CRESSIDA.
[TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.]
It is the strictly honourable daughter of the priest Calchas whom I here present to the most honourable public. Pandarus was her uncle, a most admirable pander indeed; but his active aid, as regarded his calling, was here hardly called for. Troilus, a son of the very productive Priam, was her first lover. She fulfilled with him all the usual formalities, swore him endless truth, broke her oath with befitting propriety, and delivered a mournful monologue on the weakness of the female heart before transferring herself to Diomed. The eavesdropper Thersites, who ever ungallantly calls a spade a spade, speaks of her as a strumpet; but he should certainly have softened the word, for it may come to pass that the beauty, transferred from one hero to another, and ever sinking lower, will at last fall as a sweetheart to him.
Not without good and many reasons have I placed the portrait of Cressida at the portal of this gallery. Truly it was not for her virtue, and not because she is a type of the ordinary average woman, did I give her preference to so
283
