William Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida in the complete original text.
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Troilus and Cressida

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Prologue

In Troy there lies the scene. From isles of  
Greece  
The princes orgulous, their high blood chaf'd,  
Have to the port of Athens sent their ships,  
Fraught with the ministers and instruments 4
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 im-  
mures 8
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 war-like fraughtage: now on Dardan  
plains 13
The fresh and yet unbruised Greeks do pitch  
Their brave pavilions : Priam's six-gated city,  
Cardan, and Tymbria, Ilias, Chetas, Trojan,  
And Antenorides, with massy staples 17
And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts,  
Sperr up the sons of Troy.  
Now expectation, tickling skittish spirits, 20
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 24
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. 29
Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are:  
Now good or bad, 'tis but the chance of war.  
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