Read "Troilus and Cressida" by William Shakespeare online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
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 / 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, / 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 / 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.
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 / 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. / Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are: / Now good or bad, 'tis but the chance of war.