Like, or find fault; do as your pleasures are ;
Now, good or bad, 'tis but the chance of war.

Enter TROILUS armed, and PANDARUS.

Tro. Call here my varlet;1 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 !
Pan. Will this gear2 ne'er be mended?

Tro. The Greeks are strong, and skilful to3 their strength, Fierce to their skill, and to their fierceness valiant ;

But I am weaker than a woman's tear,
Tamer than sleep, fonder1 than ignorance,
Less valiant than the virgin in the night,
And skilless as unpractised infancy.

Pan. Well, I have told you enough of this: for my part, I'll not meddle nor make no further. He that will have a cake out of the wheat must needs tarry the grinding.

Tro. Have I not tarried?

Pan. Ay, the grinding; but you must tarry the bolting.

1 Varlet properly meant a servant to a knight or warrior, but was also used for a groom or servant of any sort. So Holinshed, describing the battle of Agincourt: "Diverse were releeved by their varlets and conveied out of the field."

2 Gear was in common use for any business or matter in hand.

3 Here to has the force of in addition to. The usage was not uncommon. See vol. x. page 11, note 15.

4 That is, more foolish; such being generally the old meaning of fond.

Tro. Have I not tarried?

Pan. Ay, the bolting; but you must tarry the leavening. Tro. Still have I tarried.

Pan. 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 to burn your lips.

Tro. Patience herself, what goddess e'er she be,
Doth lesser blench 5 at sufferance 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?

Pan. Well, she look'd yesternight fairer than ever I saw

her look, or any woman else.

Tro. 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, as when the Sun doth light a storm

I have

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.

Pan. 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

Tro. 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;

5 To blench is to start or fly off, to shrink or flinch.

Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice
Handlest in thy discourse ;-(0 that her hand,
In whose comparison all whites are ink,

Writing their own reproach; to 6 whose soft seizure
And spirit of sense 7 the cygnet's down is harsh

As the hard palm of ploughman !) this thou tell'st me,
And true thou tell'st me, when I say I love her:
But, saying thus, instead of oil and balm
Pour'd in the open ulcer of my heart,

Thou lay'st in every gash that love hath given me
The knife that made it.

Pan. I speak no more than truth..
Tro. Thou dost not speak so much.
Pan. Faith, I'll not meddle in't.

if she be fair, 'tis the better for her;

the 'mends in her own hands.8

Let her be as she is:

an she be not, she has

Tro. Good Pandarus, how now, Pandarus!

Pan. 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.

Tro. What, art thou angry, Pandarus? what, with me?

Pan. 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 on Friday as Helen is on Sunday.9 But what care I?

6 Here to has the force of compared to. See vol. xiv. page 159, note 28. 7 Spirit of sense probably means, here, most delicate and etherial touch. In iii. 3, the same words are applied to the organ of vision: "The eye itself, that most pure spirit of sense."— It may be needful to explain that, when Troilus comes to "Handlest in thy discourse," that word suggests to him the whiteness and softness of Cressida's hand, and so starts him off on this parenthetical rapture.

8 This was a common proverbial phrase, and means "It is her own fault," or, "The remedy lies with herself." So in Burton's Anatomy of Me!ancholy: "If men will be jealous in such cases, the 'mends is in their owne hands, they must thank themselves."

9 That is, as beautiful in her plainest dress as Helen is in her finest. Al

I care not an she were a black-a-moor; 'tis all one to me. Tro. Say I she is not fair?

Pan. I do not care whether you do or no.

She's a fool

to stay behind her father; 10 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.

Pan. Pray you, speak no more to me: I will leave all as I found it, and there an end.

[Exit PANDARUS. Alarum.

Tro. 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 woo'd to woo,
As she is stubborn-chaste against all suit.
Tell me, Apollo, for thy Daphne's love,12

luding to the old Christian custom of wearing fasting attire on Friday and festival attire on Sunday.

10 In the Destruction of Troy, Calchas is represented as "a great learned bishop," who was sent by Priam to consult the oracle of Delphi about the issue of the war. When he had made "his oblations and demands for them of Troy, Apollo answered unto him saying, Calcas, Calcas, beware thou returne not back againe to Troy, but goe thou with Achylles unto the Greekes, and depart never from them, for the Greekes shall have victorie of the Trojans, by the agreement of the gods."

11 Sweet was continually used, in address, precisely as dear is now. So a great many times in this play, as also in all the others.

12 The story of Apollo and Daphne is best told by Wordsworth, in The Russian Fugitive, Part iii. :

'Tis sung in ancient minstrels;

That Phoebus wont to wear

What Cressid is, what Pandar, and what we?
Her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl:
Between our Ilium 13 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 ENEAS.

Ene. How now, Prince Troilus! wherefore not a-field? Tro. Because not there: this woman's answer sorts,1 14 For womanish it is to be from thence.

What news, Æneas, from the field to-day?

Ene. That Paris is returned home, and hurt.

Tro. By whom, Æneas?

Ene.

Troilus, by Menelaus.

Tro. Let Paris bleed; 'tis but a scorse to scorn; 15 Paris is gored with Menelaus' horn.

[Alarum. Ene. Hark, what good sport is out of town to-day! Tro. Better at home, if would I might were may.

The leaves of any pleasant tree
Around his golden hair;

Till Daphne, desperate with pursuit

Of his imperious love,

At her own prayer transform'd, took root

A laurel in the grove.

13 Ilium was properly the name of the city; but in Caxton's History it is thus described: "In the most open place of the cittie, upon a rock, the king Priamus did build his rich pallace, which was named Ilion: that was one of the richest pallaces and the strongest that ever was in the world." 14 Sorts in the sense of fits or suits. See vol. ix. page 37, note 10.

15 The meaning is, that the wound which Paris has received from Menelaus is but a fair offset or payment for the contempt he has drawn upon Menelaus by seducing Helen. The use of scorse in the sense of bargain, payment, exchange, equivalent, or offset, occurs repeatedly in the writers of Shakespeare's time. Spenser has it both as a noun and a verb. So in The Faerie Queene, iii. 9, 16: "But Paridell sore brusèd with the blow could not arise, the counterchange to scorse." See, also, note on "I see that men make ropes in such a snare," &c., vol. iv. page 145,