Текст книги "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition"

Автор книги: William Shakespeare

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3.1 Music sounds within. Enter Pandarus ⌈at one door⌉ and a Servant ⌈at another door⌉

PANDARUS Friend? You. Pray you, a word. Do not you 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 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’s there in person; with him, the mortal Venus, the heart-blood of beauty, love’s visible 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 Cressid. 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 stewed phrase, indeed.

Enter Paris and Helen, attended ⌈by musicians⌉

PANDARUS Fair be to you, my lord, and to all this fair company. Fair desires in all fair measure fairly guide them—especially to you, fair Queen. Fair thoughts be your fair pillow.

HELEN Dear lord, you are full of fair words.

PANDARUS You speak your fair pleasure, sweet Queen. (To Paris) Fair prince, here is good broken music.

PARIS You have broke it, cousin, and by my life you shall make it whole again. You shall piece it out with a piece of your performance.—Nell, he is full of harmony.

PANDARUS Truly, lady, no.

HELEN O sir.

⌈She tickles him⌉

PANDARUS Rude, in sooth, in good sooth very rude.

PARIS Well said, my lord. Will 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 Go to, sweet Queen, go tot—commends himself most affectionately to you.

HELEN 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. Ay, 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 (to Paris) You must not know where he sups.

PARIS I’ll lay my life, with my dispenser Cressida.

PANDARUS No, no! No such matter. You are wide. Come, your dispenser is sick.

PARIS Well, I’ll make’s excuse.

PANDARUS Ay, good my lord. Why should you say

Cressida? No, your poor dispenser’s sick.

PARIS ‘I spy.’

PANDARUS You spy? What do you spy?—⌈To a musician⌉

Come, give me an instrument.—Now, sweet Queen.

HELEN Why, this is kindly done!

PANDARUS My niece is horrible 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.

⌈She strokes his 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 truth, it begins so.

(Sings)

Love, love, nothing but love, still love, still more!

For O love’s bow

Shoots buck and doe.

The shaft confounds

Not that it wounds,

But tickles still the sore.

These lovers cry ‘O! O!’, they die.

Yet that which seems the wound to kill

Doth turn ‘O! O!’ to ‘ha ha he!’

So dying love lives still.

‘O! O!’ a while, but ‘ha ha ha!’

‘O! O!’ groans out for ‘ha ha ha!’—

Heigh-ho.

HELEN In love—ay, faith, to the very tip of the nose.

PARIS He eats nothing but doves, love, and that breeds hot blood, and hot blood begets hot thoughts, and hot thoughts beget hot deeds, and hot deeds is love.

PANDARUS Is this the generation of love: hot blood, hot thoughts, and hot deeds? Why, they are vipers. Is love a generation of vipers?

⌈Alarum⌉

Sweet lord, who’s afield today?

PARIS Hector, Deiphobus, Helenus, Antenor, and all the gallantry of Troy. I would fain have armed 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 sped 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 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 touched,

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

3.2 Enter Pandarus ⌈at one door⌉ and Troilus’ man ⌈at another door⌉

PANDARUS How now, where’s thy master? At my cousin Cressida’s?

MAN No, sir, he stays for you to conduct him thither.

Enter Troilus

PANDARUS O here he comes.—How now, how now?

TROILUS Sirrah, walk off. Exit Man

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 those fields

Where I may wallow in the lily beds

Proposed 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 palates taste indeed

Love’s thrice-repurèd nectar? Death, I fear me,

Swooning destruction, or some joy too fine,

Too subtle-potent, tuned 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.

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 frayed with a spirit. 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.

Enter Pandarus, with Cressida ⌈veiled⌉

PANDARUS (to Cressida) Come, come, what need you blush? Shame’s a baby. (To Troilus) Here she is now. Swear the oaths now to her that you have sworn to me. (To Cressida) What, are you gone again? You must be watched ere you be made tame, must you? Come your ways, come your ways. An you draw backward, we’ll put you i‘th’ thills. (To Troilus) Why do you not speak to her? (To Cressida) Come, draw this curtain, and let’s see your picture. ⌈He unveils her⌉ Alas the day! How loath you are to offend daylight! An’t were dark, you’d close sooner. So, so. (To Troilus) Rub on, and kiss the mistress. (They kiss) How now, a kiss in fee farm! Build there, carpenter, the air is sweet. Nay, you shall fight your hearts out ere I part you. 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. (They kiss) What, billing again? Here’s ‘in witness whereof the parties interchangeably’. Come in, come in. I’ll go get a fire. Exit

CRESSIDA Will you walk in, my lord?

TROILUS O Cressida, how often have I wished me thus.

CRESSIDA Wished, my lord? The gods grant—O, my lordl

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 More dregs than water, if my fears have eyes.

TROILUS Fears make devils of cherubims; 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 confined; 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?

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 (to Cressida) 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 burrs, 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 loved 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. In faith, I lie:

My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown

Too headstrong for their mother. See, we fools!

Why have I blabbed? Who shall be true to us,

When we are so unsecret to ourselves?

But though I loved you well, I wooed you not—

And yet, good faith, I wished myself a man,

Or that we women had men’s privilege

Of speaking first. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue,

For in this rapture I shall surely speak

The thing I shall repent. See, see, your silence,

Cunning in dumbness, in my weakness draws

My soul of counsel from me. Stop my mouth.

TROILUS

And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence.

He kisses her

PANDARUS Pretty, i’ faith.

CRESSIDA (to Troilus)

My lord, I do beseech you pardon me.

’Twas not my purpose thus to beg a kiss.

I am ashamed. O heavens, what have I done?

For this time will I take my leave, my lord. TROILUS Your leave, sweet Cressid?

PANDARUS Leave? An 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. Where is my wit?

I would be gone. I speak I know not what.

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,

Wants similes, truth tired 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 water drops have worn the stones of Troy

And blind oblivion swallowed 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 they’ve 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 Go to, a bargain made. Seal it, seal it. I’ll be the witness. Here I hold your hand; here, my cousin’s. If ever you prove false one to another, since I have taken such pain to bring you together, let all pitiful goers-between be called to the world’s end after my name: call them all panders. Let all constant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids, and all brokers-between panders. Say ‘Amen’.

TROILUS Amen.

CRESSIDA Amen.

PANDARUS Amen. Whereupon I will show you a chamber with 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

3.3 Flourish. Enter Ulysses, Diomedes, Nestor, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Ajax, and Calchas

CALCHAS

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

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 abandoned Troy, left my profession,

Incurred a traitor’s name, exposed myself

From certain and possessed 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 registered 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 called Antenor,

Yesterday took. Troy holds him very dear.

Oft have you—often have you thanks therefor—

Desired my Cressid in right great exchange,

Whom Troy hath still denied. But this Antenor

I know is such a wrest in their affairs

That their 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 answered in his challenge. Ajax is ready.

DIOMEDES

This shall I undertake, and ’tis a burden

Which I am proud to bear. Exit with Calchas

Enter Achilles and Patroclus 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 turned on

him.

If so, I have derision medicinable

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 looked on. I will lead the way.

They pass by the tent, in turn

ACHILLES

What, comes the general to speak with me?

You know my mind: I’ll fight no more ’gainst Troy.

AGAMEMNON (to Nestor)

What says Achilles? Would he aught with us?

NESTOR (to Achilles)

Would you, my lord, aught with the general?

ACHILLES

No.

NESTOR (to Agamemnon)

Nothing, my lord.

AGAMEMNON

The better.

⌈Exeunt Agamemnon and Nestor⌉

ACHILLES ⌈to Menelaus⌉ Good day, good day.

MENELAUS How do you? How do you?

⌈Exit⌉

ACHILLES (to Patroclus)

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 (to Patroclus)

What mean these fellows? Know they not Achilles?

PATROCLUS

They pass by strangely. They were used to bend,

To send their smiles before them to Achilles,

To come as humbly as they use 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 declined 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 leaned 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 givers.

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 travelled and is mirrored 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 th‘applause

Where they’re 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

The unknown Ajax.

Heavens, what a man is there! A very horse,

That has he knows not what. Nature, what things

there are,

Most abject in regard and dear in use.

What things again, most dear in the esteem

And poor in worth. Now shall we see tomorrow

An act that very chance doth throw upon him.

Ajax renowned? O heavens, what some men do,

While some men leave to do.

How some men creep in skittish Fortune’s hall

Whiles others play the idiots in her eyes;

How one man eats into another’s pride

While pride is fasting in his wantonness.

To see these Grecian lords! Why, even already

They clap the lubber Ajax on the shoulder,

As if his foot were on brave Hector’s breast

And great Troy shrinking.

ACHILLES I do believe it,

For they passed by me as misers do by beggars,

Neither gave to me good word nor look.

What, are my deeds forgot?

ULYSSES Time hath, my lord,

A wallet at his back, wherein he puts

Alms for oblivion, a great-sized monster

Of ingratitudes. Those scraps are good deeds past,

Which are devoured 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 entered 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’errun 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 outstretched as he would fly,

Grasps in the comer. 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 not stirs. The cry went once on thee,

And still it might, and yet it may again,

If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive

And case thy reputation in thy tent,

Whose glorious deeds but in these fields of late

Made emulous missions ’mongst the gods themselves,

And drove 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 Pluto’s gold,

Finds bottom in th’uncomprehensive deeps,

Keeps place with aught, and almost like the gods

Do infant 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 his 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 moved you.

A woman impudent and mannish grown

Is not more loathed than an effeminate man

In time of action. I stand condemned for this.

They think my little stomach to the war

And your great love to me restrains you thus.

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 gored.

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 we sit idly in the sun.

ACHILLES

Go call Thersites hither, sweet Patroclus.

I’ll send the fool to Ajax, and desire him

T’invite the Trojan lords after the combat

To see us here unarmed. I have a woman’s longing,

An appetite that I am sick withal,

To see great Hector in his weeds of peace,

Enter Thersites

To talk with him and to behold his visage

Even to my full of view.—A labour saved.

THERSITES A wonder!

ACHILLES What?

THERSITES Ajax goes up and down the field, as 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, an’t would 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 a leather jerkin.

ACHILLES Thou must be my ambassador to him, Thersites.

THERSITES Who, I? Why, he’ll answer nobody. He professes not answering. Speaking is for beggars. He wears his tongue in’s arms. I will put on his presence. Let Patroclus make 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 unarmed to my tent, and to procure safe-conduct for his person of the magnanimous and most illustrious six-or-seven-times-honoured captain-general of the Grecian army, Agamemnon; et cetera. Do this.

PATROCLUS (to Thersites) Jove bless great Ajax!

THERSITES H’m.

PATROCLUS I come from the worthy Achilles—

THERSITES Ha?

PATROCLUS Who most humbly desires you to invite Hector to his tent—

THERSITES H’m!

PATROCLUS And to procure safe-conduct from Agamemnon.

THERSITES Agamemnon?

PATROCLUS Ay, my lord.

THERSITES Ha!

PATROCLUS What say you to’t?

THERSITES God b’wi’ you, with all my heart.

PATROCLUS Your answer, sir?

THERSITES If tomorrow be a fair day, by eleven o’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 he’s out o’ tune thus. What music will be in him when Hector has knocked out his brains, I know not. But I am feared 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 carry another to his horse, for that’s the more capable creature.

ACHILLES

My mind is troubled like a fountain stirred,

And I myself see not the bottom of it.

Exit with Patroclus

THERSITES Would the fountain of your mind were clear again, that I might water an ass at it. I had rather be a tick in a sheep than such a valiant ignorance. Exit