Thus, If Alcibiades kill my countrymen, Let Alcibiades know this of Timon, That Timon cares not. But if he sack fair Athens, And take our goodly aged men by the beards, Giving our holy virgins to the stain Of contumelious, beastly, mad-brain'd war; Then, let him know, -and tell him, Timon speaks it, In pity of our aged, and our youth, I cannot choose but tell him, that I care not, And let him take 't at worst; for their knives care not, The reverend 'st throat in Athens. So I leave you As thieves to keepers. Flav. Stay not, all's in vain. And nothing brings me all things. Go, live still; Be Alcibiades your plague, you his, And last so long enough! 1 Sen. We speak in vain. Tim. But yet I love my country, and am not One that rejoices in the common wrack, As common bruit doth put it. That's well spoke. 1 Sen. Tim. Commend me to my loving countrymen,— 1 Sen. These words become your lips as they pass through them. 2 Sen. And enter in our ears like great triumphers In their applauding gates. Tim. In life's uncertain voyage, I will some kindness do them : I'll teach them to prevent wild Alcibiades' wrath. Tim. Come not to me again: but say to Athens, 1 Sen. His discontents are unremoveably Coupled to nature. 2 Sen. Our hope in him is dead: let us return, And strain what other means is left unto us SCENE III.-The Walis of Athens. Enter Two Senators, and a Messenger. 1 Sen. Thou hast painfully discover'd; are his fles As full as thy report 7 I have spoke the least; Besides, his expedition promises Present approach. Mess. 2 Sen. We stand much hazard, if they bring nut Timon. Mess. I met a courier, one mine ancient friend;Whom, though in general part we were oppos'd, Yet our old love made a particular force, And made us speak like friends :-this man was riding With letters of entreaty, which imported Enter Senators from Timon. 1 Sen. Here come our brothers. 3 Sen. No talk of Timon, nothing of him expect.— The enemies' drum is heard, and fearful scouring Doth choke the air with dust: In, and prepare; Ours is the fall, I fear; our foes the snare. [Exeunt. SCENE IV.-The Woods. Timon's Cave, and a Tombstone seen. Enter a Soldier, seeking TIMON. Sold. By all description this should be the place. Who's here? speak, hoa!-No answer?-What is this! Timon is dead, who hath outstretch'd his span: Some beast rear'd this; there does not live a man. I cannot read; the character I'll take with wax: Dead, sure; and this his grave.-What 's on this tomb Our captain hath in every figure skill; An ag'd interpreter, though young in days: Before proud Athens he 's set down by this, Whose fall the mark of his ambition is. SCENE V. Trumpets sound. [Erit. Before the walls of Athens. Enter ALCIBIADES and Forces. Alcib. Sound to this coward and lascivious town Our terrible approach. [A parley sounded. Enter Senators on the walls. 1 Sen. 2 Sen. So did we woo By humble message, and by promis'd means; Were not erected by their hands from whom You have receiv'd your grief: nor are they such That these great towers, trophies, and schools should fall For private faults in them." Descend, and open your unchanged ports: Both. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. THE original quarto edition of Troilus and Cressida was printed in 1609. No other edition of the play was published until it appeared in the folio collection of 1623. "The original story," says Dryden, "was written by one Lollius, a Lombard, in Latin verse, and translated by Chaucer into English; intended, I suppose, a satire on the inconstancy of women. I find nothing of it among the ancients, not so much as the name Cressida once mentioned. Shakspere (as I hinted), in the apprenticeship of his writing, modelled it into that play which is now called by the name of 'Troilus and Cressida.'" Without entering into the question who Lollius was, we at once receive the Troilus and Creseide' of Chau Cressida' into a regular tragedy. He complains that "the chief persons who give name to the tragedy are left alive: Cressida is false, and is not punished." The excitement of pity and terror, we are told, is the only ground of tragedy. Tragedy, too, must have “a moral that directs the whole action of the play to one centre." To this standard, then, is Shakspere's Troilus and Cressida' to be reduced. The chief persons who give name to the tragedy are not to be left alive. Cressida is not to be false; but she is to die: and so terror and pity are to be produced. And then comes the moral: "Then, since from home-bred factions ruin springs, Let subjects learn obedience to their kings." The management by which Dryden has accomplished this metamorphosis is one of the most remarkable examples of perverted ingenuity. He had a licentious age to please. He could not spare a line, or a word, of what may be considered the objectionable scenes be tween Pandarus, Troilus, and Cressida. They formed no part of the "rubbish" he desired to remove. He has heightened them wherever possible; and what in Shakspere was a sly allusion becomes with him a positive grossness. Now let us consider for a moment what Shakspere intended by these scenes. Cressida is the exception to Shakspere's general idea of the female cha racter. She is beautiful, witty, accomplished,—but she is impure. In her, love is not a sentiment, or a passion, cer as the foundation of Shakspere's play. Of his perfect acquaintance with that poem there can be no doubt. Chaucer, of all English writers, was the one who would have the greatest charm for Shakspere. Mr. Godwin has justly observed that the Shaksperian commentators have done injustice to Chaucer in not more distinctly associating his poem with this remark able play. But although the main incidents in the adventures of the Greek lover and his faithless mistress, as given by Chaucer, are followed with little deviation, yet, independent of the wonderful difference in the characterisation, the whole story under the treatment of Shakspere becomes thoroughly original. In no play does he appear to us to have a more complete mastery over his materials, or to mould them into more plasticit is an impulse. Temperament is stronger than will. shapes by the force of his most surpassing imagination. The great Homeric poem, the rude romance of the destruction of Troy, the beautiful elaboration of that romance by Chaucer, are all subjected to his wondrous alchemy; and new forms and combinations are called forth so lifelike, that all the representations which have preceded them look cold and rigid statues, not warm and breathing men and women. Coleridge's theory of the principle upon which this was effected is, we have no doubt, essentially true : “I am half inclined to believe that Shakspere's main object (or shall I rather say his ruling impulse?) was to translate the poetic heroes of Paganism into the not less rude, but more intellectually vigorous, and more featurely, warriors of Christian chivalry, and to substantiate the distinct and graceful profiles or outlines of the Homeric epic into the flesh and blood of the romantic drama,-in short, to give a grand history-piece in the robust style of Albert Dürer." * Dryden, we have seen, speaks of Shakspere's Troilus and Cressida as a work of his apprenticeship. Dryden himself aspired to reform it with his own master-hand. The notion of Dryden was to convert the Troilus and • Literary Remains, vol. ii. P 183. Her love has nothing ideal, spiritual, in its composition. It is not constant, because it is not discriminate. Setting apart her inconstancy, how altogether different is Cressida from Juliet, or Viola, or Helena, or Perdita! There is nothing in her which could be called love: no depth, no concentration of feeling,—nothing that can bear the name of devotion. Shakspere would not permit a mistake to be made on the subject; and he has therefore given to Ulysses to describe her, as he conceived her. Considering what his intentions were, and what really is the high morality of the characterisation, we can scarcely say that he has made the representation too prominent. When he drew Cressida, we think he had the feeling strong on his mind which gave birth to the 129th Sonnet. A French writer, in a notice of this play, says, "Les deux amants se voient, s'entendent, et sont heureux." Shakspere has described such happi |