The History of Troilus and Cressida: PROLOGUE
Introduction PROLOGUE PROLOGUE ACT I ACT II ACT III ACT IV ACT V About the Play Feedback			Search: All the plays Hamlet Coriolanus Julius Caesar King Lear Macbeth Othello Romeo and Juliet Richard II Richard III Titus Andronicus Antony and Cleopatra Timon of Athens Henry IV Part 1 Henry IV Part 2 Henry the Fifth Henry VI Part 1 Henry VI Part 2 Henry VI Part 3 Henry VIII King John Pericles Troilus and Cressida All's Well... As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Cymbeline A Midsummer... Love's Labour's Lost Measure for Measure The Merry Wives... Much Ado about Nothing The Merchant of Venice Twelfth Night The Taming of... The Tempest The Two Gentlemen... The Winter's Tale    for: 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 5     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, 10    With wanton Paris sleeps; and that's the quarrel.       To Tenedos they come;       And the deep-drawing barks do there disgorge       Their warlike fraughtage: now on Dardan plains       The fresh and yet unbruised Greeks do pitch 15    Their brave pavilions: Priam's six-gated city,       Dardan, and Tymbria, Helias, Chetas, Troien,       And Antenorides, with massy staples       And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts,       Sperr up the sons of Troy. 20    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 25    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. 30    Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are:       Now good or bad, 'tis but the chance of war. Return to top of page ... or ... Go to next scene