| 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 immures | 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 | 12 |
| 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, Ilias, Chetas, Trojan, | 16 |
| And Antenorides, with massy staples | |
| 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 | 28 |
| 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. | |