William Shakespeare: The History of Troilus and Cressida

ACT I. SCENE 2. Troy. A street

[Enter CRESSIDA and her man ALEXANDER.]

CRESSIDA.
Who were those went by?

ALEXANDER.
Queen Hecuba and Helen.

CRESSIDA.
And whither go they?

ALEXANDER.
Up to the eastern tower,
Whose height commands as subject all the vale,
To see the battle. Hector, whose patience
Is as a virtue fix'd, to-day was mov'd.
He chid Andromache, and struck his armourer;
And, like as there were husbandry in war,
Before the sun rose he was harness'd light,
And to the field goes he; where every flower
Did as a prophet weep what it foresaw
In Hector's wrath.

CRESSIDA.
What was his cause of anger?

ALEXANDER.
The noise goes, this: there is among the Greeks
A lord of Troyan blood, nephew to Hector;
They call him Ajax.

CRESSIDA.
Good; and what of him?

ALEXANDER.
They say he is a very man per se,
And stands alone.

CRESSIDA.
So do all men, unless they are drunk, sick, or have no legs.

ALEXANDER.
This man, lady, hath robb'd many beasts of their particular
additions: he is as valiant as a lion, churlish as the bear, slow
as the elephant--a man into whom nature hath so crowded
humours that his valour is crush'd into folly, his folly sauced
with discretion. There is no man hath a virtue that he hath not a
glimpse of, nor any man an attaint but he carries some stain of
it; he is melancholy without cause and merry against the hair; he
hath the joints of every thing; but everything so out of joint
that he is a gouty Briareus, many hands and no use, or purblind
Argus, all eyes and no sight.

CRESSIDA.
But how should this man, that makes me smile, make Hector
angry?

ALEXANDER.
They say he yesterday cop'd Hector in the battle and
struck him down, the disdain and shame whereof hath ever since
kept Hector fasting and waking.