Chapter: PROLOGUE
                        PROLOGUE

    In Troy, there lies the scene. From isles of Greece
    The princes orgillous, their high blood chaf'd,
    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 th' 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 war-like 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, Troyan 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.

 We begin with a prologue. An actor dressed in armor comes out on stage and welcomes us to ancient Troy, where the Greeks and Trojans have been going at it on the Trojan battlefields for the last...get this...7 years. Since we're starting out "in the middle" of all the action, the Prologue quickly catches us up to speed. You know, just in case we've never heard of a little old thing called the Trojan War. Here are the deets: the Greeks have sailed across the "Athenian Bay" to "ransack" Troy because a Trojan Prince named Paris stole Helen from the Greek King Menelaus and has been sleeping with her ever since. Simple as that. Next, the Prologue warns us that we might not like the play because nothing good ever really happens in times of "war." By the way, Shmooperinos, the Prologue says absolutely NOTHING about Troilus and Cressida, the two characters Shakespeare named this play after. What's up with that?

