fiddler Apollo get his sinews to make
catlings on.
ACHILLES.
Come, thou shalt bear a letter to him straight.
THERSITES.
Let me bear another to his horse; for that’s the more capable creature.
ACHILLES.
My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr’d;
And I myself see not the bottom of it.
[Exeunt Achilles and Patroclus.]
THERSITES.

[Exit.]
Enter, at one side, Aeneas and servant with a torch; at another Paris, Deiphobus, Antenor, Diomedes the Grecian, and others, with torches.
PARIS.
See, ho! Who is that there?