But when we know the grounds and authors of it
Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge
Of thine own cause.
FABIAN Good madam, hear me speak,
And let no quarrel nor no brawl to come
Taint the condition of this present hour,
Which I have wondered at. In hope it shall not,
Most freely I confess myself and Toby
Set this device against Malvolio here
Upon some stubborn and uncourteous parts
We had conceived against him. Maria writ
The letter, at Sir Toby’s great importance,
In recompense whereof he hath married her.
How with a sportful malice it was followed
May rather pluck on laughter than revenge
If that the injuries be justly weighed
That have on both sides passed.
OLIVIA (to Malvolio)
Alas, poor fool, how have they baffled thee!
FESTE Why, ‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrown upon them.’ I was one, sir, in this interlude, one Sir Topas, sir; but that’s all one. ‘By the Lord, fool, I am not mad’—but do you remember, ‘Madam, why laugh you at such a barren rascal, an you smile not, he’s gagged’—and thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.
MALVOLIO I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you. Exit
OLIVIA
He hath been most notoriously abused.
ORSINO
Pursue him, and entreat him to a peace.
He hath not told us of the captain yet.
⌈Exit one or more⌉
When that is known, and golden time convents,
A solemn combination shall be made
Of our dear souls. Meantime, sweet sister,
We will not part from hence. Cesario, come—
For so you shall be while you are a man;
But when in other habits you are seen,
Orsino’s mistress, and his fancy’s queen.
Exeunt all but Feste
FESTE (sings)
When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.
But when I came to man’s estate,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
’Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,
For the rain it raineth every day.
But when I came, alas, to wive,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
By swaggering could I never thrive,
For the rain it raineth every day.
But when I came unto my beds,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
With tosspots still had drunken heads,
For the rain it raineth every day.
A great while ago the world begun,
With hey ho, the wind and the rain,
But that’s all one, our play is done,
And we’ll strive to please you every day.
Exit
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA
Troilus and Cressida, first heard of in a Stationers’ Register entry of 7 February 1603, was probably written within the previous eighteen months. This entry did not result in publication; the play was re-entered on 28 January 1609, and a quarto appeared during that year. The version printed in the 1623 Folio adds a Prologue, and has many variations in dialogue. It includes the epilogue spoken by Pandarus (which we print as an Additional Passage), but certain features of the text suggest that it does so by accident, and that the epilogue had been marked for omission. Our text is based in substance on the Folio in the belief that this represents the play in its later, revised form.
The story of the siege of Troy was the main subject of one of the greatest surviving works of classical literature, Homer’s Iliad, probably Shakespeare read George Chapman’s 1598 translation of Books 1―2 and 7―11. The story also figures prominently in Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, both of which Shakespeare knew well. The war between Greece and Troy had been provoked by the abduction of the Grecian Helen (better, if confusingly, known as Helen of Troy) by the Trojan hero Paris, son of King Priam. Shakespeare’s play opens when the Greek forces, led by Menelaus’ brother Agamemnon, have already been besieging Troy for seven years. Shakespeare concentrates on the opposition between the Greek hero Achilles and the Trojan Hector. In the Folio, Troilus and Cressida is printed among the tragedies; if there is a tragic hero, it is Hector.
Shakespeare also shows how the war caused by one love affair destroys another. The stories of the love between the Trojan Troilus and the Grecian Cressida, encouraged by her uncle Pandarus, and of Cressida’s desertion of Troilus for the Greek Diomedes, are medieval additions to the heroic narrative. Chaucer’s long poem Troilus and Criseyde was already a classic, and Shakespeare would also have known Robert Henryson’s continuation, The Testament of Cresseid, in which Cressida, deserted by Diomedes, dwindles into a leprous beggar.
Troilus and Cressida is a demanding play, Shakespeare’s third longest, highly philosophical in tone and with an exceptionally learned vocabulary. Possibly (as has often been conjectured) he wrote it for private performance; the 1603 Stationers’ Register entry says it had been acted by the King’s Men, and the original title-page of the 1609 quarto repeats this claim, but while the edition was being printed this title-page was replaced by one that does not mention performance, and an epistle was added claiming that it was ‘a new play, never staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar’. An adaptation by John Dryden of 1679 was successfully acted from time to time for half a century, but the first verified performance of Shakespeare’s play was in Germany in 1898, and that was heavily adapted. Troilus and Cressida came into its own in the twentieth century, when its deflation of heroes, its radical questioning of human values (especially in relation to love and war), and its remorseless examination of the frailty of human aspirations in the face of the destructive powers of time seemed particularly apposite to modern intellectual and ethical preoccupations.
THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY
PROLOGUE
Trojans
PRIAM, King of Troy
CASSANDRA, Priam’s daughter, a prophetess
ANDROMACHE, wife of Hector
PANDARUS, a lord
CRESSIDA, his niece
CALCHAS, her father, who has joined the Greeks
HELEN, wife of Menelaus, now living with Paris
ALEXANDER, servant of Cressida
Servants of Troilus, musicians, soldiers, attendants
Greeks
AGAMEMNON, Commander-in-Chief
MENELAUS, his brother
NESTOR
ULYSSES
ACHILLES
PATROCLUS, his companion
DIOMEDES
AJAX
THERSITES
MYRMIDONS, soldiers of Achilles
Servants of Diomedes, soldiers
Troilus and Cressida
Prologue Enter the Prologue armed
PROLOGUE
In Troy there lies the scene. From isles of Greece
The princes orgulous, their high blood chafed,
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 th‘Athenian bay
Put forth toward Phrygia, and their vow is made
To ransack Troy, within whose strong immures
The ravished Helen, Menelaus’ queen,
With wanton Paris steeps—and that’s the quarrel.
To Tenedos they come,
And the deep-drawing barques do there disgorge
Their warlike freightage; now on Dardan plains
The fresh and yet unbruisèd Greeks do pitch
Their brave pavilions. Priam’s six-gated city—
Dardan and Timbria, Helias, Chetas, Troien,
And Antenorides—with massy staples
And corresponsive and full-filling bolts
Spar 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 armed—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.
Exit
1.1 Enter Pandarus, and Troilus armed
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 Betd—Troitus, 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 unpractised 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 boulting.
TROILUS Have I not tarried?
PANDARUS Ay, the boulting; 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 the oven, and the baking—nay, you must stay the cooling too, or ye 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 is she thence?
PANDARUS Well, she looked 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 askance,
Buried this sigh in wrinkle of a smile.
But sorrow that is couched 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 drowned’,
Reply not in how many fathoms deep
They lie endrenched. I tell thee I am mad
In Cressid’s love; thou answer’st ‘She is fair’,
Pourest 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 it. Let her be as she is. If she be fair, ’tis the better for her; an 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. An she were not kin to me, she would be as fair o’ Friday as Helen is on Sunday. But what care I? I care not an 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’th’ 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
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 starved 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 wooed 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 called the wild and wand’ring flood,
Ourself the merchant, and this sailing Pandar
Our doubtful hope, our convoy, and our barque.
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 gored 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
1.2 Enter ⌈above⌉ Cressida and her servant 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 fixed, today was moved.
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He chid Andromache and struck his armourer
And, like as there were husbandry in war,
Before the sun rose he was harnessed 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 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 farced 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 coped Hector in the battle and struck him down, the disdain and shame whereof hath ever since kept Hector fasting and waking.
CRESSIDA Who comes here?
ALEXANDER Madam, your uncle Pandarus.
⌈Enter Pandarus above⌉
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.
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works Page 243
