Cres. So do all men, unless they are drunk, sick, or have no legs.

Alex. This man, lady, hath robbed 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 crushed 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 every thing, but every thing so out of joint that he is a gouty Briareus, many hands and no use; or purblind Argus, all eyes and no sight.

31

Cres. But how should this man, that makes me smile, make Hector angry?

Alex. They say he yesterday coped Hector in the battle and struck him down; the disdain

60

Cres. What! is he angry too? Pan. Who, Troilus? Troilus is the better man of the two.

Cres. O Jupiter! there's no comparison. 64 Pan. What! not between Troilus and Hector? Do you know a man if you see him?

Cres. Ay, if I ever saw him before and knew him.

68

Pan. Well, I say Troilus is Troilus. Cres. Then you say as I say; for I am sure he is not Hector.

Pan. No, nor Hector is not Troilus in some degrees.

73

Pan. And Cassandra laughed.
Cres. But there was more temperate fire under

Cres. To say the truth, true and not true. 104
Pan. She prais'd his complexion above Paris.
Cres. Why, Paris hath colour enough.
Pan. So he has.

Cres. Then Troilus should have too much: if she praised 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. 113 Pan. I swear to you, I think Helen loves him better than Paris.

Cres. Then she's a merry Greek indeed. 116 Pan. Nay, I am sure she does. She came to him th' other day into the compassed window, and, you know, he has not past three or four hairs on his chin,120 Cres. Indeed, a tapster's arithmetic may soon bring his particulars therein to a total.

Pan. Why, he is very young; and yet will he, within three pound, lift as much as his brother Hector.

125

Pan. And Hector laughed.

160

Cres. At what was all this laughing? Pan. Marry, at the white hair that Helen spied on Treilus' chin.

Cres. An't had been a green hair, I should have laughed too.

165 Pan. They laughed not so much at the hair as at his pretty answer.

168

Cres. What was his answer? Pan. Quoth she, 'Here's but one-and-fifty hairs on your chin, and one of them is white.' Cres. This is her question.

Pan. That's true; make no question of that. 'One-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 blushed, and Paris so chafed, and all the rest so laughed, that it passed.

180

Pan. I'll be sworn 'tis true: he will weep you, an 'twere a man born in April.

Cres. And I'll spring up in his tears, an 'twere a nettle against May. [A retreat sounded. Pan. 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. Cres. At your pleasure.

193

Pan. 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.

Cres. Speak not so loud.

ENEAS passes over the stage.

197

Pan. That's Eneas: 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. 201

ANTENOR passes over.
Cres. Who's that?

Pan. That's Antenor: he has a shrewd wit, I can tell you; and he's a man good enough: he's one o' the soundest judgments 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. 208 Cres. Will he give you the nod? Pan. You shall see.

Cres. If he do, the rich shall have more.

sword is bloodied, and his helmet more hacked than Hector's; and how he looks, and Łow he goes! O admirable youth! he ne'er saw threeand-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.

Cres. Here come more.

Soldiers pass over.

259

Pan. Asses, fools, dolts! chaff and bran, chaff and bran! porridge after meat! I could live and die i' the eyes of Troilus. 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. 265 Cres. There is among the Greeks Achilles, a better man than Troilus.

Pan. Achilles! a drayman, a porter, a very camel. 269

Cres. Well, well.

Pan. '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 so forth, the spice and salt that season a man? 276

Cres. Ay, a minced man: and then to be baked with no date in the pie, for then the man's date's out.

Pan. You are such a woman! one knows not at what ward you lie. 281

Cres. 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.

Pan. Say one of your watches.

288

Cres. 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. Pan. You are such another!

Enter TROILUS' Eoy.

293

Grow in the veins of actions highest rear'd;
As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Infect the sound pine and divert 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

12

16

Whose weak untimber'd sides but even now
Co-rivall'd greatness? either to harbour fled, 44
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 breese 48 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 sympathize, And with an accent tun'd in self-same key, Retorts to chiding fortune.

Ulyss.

Agamemnon,

53

Thou great commander, nerve and bone of

Greece,

Heart of our numbers, soul and only spirit, 56
In whom the tempers and the minds of all
Should be shut up, hear what Ulysses speaks.
Besides the applause and approbation
The which, [To AGAMEMNON.] most mighty
for thy place and sway,

60

As Agamemnon and the hand of Greece
Should hold up high in brass; and such again 64
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

less expect

72

That matter needless, of importless burden,
Divide thy lips, than we are confident,
When rank Thersites opes his mastick jaws,
We shall hear music, wit, and oracle.
Ulyss. Troy, yet upon his basis, had been
down,

And the great Hector's sword had lack'd a master,

But for these instances.

76

Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixure! O! when degree is
shak'd,

Which is the ladder to all high designs,
The enterprise is sick. How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, 105
The primogenitive 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
meets

108

113

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-

too.

Then every thing includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, a universal wolf,

So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce a universal prey,
And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,
This chaos, when degree is suffocate,
Follows the choking.

120

125

129

132

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,
Exampled 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 lives, not in her strength.
Nest. Most wisely hath Ulysses here dis-
cover'd

The fever where of all our power is sick.
Agam. The nature of the sickness found,
Ulysses,

What is the remedy?

140

Ulyss. The great Achilles, whom opinion

crowns

144

The sinew and the forehand of our host,
Having his ear full of his airy fame,
Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent
Lies mocking our designs. With him Patroclus
Upon a lazy bed the livelong day
Breaks scurril jests,

148

152

And with ridiculous and awkward actionWhich, slanderer, he imitation callsHe pageants us. 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 fcoting and the scaffoldage,156

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,

160