The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works

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The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 514

by William Shakespeare

That my integrity and truth to you

  Might be affronted with the match and weight

  Of such a winnowed purity in love;

  How were I then uplifted! But alas,

  I am as true as truth’s simplicity,

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  And simpler than the infancy of truth.

  CRESSIDA In that I’ll war with you.

  TROILUS O virtuous fight,

  When right with right wars who shall be most right!

  True swains in love shall in the world to come

  Approve their truth by Troilus. When their rhymes,

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  Full of protest, of oath and big compare,

  Wants similes, truth tired with iteration –

  ‘As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,

  As sun to day, as turtle to her mate,

  As iron to adamant, as earth to th’ centre’ –

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  Yet, after all comparisons of truth,

  As truth’s authentic author to be cited,

  ‘As true as Troilus’ shall crown up the verse

  And sanctify the numbers.

  CRESSIDA AProphet may you be!

  If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,

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  When time is old and hath forgot itself,

  When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,

  And blind oblivion swallowed cities up,

  And mighty states characterless are grated

  To dusty nothing, yet let memory,

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  From false to false, among false maids in love,

  Upbraid my falsehood! When they’ve said ‘As false

  As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth,

  As fox to lamb, or wolf to heifer’s calf,

  Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son’,

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  Yea, let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood,

  ‘As false as Cressid’.

  PANDARUS Go to, a bargain made. Seal it, seal it; I’ll be

  the witness. Here I hold your hand, here my cousin’s.

  If ever you prove false one to another, since I have

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  taken such pains to bring you together, let all pitiful

  goers-between be called to the world’s end after my

  name: call them all panders. Let all constant men be

  TROILUS es, all false women Cressids, and all brokers-

  between panders! Say ‘Amen’.

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  TROILUS Amen.

  CRESSIDA Amen.

  PANDARUS Amen. Whereupon I will show you a chamber

  with a bed; which bed, because it shall not speak of your

  pretty encounters, press it to death. Away!

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  Exeunt Troilus and Cressida.

  And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here

  Bed, chamber, pander to provide this gear! Exit.

  3.3 Flourish. Enter ULYSSES, DIOMEDES, NESTOR, AGAMEMNON, AJAX, MENELAUS and CALCHAS.

  CALCHAS

  Now, princes, for the service I have done you,

  Th’advantage of the time prompts me aloud

  To call for recompense. Appear it to your mind

  That, through the sight I bear in things to come,

  I have abandoned Troy, left my possessions,

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  Incurred a traitor’s name, exposed myself,

  From certain and possessed conveniences,

  To doubtful fortunes, sequest’ring from me all

  That time, acquaintance, custom and condition

  Made tame and most familiar to my nature;

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  And here, to do you service, am become

  As new into the world, strange, unacquainted.

  I do beseech you, as in way of taste,

  To give me now a little benefit

  Out of those many registered in promise

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  Which, you say, live to come in my behalf.

  AGAMEMNON

  What wouldst thou of us, Trojan, make demand?

  CALCHAS You have a Trojan prisoner, called Antenor,

  Yesterday took. Troy holds him very dear.

  Oft have you – often have you thanks therefor –

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  Desired my Cressid in right great exchange,

  Whom Troy hath still denied; but this Antenor,

  I know, is such a wrest in their affairs

  That their negotiations all must slack,

  Wanting his manage; and they will almost

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  Give us a prince of blood, a son of Priam,

  In change of him. Let him be sent, great princes,

  And he shall buy my daughter; and her presence

  Shall quite strike off all service I have done

  In most accepted pain.

  AGAMEMNON Let Diomedes bear him,

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  And bring us Cressid hither; Calchas shall have

  What he requests of us. Good Diomed,

  Furnish you fairly for this interchange;

  Withal, bring word if Hector will tomorrow

  Be answered in his challenge. Ajax is ready.

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  DIOMEDES This shall I undertake, and ’tis a burden

  Which I am proud to bear. Exit with Calchas.

  ACHILLES and PATROCLUS stand in their tent.

  ULYSSES Achilles stands i’th’ entrance of his tent.

  Please it our general pass strangely by him,

  As if he were forgot; and, princes all,

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  Lay negligent and loose regard upon him.

  I will come last. ’Tis like he’ll question me

  Why such unplausive eyes are bent, why turned on him.

  If so, I have derision medicinable

  To use between your strangeness and his pride,

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  Which his own will shall have desire to drink.

  It may do good. Pride hath no other glass

  To show itself but pride; for supple knees

  Feed arrogance, and are the proud man’s fees.

  AGAMEMNON We’ll execute your purpose, and put on

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  A form of strangeness as we pass along.

  So do each lord, and either greet him not

  Or else disdainfully, which shall shake him more

  Than if not looked on. I will lead the way.

  [They proceed in turn past Achilles’ tent.]

  ACHILLES What, comes the general to speak with me?

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  You know my mind: I’ll fight no more ’gainst Troy.

  AGAMEMNON [to Nestor]

  What says Achilles? Would he aught with us?

  NESTOR [to Achilles]

  Would you, my lord, aught with the general?

  ACHILLES No.

  NESTOR [to Agamemnon] Nothing, my lord.

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  AGAMEMNON The better.

  Exeunt Agamemnon and Nestor.

  ACHILLES [to Menelaus] Good day, good day.

  MENELAUS How do you? How do you?

  Exit.

  ACHILLES [to Patroclus] What, does the cuckold scorn

  me?

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  AJAX How now, Patroclus?

  ACHILLES Good morrow, Ajax.

  AJAX Ha?

  ACHILLES Good morrow.

  AJAX Ay, and good next day too. Exit.

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  [Ulysses remains behind, reading.]

  ACHILLES [to Patroclus]

  What mean these fellows? Know they not Achilles?

  PATROCLUS

  They pass by strangely. They were used to bend,

  To send their smiles before them to Achilles,

  To come as humbly as they use to creep

  To holy altars.

  ACHILLES What, am I poor of late?

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  ’Tis certain, greatness, once fall’n out with fortune,

  Must fall out with men too. What the declined is

  He shall as soon r
ead in the eyes of others

  As feel in his own fall; for men, like butterflies,

  Show not their mealy wings but to the summer,

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  And not a man, for being simply man,

  Hath any honour, but honour for those honours

  That are without him – as place, riches and favour,

  Prizes of accident as oft as merit;

  Which when they fall, as being slippery standers,

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  The love that leaned on them as slippery too

  Doth one pluck down another and together

  Die in the fall. But ’tis not so with me;

  Fortune and I are friends. I do enjoy

  At ample point all that I did possess,

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  Save these men’s looks, who do, methinks, find out

  Something not worth in me such rich beholding

  As they have often given. Here is Ulysses;

  I’ll interrupt his reading. – How now, Ulysses?

  ULYSSES Now, great Thetis’ son!

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  ACHILLES What are you reading?

  ULYSSES A strange fellow here

  Writes me that man, how dearly ever parted,

  How much in having, or without or in,

  Cannot make boast to have that which he hath,

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  Nor feels not what he owes, but by reflection;

  As when his virtues, shining upon others,

  Heat them, and they retort that heat again

  To the first givers.

  ACHILLES This is not strange, Ulysses.

  The beauty that is borne here in the face

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  The bearer knows not, but commends itself

  To others’ eyes; nor doth the eye itself,

  That most pure spirit of sense, behold itself,

  Not going from itself, but eye to eye opposed

  Salutes each other with each other’s form.

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  For speculation turns not to itself

  Till it hath travelled and is mirrored there

  Where it may see itself. This is not strange at all.

  ULYSSES I do not strain at the position –

  It is familiar – but at the author’s drift,

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  Who in his circumstance expressly proves

  That no man is the lord of anything,

  Though in and of him there be much consisting,

  Till he communicate his parts to others;

  Nor doth he of himself know them for aught

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  Till he behold them formed in th’applause

  Where they’re extended – who, like an arch, reverb’rate

  The voice again, or, like a gate of steel

  Fronting the sun, receives and renders back

  His figure and his heat. I was much rapt in this,

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  And apprehended here immediately

  Th’unknown Ajax. Heavens, what a man is there!

  A very horse, that has he knows not what.

  Nature, what things there are

  Most abject in regard and dear in use!

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  What things again most dear in the esteem

  And poor in worth! Now shall we see tomorrow

  An act that very chance doth throw upon him.

  Ajax renowned? O heavens, what some men do,

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  While some men leave to do!

  How some men creep in skittish Fortune’s hall,

  Whiles others play the idiots in her eyes!

  How one man eats into another’s pride,

  While pride is fasting in his wantonness!

  To see these Grecian lords! Why, even already

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  They clap the lubber Ajax on the shoulder,

  As if his foot were on brave Hector’s breast,

  And great Troy shrinking.

  ACHILLES I do believe it; for they passed by me

  As misers do by beggars, neither gave to me

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  Good word nor look. What, are my deeds forgot?

  ULYSSES Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,

  Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

  A great-sized monster of ingratitudes.

  Those scraps are good deeds past, which are

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  Devoured as fast as they are made, forgot

  As soon as done. Perseverance, dear my lord,

  Keeps honour bright; to have done is to hang

  Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail

  In monumental mock’ry. Take the instant way,

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  For honour travels in a strait so narrow

  Where one but goes abreast. Keep then the path,

  For emulation hath a thousand sons,

  That one by one pursue. If you give way,

  Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,

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  Like to an entered tide they all rush by

 

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