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Complete Plays, The

Page 81

by William Shakespeare

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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