The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
Page 514
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,
5
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