Shakespeare - First Folio facsimile (1910)/The Tragedy of Troylus and Cressida/Prologue

by William Shakespeare

The Prologue.

In Troy there lyes the Scene: From Iles of GreeceThe Princes Orgillous, their high blood chaf'd Haue to the Port of Athens sent their shippes Fraught with the ministers and instrumentsOf cruell Warre: Sixty and nine that woreTheir Crownets Regall, from th' Athenian bayPut forth toward Phrygia, and their vow is madeTo ransacke Troy, Within whose strong emuresThe rauish'd Helen, Menelaus Queene, With wanton Paris sleepes, and that's the Quarrell.To Tenedos they come.And the deepe-drawing Barke do there disgorge Their warlike frautage: now on Dardan Plaines The fresh and yet unbruised Greekes do pitchTheir braue Pauillions. Priams six-gated City,Dardan and Timbria, Helias, Chetas, Troien, And Antenonidus with massie Staples And corresponsiue and fulfilling Bolts Stirre up the Sonnes of Troy.Now Expectation tickling skittish spirits,On one and other side, Troian and Greeke, Sets all on hazard. And hither am I come,A Prologue arm'd, but not in confidenceOf Authors pen, or Actors voyce; but suitedIn like conditions, as our Argument; To tell you (faire Beholders) that our Play Leapes ore the vaunt and firstlings of those broyles, Beginning in the middle: starting thence away,To what may be digested in a Play:Like, or finde fault, do as your pleasures are,Now good, or bad, 'tis but the chance of Warre