intention of leaping over the first part, and beginning in the midst of the course of events.

The opening scene is laid in Troy, in front of Priam's palace. Troilus and Pandarus enter, and Troilus at once makes Pandarus the confidant of his love for Cressida. Pandarus adds fuel to the fire by singing praises to her beauty and her wit; Troilus interrupts him with

"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."

In Troilus we see all the fervent love and trust of a first youthful passion. His impetuosity and innocence of heart make him believe the uncle and the niece to be a thousand times more stern, more difficult to be persuaded and to be won, than they are in reality.

"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."

But Pandarus is no more "tetchy" than Cressida is "stubborn-chaste." The worthy man pretends to hold back, but it is merely in order to be further pressed, and he only declares he will neither meddle nor make in the matter for the sake of increasing his importance, and of making the value of his services doubly felt.

In the second scene, he begins to open his batteries upon Cressida. As he enters, she is talking with her servant about Hector, who had started before sunrise for the field of battle. Pandarus immediately joins in the conversation, but only to bring forward the name of Troilus, whom he praises at every turn for his courage and wit and beauty. Cressida answers with a running fire of taunts and epigrams. It might be concluded that she was perfectly indifferent towards Troilus, if it were not that, from the first moment of her entrance, her

excessive levity of tone, at times outrunning the limits of decorum, and the suspicious compliancy of her mind excite doubts, but too well founded, as to the truth and honesty of her words and character. While the uncle and niece thus bandy words together, a retreat is sounded, and the Trojan army returns.

"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."

Pandarus points out the different heroes to his niece, impatiently wondering, as each goes by, where Troilus is. At last Cressida asks

"What sneaking fellow comes yonder?"

"Pan. Where? yonder? that's Deiphobus;-'tis Troilus! there's a man, niece! Hem!-Brave Troilus! the prince of chivalry! . . . O brave Troilus!-look well upon him, niece; look you how his sword is bloodied, and his helm more hacked than Hector's; and how he looks, and how he goes!-O admirable youth! he ne'er saw three and 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 money to boot." *

When Cressida is left alone, she further enlightens us as to her character by an edifying soliloquy, in which she gives a short but substantial statement of principles.

"But more in Troilus thousandfold I see

Than in the glass of Pandar's praise may be ;
Yet hold I off. Women are angels, wooing:

Things won are done, joy's soul lies in the doing:

That she belov'd knows nought that knows not this,-
Men prize the thing ungain'd more than it is:

That she was never yet that ever knew

Love got so sweet, as when desire did sue:

* A scene striking in its analogy to this is to be found in the "Phoenissæ" of Euripides, in which Antigone watches the field of battle from one of the terraces of the palace, and an old servitor tells her the names of all the chiefs of the enemy's army.

Therefore this maxim out of love I teach,--
Achievement is command; ungain'd, beseech:
Then, though my heart's content firm love doth bear,
Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear."

The third scene transports us to the camp of the Greeks, before Agamemnon's tent, where the chiefs are met in deliberation. It would be puzzling to say exactly what they are talking about, or what the precise subject of their conference consists in. They talk much but say little; in fact, all through the play the speeches of the Greeks are characterized by the possession of more words than meaning. Their language is ludicrously bombastic and verbose, and the poet evidently intended to ridicule them. This irony, no doubt, plays round all, but he certainly shows a greater respect for the Trojans, who have not only more sense, but are also more courageous, and act a comparatively nobler part both in words and deeds.

Agamemnon inquires of his companions what grief has set the jaundice on their cheeks-is it because after a seven years' siege Troy walls still stand? Nestor is the next to open his mouth, and with a lavish profusion of metaphors says nothing. Then Ulysses takes his turn. He begins by addressing extravagant compliments to the two preceding orators, and is himself outrageously verbose and diffuse; it is, however, possible to gather one fact from his lengthy discourse, that fact being that discipline has grown lax, that all authority has disappeared, and that each man in the army does as seems best in his own eyes, instead of obeying the orders of his superior. "Troy in our weakness lives, not in her strength." Finally, leaving generalities to come to more definite accusations, Ulysses complains of the conduct of Achilles, who

"Having his ear full of his airy fame,

Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent
Lies mocking our designs,"

M

while Patroclus keeps him in roars of laughter at his imitation of the different chiefs.

The conference is interrupted by the sound of a trumpet, and Agamemnon asks Menelaus to look and see what it means. "From Troy," announces Menelaus. Æneas enters with a message from Troy, and salutes Agamemnon with an address couched in such ridiculously high-flown terms, that even the haughty "king of men," "the high and mighty Agamemnon," hesitates about accepting it as serious. Eneas is the bearer of a challenge from Hector to all the Grecian Princes, which he delivers in true chivalrous style, after the mode of mediæval heroes. His challenge for the morrow is accepted, and Agamemnon then conducts Æneas to his tent to entertain him worthily.

Ulysses and Nestor remain talking over the matter, and agree that the challenge "relates in purpose only to Achilles," who is the only Greek fit to cope with Hector. But on no account must he be allowed to fight-for either he will conquer or be conquered; if he should be conquered his shame would be theirs, if he should conquer, his glory would be his own, and would only add to his overweening insolence. Ulysses therefore suggests that a lottery should be held, when it could be easily contrived that "blockish Ajax draw the sort to fight with Hector."

"Hit or miss,

Our project's life this shape of sense assumes,-
Ajax employ'd, plucks down Achilles' plumes."

And with this little plot on the part of Ulysses and
Nestor, the first act comes to an end.

The second act introduces a personage who might be said to fulfil the function of Chorus in the play, if it were not that the vileness and meanness of his nature render him quite unworthy of so dignified an employment as giving voice and expression to the sentiments of the

collective conscience of humanity, concerning men and things. Like the Thersites of Homer, Shakespeare's Thersites is a reviler, but it is no longer only upon Achilles, Ulysses, and Agamemnon that he spits forth his venom,―he reviles the whole world, and his foul-mouthed insults, infinitely grosser than those of the Thersites of the "Iliad," are of greater depth and of far wider significance. The causes of the Trojan war are summed up by him, in the coarsest terms, as being a dishonoured husband and a guilty wife; and in the innermost heart of each hero of the war, both Greek and Trojan, the only ruling passion that he recognizes is that of lust, with which he reproaches them in torrents of gross and obscene words unfit for handling. A tolerably accurate notion of the part played by Thersites may be obtained by considering him as a sort of court fool. Like the fools and jesters of old, he dresses up truth in so strange a garb that it is scarcely recognizable; like them also, he possesses wit, sets a high value upon it, is wholly occupied in finding it both in himself and in others. The reason of his contempt for Ajax is, that he "has not so much wit as will stop the eye of Helen's needle," and Achilles is in much the same predicament, having but "little, little, less than little wit; which will not deliver a fly from a spider without drawing the massy irons and cutting the web." (Act II., Sc. 3.)

This decided taste that Thersites has for wit leads him to pass a comparatively favourable judgment upon Nestor and Ulysses, the only warriors for whom he appears to entertain the faintest spark of respect, as their wit, unlike that of Achilles, lies not in their sinews. "There's Ulysses and old Nestor,-whose wit was mouldy ere your grandsires had nails on their toes,-yoke you like draught oxen, and make you plough up the war." Rail as he will, the company of Thersites is put up with on account of the amusement he affords, and because he