He hangs the lip at something: you know all, Lord Pandarus.
Pandarus
Not I, honey-sweet queen. I long to hear how they sped to-day. You’ll remember your brother’s excuse?
Paris
To a hair.
Pandarus
Farewell, sweet queen.
Helen
Commend me to your niece.
Pandarus
I will, sweet queen.
Exit
A retreat sounded
Paris
They’re come from field: let us to Priam’s hall,
To greet the warriors. Sweet Helen, I must woo you
To help unarm our Hector: his stubborn buckles,
With these your white enchanting fingers touch’d,
Shall more obey than to the edge of steel
Or force of Greekish sinews; you shall do more
Than all the island kings,— disarm great Hector.
Helen
’Twill make us proud to be his servant, Paris;
Yea, what he shall receive of us in duty
Gives us more palm in beauty than we have,
Yea, overshines ourself.
Paris
Sweet, above thought I love thee.
Exeunt
SCENE II. THE SAME. PANDARUS’ ORCHARD.
Enter Pandarus and Troilus’s Boy, meeting
Pandarus
How now! where’s thy master? at my cousin
Cressida’s?
Boy
No, sir; he stays for you to conduct him thither.
Pandarus
O, here he comes.
Enter Troilus
How now, how now!
Troilus
Sirrah, walk off.
Exit Boy
Pandarus
Have you seen my cousin?
Troilus
No, Pandarus: I stalk about her door,
Like a strange soul upon the Stygian banks
Staying for waftage. O, be thou my Charon,
And give me swift transportance to those fields
Where I may wallow in the lily-beds
Proposed for the deserver! O gentle Pandarus,
From Cupid’s shoulder pluck his painted wings
And fly with me to Cressid!
Pandarus
Walk here i’ the orchard, I’ll bring her straight.
Exit
Troilus
I am giddy; expectation whirls me round.
The imaginary relish is so sweet
That it enchants my sense: what will it be,
When that the watery palate tastes indeed
Love’s thrice repured nectar? death, I fear me,
Swooning destruction, or some joy too fine,
Too subtle-potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness,
For the capacity of my ruder powers:
I fear it much; and I do fear besides,
That I shall lose distinction in my joys;
As doth a battle, when they charge on heaps
The enemy flying.
Re-enter Pandarus
Pandarus
She’s making her ready, she’ll come straight: you must be witty now. She does so blush, and fetches her wind so short, as if she were frayed with a sprite: I’ll fetch her. It is the prettiest villain: she fetches her breath as short as a new-ta’en sparrow.
Exit
Troilus
Even such a passion doth embrace my bosom:
My heart beats thicker than a feverous pulse;
And all my powers do their bestowing lose,
Like vassalage at unawares encountering
The eye of majesty.
Re-enter Pandarus with Cressida
Pandarus
Come, come, what need you blush? shame’s a baby. Here she is now: swear the oaths now to her that you have sworn to me. What, are you gone again? you must be watched ere you be made tame, must you? Come your ways, come your ways; an you draw backward, we’ll put you i’ the fills. Why do you not speak to her? Come, draw this curtain, and let’s see your picture. Alas the day, how loath you are to offend daylight! an ’twere dark, you’ld close sooner. So, so; rub on, and kiss the mistress. How now! a kiss in fee-farm! build there, carpenter; the air is sweet. Nay, you shall fight your hearts out ere I part you. The falcon as the tercel, for all the ducks i’ the river: go to, go to.
Troilus
You have bereft me of all words, lady.
Pandarus
Words pay no debts, give her deeds: but she’ll bereave you o’ the deeds too, if she call your activity in question. What, billing again? Here’s ‘In witness whereof the parties interchangeably’— Come in, come in: I’ll go get a fire.
Exit
Cressida
Will you walk in, my lord?
Troilus
O Cressida, how often have I wished me thus!
Cressida
Wished, my lord! The gods grant,— O my lord!
Troilus
What should they grant? what makes this pretty abruption? What too curious dreg espies my sweet lady in the fountain of our love?
Cressida
More dregs than water, if my fears have eyes.
Troilus
Fears make devils of cherubims; they never see truly.
Cressida
Blind fear, that seeing reason leads, finds safer footing than blind reason stumbling without fear: to fear the worst oft cures the worse.
Troilus
O, let my lady apprehend no fear: in all Cupid’s pageant there is presented no monster.
Cressida
Nor nothing monstrous neither?
Troilus
Nothing, but our undertakings; when we vow to weep seas, live in fire, eat rocks, tame tigers; thinking it harder for our mistress to devise imposition enough than for us to undergo any difficulty imposed. This is the monstruosity in love, lady, that the will is infinite and the execution confined, that the desire is boundless and the act a slave to limit.
Cressida
They say all lovers swear more performance than they are able and yet reserve an ability that they never perform, vowing more than the perfection of ten and discharging less than the tenth part of one. They that have the voice of lions and the act of hares, are they not monsters?
Troilus
Are there such? such are not we: praise us as we are tasted, allow us as we prove; our head shall go bare till merit crown it: no perfection in reversion shall have a praise in present: we will not name desert before his birth, and, being born, his addition shall be humble. Few words to fair faith: Troilus shall be such to Cressid as what envy can say worst shall be a mock for his truth, and what truth can speak truest not truer than Troilus.
Cressida
Will you walk in, my lord?
Re-enter Pandarus
Pandarus
What, blushing still? have you not done talking yet?
Cressida
Well, uncle, what folly I commit, I dedicate to you.
Pandarus
I thank you for that: if my lord get a boy of you, you’ll give him me. Be true to my lord: if he flinch, chide me for it.
Troilus
You know now your hostages; your uncle’s word and my firm faith.
Pandarus
Nay, I’ll give my word for her too: our kindred, though they be long ere they are wooed, they are constant being won: they are burs, I can tell you; they’ll stick where they are thrown.
Cressida
Boldness comes to me now, and brings me heart.
Prince Troilus, I have loved you night and day
For many weary months.
Troilus
Why was my Cressid then so hard to win?
Cressida
Hard to seem won: but I was won, my lord,
With the first glance that ever — pardon me —
If I confess much, you will play the tyrant.
I love you now; but not, till now, so much
But I might master it:
in faith, I lie;
My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown
Too headstrong for their mother. See, we fools!
Why have I blabb’d? who shall be true to us,
When we are so unsecret to ourselves?
But, though I loved you well, I woo’d you not;
And yet, good faith, I wish’d myself a man,
Or that we women had men’s privilege
Of speaking first. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue,
For in this rapture I shall surely speak
The thing I shall repent. See, see, your silence,
Cunning in dumbness, from my weakness draws
My very soul of counsel! stop my mouth.
Troilus
And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence.
Pandarus
Pretty, i’ faith.
Cressida
My lord, I do beseech you, pardon me;
’Twas not my purpose, thus to beg a kiss:
I am ashamed. O heavens! what have I done?
For this time will I take my leave, my lord.
Troilus
Your leave, sweet Cressid!
Pandarus
Leave! an you take leave till to-morrow morning,—
Cressida
Pray you, content you.
Troilus
What offends you, lady?
Cressida
Sir, mine own company.
Troilus
You cannot shun Yourself.
Cressida
Let me go and try:
I have a kind of self resides with you;
But an unkind self, that itself will leave,
To be another’s fool. I would be gone:
Where is my wit? I know not what I speak.
Troilus
Well know they what they speak that speak so wisely.
Cressida
Perchance, my lord, I show more craft than love;
And fell so roundly to a large confession,
To angle for your thoughts: but you are wise,
Or else you love not, for to be wise and love
Exceeds man’s might; that dwells with gods above.
Troilus
O that I thought it could be in a woman —
As, if it can, I will presume in you —
To feed for aye her ramp and flames of love;
To keep her constancy in plight and youth,
Outliving beauty’s outward, with a mind
That doth renew swifter than blood decays!
Or that persuasion could but thus convince me,
That my integrity and truth to you
Might be affronted with the match and weight
Of such a winnow’d purity in love;
How were I then uplifted! but, alas!
I am as true as truth’s simplicity
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 truths by Troilus: when their rhymes,
Full of protest, of oath and big compare,
Want 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 the centre,
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
Prophet may you be!
If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,
When time is old and hath forgot itself,
When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,
And blind oblivion swallow’d cities up,
And mighty states characterless are grated
To dusty nothing, yet let memory,
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, as wolf to heifer’s calf,
Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son,’
‘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 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 Pandars; let all constant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids, and all brokers-between Pandars! say, amen.
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!
And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here
Bed, chamber, Pandar to provide this gear!
Exeunt
SCENE III. THE GRECIAN CAMP. BEFORE ACHILLES’ TENT.
Enter Agamemnon, Ulysses, Diomedes, Nestor, Ajax, Menelaus, and Calchas
Calchas
Now, princes, for the service I have done you,
The 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 love,
I have abandon’d Troy, left my possession,
Incurr’d a traitor’s name; exposed myself,
From certain and possess’d conveniences,
To doubtful fortunes; sequestering from me all
That time, acquaintance, custom and condition
Made tame and most familiar to my nature,
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 register’d in promise,
Which, you say, live to come in my behalf.
Agamemnon
What wouldst thou of us, Trojan? make demand.
Calchas
You have a Trojan prisoner, call’d Antenor,
Yesterday took: Troy holds him very dear.
Oft have you — often have you thanks therefore —
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
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,
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 to-morrow
Be answer’d in his challenge: Ajax is ready.
Diomedes
This shall I undertake; and ’tis a burden
Which I am proud to bear.
Exeunt Diomedes and Calchas
Enter Achilles and Patroclus, before their tent
Ulysses
Achilles stands i’ the entrance of his tent:
Please it our general to pass strangely by him,
As if he were forgot; and, princes all,
Lay negligent and loose regard upon him:
I will come last. ’Tis like he�
��ll question me
Why such unplausive eyes are bent on him:
If so, I have derision medicinable,
To use between your strangeness and his pride,
Which his own will shall have desire to drink:
It may be 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
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 look’d on. I will lead the way.
Achilles
What, comes the general to speak with me?
You know my mind, I’ll fight no more ’gainst Troy.
Agamemnon
What says Achilles? would he aught with us?
Nestor
Would you, my lord, aught with the general?
Achilles
No.
Nestor
Nothing, my lord.
Agamemnon
The better.
Exeunt Agamemnon and Nestor
Achilles
Good day, good day.
Menelaus
How do you? how do you?
Exit
Achilles
What, does the cuckold scorn me?
Ajax
How now, Patroclus!
Achilles
Good morrow, Ajax.
Ajax
Ha?
Achilles
Good morrow.
Ajax
Ay, and good next day too.
Exit
Achilles
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 used to creep
To holy altars.
Achilles
What, am I poor of late?
’Tis certain, greatness, once fall’n out with fortune,
Must fall out with men too: what the declined is
He shall as soon read in the eyes of others
As feel in his own fall; for men, like butterflies,
Show not their mealy wings but to the summer,
And not a man, for being simply man,
Hath any honour, but honour for those honours
That are without him, as place, riches, favour,
Prizes of accident as oft as merit:
Which when they fall, as being slippery standers,
The love that lean’d on them as slippery too,
Do 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,
Save these men’s looks; who do, methinks, find out
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