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PAR. They are 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 touch'd,
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.

PAR. Sweet, above thought I love thee."

SCENE II.

[Exeunt.

The same. Pandarus' Orchard.

Enter PANDARUS and a Servant, meeting.

PAN. How now? where's thy master? at my cousin Cressida's?

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

Enter TROILUS.

PAN. O, here he comes.-How now, how now? TRO. Sirrah, walk off.

[Exit Servant.

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above thought I love thee.] So, in Antony and Cleo

patra:

"She's cunning past man's thought." STEEVENS

PAN. Have you seen my cousin ?

TRO. 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

Propos'd for the deserver! O gentle Pandarus, From Cupid's shoulder pluck his painted wings, And fly with me to Cressid!

PAN. Walk here i'the orchard, I'll bring her straight. [Exit PANDARUS. TRO. I am giddy; expectation whirls me round. The imaginary relish is so sweet

That it enchants my sense; What will it be,
When that the watry palate tastes indeed
Love's thrice-reputed nectar? death, I fear me;
Swooning destruction; or some joy too fine,
Too subtle-potent, tun'd 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;2
As doth a battle, when they charge on heaps
The enemy flying.

1

tun'd too sharp-] So the quarto, and more accurately than the folio, which has—and too sharp. JOHNSON. The quarto has to instead of too. MALONE.

• That I shall lose distinction in my joys;] Thus, in Sappho's Epistle to Phaon :

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ubi jam amborum fuerat confusa voluptas,-"

STEEVENS.

Re-enter PANDARUS.

PAN. 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 sprite: I'll fetch her. It is the prettiest villain :-she fetches her breath as short as a new-ta'en sparrow. [Exit PANDARus.

TRO. Even such a passion doth embrace my bo

som: 4

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.5

Enter PANDARUS and CRESSIDA.

PAN. Come, come, what need you blush? shame's a baby. Here she is now: swear the oaths now to

frayed-] i. e. frighted. So, in Chapman's version of the 21st Iliad:

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all the massacres

"Left for the Greeks, could put on looks of no more overthrow

"Than now fray'd life." STEEvens.

Even such a passion doth embrace my bosom:] So, in The Merchant of Venice:

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rash-embraced despair." MALOne.

Like vassalage at unawares encount❜ring

The eye of majesty.] Mr. Rowe seems to have imitated this passage in his Ambitious Stepmother, Act I:

"Well may the ignoble herd

"Start, if with heedless steps they unawares
"Tread on the lion's walk: a prince's genius
"Awes with superior greatness all beneath him."

STEEVENS.

her, that you have sworn to me.-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'the fills. Why do you not speak to her?-Come, draw this curtain, and let's see your picture. Alas the day, how loath you are to offend daylight! an 'twere dark, you'd close sooner.

So, so;

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rub on,

-you must be watched ere you be made tame,] Alluding

to the manner of taming hawks. So, in The Taming of the

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Hawks were tamed by being kept from sleep, and thus Pandarus means that Cressida should be tamed.

7

MALONE.

i'the fills.] That is, in the shafts. Fill is a provincial word used in some counties for thills, the shafts of a cart or waggon. See Vol. VII. p. 269, n. 9.

The editor of the second folio, for fills, the reading of the first folio, substituted files, which has been adopted in all the modern editions. The quarto has filles, which is only the more ancient spelling of fills. The words "draw backward" show that the original is the true reading. MALONE.

Sir T. Hanmer supports the reading of the second folio, by saying-put you in the files, " alludes to the custom of putting men suspected of cowardice [i. e. of drawing backward,] in the middle places." Thus, Homer, Iliad IV. 299:

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κακὲς δ ̓ ἐς μέσσον ἔλασσεν,

« Οφρα και ἐκ ἐθέλων τις ἀναγκαίη πολεμίζη.”

STEEVENS.

The word files does not mean the middle places, but the ranks. The common soldiers of an army are called the rank and file; and when the serjeants or corporals misbehave, it is usual to punish them by reducing them to the files, that is, to the rank of private men. To draw backward, is merely to fall back, and has no reference to drawing in a carriage.

M. MASON.

• Come, draw this curtain, and let's see your picture.] It should seem, from these words, that Cressida, like Olivia in Twelfth Night, was intended to come in veiled. Pandarus however had, as usual, a double meaning. MALONE.

and kiss the mistress." How now, a kiss in feefarm!' build there, carpenter; the air is sweet.2 Nay, you shall fight your hearts out, ere I part you. The falcon as the tercel, for all the ducks i'the river:3 go to, go to.

9 So, so; rub on, and kiss the mistress.] The allusion is to bowling. What we now call the jack, seems, in Shakspeare's time, to have been termed the mistress. A bowl that kisses the jack or mistress, is in the most advantageous situation. Rub on is a term at the same game. So, in No Wit like a Woman's a comedy, by Middleton, 1657:

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"There's three rubs gone; I've a clear way to the mistress."

Again, in Decker's Satiromastix, 1602:

"Mini. Since he hath hit the mistress so often in the foregame, we'll even play out the rubbers.

"Sir Vaugh. Play out your rubbers in God's name; by Jesu I'll never bowl in your alley." MALONE.

An instance to the same effect was long ago suggested in a note on Cymbeline, Act II. sc. i. STEEVENS.

1

a kiss in fee-farm!] Is a kiss of a duration that has no bounds; a fee-farm being a grant of lands in fee, that is, for ever, reserving a certain rent. MALONE.

How much more poetically is the same idea expressed in Coriolanus, when the jargon of law was absent from our author's thoughts!

2

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O, a kiss,

"Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!"

Macbeth:

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build there, carpenter; the air is sweet.]

does approve

STEEVENS.

"By his lov'd mansionry, that heaven's breath
"Smells wooingly here." STEEVENS.

So, in

The falcon as the tercel, for all the ducks i'the river:] Pandarus means, that he'll match his niece against her lover for any bett. The tercel is the male hawk; by the falcon we generally understand the female. THEOBALD.

I think we should rather read :—at the tercel-.

TYRWHITT.

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