William Shakespeare: The History of Troilus and Cressida

ACT I. SCENE 2. Troy. A street (continued)

CRESSIDA.
Troilus will stand to the proof, if you'll prove it so.

PANDARUS.
Troilus! Why, he esteems her no more than I esteem an
addle egg.

CRESSIDA.
If you love an addle egg as well as you love an idle
head, you would eat chickens i' th' shell.

PANDARUS.
I cannot choose but laugh to think how she tickled his
chin. Indeed, she has a marvell's white hand, I must needs
confess.

CRESSIDA.
Without the rack.

PANDARUS.
And she takes upon her to spy a white hair on his chin.

CRESSIDA.
Alas, poor chin! Many a wart is richer.

PANDARUS.
But there was such laughing! Queen Hecuba laugh'd that
her eyes ran o'er.

CRESSIDA.
With millstones.

PANDARUS.
And Cassandra laugh'd.

CRESSIDA.
But there was a more temperate fire under the pot of her
eyes. Did her eyes run o'er too?

PANDARUS.
And Hector laugh'd.

CRESSIDA.
At what was all this laughing?

PANDARUS.
Marry, at the white hair that Helen spied on Troilus'
chin.

CRESSIDA.
An't had been a green hair I should have laugh'd too.

PANDARUS.
They laugh'd not so much at the hair as at his pretty
answer.

CRESSIDA.
What was his answer?

PANDARUS.
Quoth she 'Here's but two and fifty hairs on your chin,
and one of them is white.'

CRESSIDA.
This is her question.