Complete Plays, The
Page 85
Thersites
No! why art thou then exasperate, thou idle immaterial skein of sleave-silk, thou green sarcenet flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal’s purse, thou? Ah, how the poor world is pestered with such waterflies, diminutives of nature!
Patroclus
Out, gall!
Thersites
Finch-egg!
Achilles
My sweet Patroclus, I am thwarted quite
From my great purpose in to-morrow’s battle.
Here is a letter from Queen Hecuba,
A token from her daughter, my fair love,
Both taxing me and gaging me to keep
An oath that I have sworn. I will not break it:
Fall Greeks; fail fame; honour or go or stay;
My major vow lies here, this I’ll obey.
Come, come, Thersites, help to trim my tent:
This night in banqueting must all be spent.
Away, Patroclus!
Exeunt Achilles and Patroclus
Thersites
With too much blood and too little brain, these two may run mad; but, if with too much brain and too little blood they do, I’ll be a curer of madmen. Here’s Agamemnon, an honest fellow enough and one that loves quails; but he has not so much brain as earwax: and the goodly transformation of Jupiter there, his brother, the bull,— the primitive statue, and oblique memorial of cuckolds; a thrifty shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his brother’s leg,— to what form but that he is, should wit larded with malice and malice forced with wit turn him to? To an ass, were nothing; he is both ass and ox: to an ox, were nothing; he is both ox and ass. To be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a toad, a lizard, an owl, a puttock, or a herring without a roe, I would not care; but to be Menelaus, I would conspire against destiny. Ask me not, what I would be, if I were not Thersites; for I care not to be the louse of a lazar, so I were not Menelaus! Hey-day! spirits and fires!
Enter Hector, Troilus, Ajax, Agamemnon, Ulysses, Nestor, Menelaus, and Diomedes, with lights
Agamemnon
We go wrong, we go wrong.
Ajax
No, yonder ’tis;
There, where we see the lights.
Hector
I trouble you.
Ajax
No, not a whit.
Ulysses
Here comes himself to guide you.
Re-enter Achilles
Achilles
Welcome, brave Hector; welcome, princes all.
Agamemnon
So now, fair prince of Troy, I bid good night.
Ajax commands the guard to tend on you.
Hector
Thanks and good night to the Greeks’ general.
Menelaus
Good night, my lord.
Hector
Good night, sweet lord Menelaus.
Thersites
Sweet draught: ‘sweet’ quoth ’a! sweet sink, sweet sewer.
Achilles
Good night and welcome, both at once, to those
That go or tarry.
Agamemnon
Good night.
Exeunt Agamemnon and Menelaus
Achilles
Old Nestor tarries; and you too, Diomed,
Keep Hector company an hour or two.
Diomedes
I cannot, lord; I have important business,
The tide whereof is now. Good night, great Hector.
Hector
Give me your hand.
Ulysses
[Aside to Troilus] Follow his torch; he goes to
Calchas’ tent:
I’ll keep you company.
Troilus
Sweet sir, you honour me.
Hector
And so, good night.
Exit Diomedes; Ulysses and Troilus following
Achilles
Come, come, enter my tent.
Exeunt Achilles, Hector, Ajax, and Nestor
Thersites
That same Diomed’s a false-hearted rogue, a most unjust knave; I will no more trust him when he leers than I will a serpent when he hisses: he will spend his mouth, and promise, like Brabbler the hound: but when he performs, astronomers foretell it; it is prodigious, there will come some change; the sun borrows of the moon, when Diomed keeps his word. I will rather leave to see Hector, than not to dog him: they say he keeps a Trojan drab, and uses the traitor Calchas’ tent: I’ll after. Nothing but lechery! all incontinent varlets!
Exit
SCENE II. THE SAME. BEFORE CALCHAS’ TENT.
Enter Diomedes
Diomedes
What, are you up here, ho? speak.
Calchas
[Within] Who calls?
Diomedes
Calchas, I think. Where’s your daughter?
Calchas
[Within] She comes to you.
Enter Troilus and Ulysses, at a distance; after them, Thersites
Ulysses
Stand where the torch may not discover us.
Enter Cressida
Troilus
Cressid comes forth to him.
Diomedes
How now, my charge!
Cressida
Now, my sweet guardian! Hark, a word with you.
Whispers
Troilus
Yea, so familiar!
Ulysses
She will sing any man at first sight.
Thersites
And any man may sing her, if he can take her cliff; she’s noted.
Diomedes
Will you remember?
Cressida
Remember! yes.
Diomedes
Nay, but do, then;
And let your mind be coupled with your words.
Troilus
What should she remember?
Ulysses
List.
Cressida
Sweet honey Greek, tempt me no more to folly.
Thersites
Roguery!
Diomedes
Nay, then,—
Cressida
I’ll tell you what,—
Diomedes
Foh, foh! come, tell a pin: you are forsworn.
Cressida
In faith, I cannot: what would you have me do?
Thersites
A juggling trick,— to be secretly open.
Diomedes
What did you swear you would bestow on me?
Cressida
I prithee, do not hold me to mine oath;
Bid me do any thing but that, sweet Greek.
Diomedes
Good night.
Troilus
Hold, patience!
Ulysses
How now, Trojan!
Cressida
Diomed,—
Diomedes
No, no, good night: I’ll be your fool no more.
Troilus
Thy better must.
Cressida
Hark, one word in your ear.
Troilus
O plague and madness!
Ulysses
You are moved, prince; let us depart, I pray you,
Lest your displeasure should enlarge itself
To wrathful terms: this place is dangerous;
The time right deadly; I beseech you, go.
Troilus
Behold, I pray you!
Ulysses
Nay, good my lord, go off:
You flow to great distraction; come, my lord.
Troilus
I pray thee, stay.
Ulysses
You have not patience; come.
Troilus
I pray you, stay; by hell and all hell’s torments
I will not speak a word!
Diomedes
And so, good night.
Cressida
Nay, but you part in anger.
Troilus
Doth that grieve thee?
O wither’d truth!
Ulysses
Why, how now, lord!
T
roilus
By Jove,
I will be patient.
Cressida
Guardian!— why, Greek!
Diomedes
Foh, foh! adieu; you palter.
Cressida
In faith, I do not: come hither once again.
Ulysses
You shake, my lord, at something: will you go?
You will break out.
Troilus
She strokes his cheek!
Ulysses
Come, come.
Troilus
Nay, stay; by Jove, I will not speak a word:
There is between my will and all offences
A guard of patience: stay a little while.
Thersites
How the devil Luxury, with his fat rump and potato-finger, tickles these together! Fry, lechery, fry!
Diomedes
But will you, then?
Cressida
In faith, I will, la; never trust me else.
Diomedes
Give me some token for the surety of it.
Cressida
I’ll fetch you one.
Exit
Ulysses
You have sworn patience.
Troilus
Fear me not, sweet lord;
I will not be myself, nor have cognition
Of what I feel: I am all patience.
Re-enter Cressida
Thersites
Now the pledge; now, now, now!
Cressida
Here, Diomed, keep this sleeve.
Troilus
O beauty! where is thy faith?
Ulysses
My lord,—
Troilus
I will be patient; outwardly I will.
Cressida
You look upon that sleeve; behold it well.
He loved me — O false wench!— Give’t me again.
Diomedes
Whose was’t?
Cressida
It is no matter, now I have’t again.
I will not meet with you to-morrow night:
I prithee, Diomed, visit me no more.
Thersites
Now she sharpens: well said, whetstone!
Diomedes
I shall have it.
Cressida
What, this?
Diomedes
Ay, that.
Cressida
O, all you gods! O pretty, pretty pledge!
Thy master now lies thinking in his bed
Of thee and me, and sighs, and takes my glove,
And gives memorial dainty kisses to it,
As I kiss thee. Nay, do not snatch it from me;
He that takes that doth take my heart withal.
Diomedes
I had your heart before, this follows it.
Troilus
I did swear patience.
Cressida
You shall not have it, Diomed; faith, you shall not;
I’ll give you something else.
Diomedes
I will have this: whose was it?
Cressida
It is no matter.
Diomedes
Come, tell me whose it was.
Cressida
’Twas one’s that loved me better than you will.
But, now you have it, take it.
Diomedes
Whose was it?
Cressida
By all Diana’s waiting-women yond,
And by herself, I will not tell you whose.
Diomedes
To-morrow will I wear it on my helm,
And grieve his spirit that dares not challenge it.
Troilus
Wert thou the devil, and worest it on thy horn,
It should be challenged.
Cressida
Well, well, ’tis done, ’tis past: and yet it is not;
I will not keep my word.
Diomedes
Why, then, farewell;
Thou never shalt mock Diomed again.
Cressida
You shall not go: one cannot speak a word,
But it straight starts you.
Diomedes
I do not like this fooling.
Thersites
Nor I, by Pluto: but that that likes not you pleases me best.
Diomedes
What, shall I come? the hour?
Cressida
Ay, come:— O Jove!— do come:— I shall be plagued.
Diomedes
Farewell till then.
Cressida
Good night: I prithee, come.
Exit Diomedes
Troilus, farewell! one eye yet looks on thee
But with my heart the other eye doth see.
Ah, poor our sex! this fault in us I find,
The error of our eye directs our mind:
What error leads must err; O, then conclude
Minds sway’d by eyes are full of turpitude.
Exit
Thersites
A proof of strength she could not publish more,
Unless she said ‘My mind is now turn’d whore.’
Ulysses
All’s done, my lord.
Troilus
It is.
Ulysses
Why stay we, then?
Troilus
To make a recordation to my soul
Of every syllable that here was spoke.
But if I tell how these two did co-act,
Shall I not lie in publishing a truth?
Sith yet there is a credence in my heart,
An esperance so obstinately strong,
That doth invert the attest of eyes and ears,
As if those organs had deceptious functions,
Created only to calumniate.
Was Cressid here?
Ulysses
I cannot conjure, Trojan.
Troilus
She was not, sure.
Ulysses
Most sure she was.
Troilus
Why, my negation hath no taste of madness.
Ulysses
Nor mine, my lord: Cressid was here but now.
Troilus
Let it not be believed for womanhood!
Think, we had mothers; do not give advantage
To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme,
For depravation, to square the general sex
By Cressid’s rule: rather think this not Cressid.
Ulysses
What hath she done, prince, that can soil our mothers?
Troilus
Nothing at all, unless that this were she.
Thersites
Will he swagger himself out on’s own eyes?
Troilus
This she? no, this is Diomed’s Cressida:
If beauty have a soul, this is not she;
If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimonies,
If sanctimony be the gods’ delight,
If there be rule in unity itself,
This is not she. O madness of discourse,
That cause sets up with and against itself!
Bi-fold authority! where reason can revolt
Without perdition, and loss assume all reason
Without revolt: this is, and is not, Cressid.
Within my soul there doth conduce a fight
Of this strange nature that a thing inseparate
Divides more wider than the sky and earth,
And yet the spacious breadth of this division
Admits no orifex for a point as subtle
As Ariachne’s broken woof to enter.
Instance, O instance! strong as Pluto’s gates;
Cressid is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven:
Instance, O instance! strong as heaven itself;
The bonds of heaven are slipp’d, dissolved, and loosed;
And with another knot, five-finger-tied,
The fractions of her faith, orts of her love,
The fragments, scraps, the bits and greasy relics
&nbs
p; Of her o’er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed.
Ulysses
May worthy Troilus be half attach’d
With that which here his passion doth express?
Troilus
Ay, Greek; and that shall be divulged well
In characters as red as Mars his heart
Inflamed with Venus: never did young man fancy
With so eternal and so fix’d a soul.
Hark, Greek: as much as I do Cressid love,
So much by weight hate I her Diomed:
That sleeve is mine that he’ll bear on his helm;
Were it a casque composed by Vulcan’s skill,
My sword should bite it: not the dreadful spout
Which shipmen do the hurricano call,
Constringed in mass by the almighty sun,
Shall dizzy with more clamour Neptune’s ear
In his descent than shall my prompted sword
Falling on Diomed.
Thersites
He’ll tickle it for his concupy.
Troilus
O Cressid! O false Cressid! false, false, false!
Let all untruths stand by thy stained name,
And they’ll seem glorious.
Ulysses
O, contain yourself
Your passion draws ears hither.
Enter Aeneas
Aeneas
I have been seeking you this hour, my lord:
Hector, by this, is arming him in Troy;
Ajax, your guard, stays to conduct you home.
Troilus
Have with you, prince. My courteous lord, adieu.
Farewell, revolted fair! and, Diomed,
Stand fast, and wear a castle on thy head!
Ulysses
I’ll bring you to the gates.
Troilus
Accept distracted thanks.
Exeunt Troilus, Aeneas, and Ulysses
Thersites
Would I could meet that rogue Diomed! I would croak like a raven; I would bode, I would bode. Patroclus will give me any thing for the intelligence of this whore: the parrot will not do more for an almond than he for a commodious drab. Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery; nothing else holds fashion: a burning devil take them!
Exit
SCENE III. TROY. BEFORE PRIAM’S PALACE.
Enter Hector and Andromache
Andromache
When was my lord so much ungently temper’d,
To stop his ears against admonishment?
Unarm, unarm, and do not fight to-day.
Hector
You train me to offend you; get you in:
By all the everlasting gods, I’ll go!
Andromache
My dreams will, sure, prove ominous to the day.
Hector
No more, I say.
Enter Cassandra
Cassandra
Where is my brother Hector?
Andromache
Here, sister; arm’d, and bloody in intent.
Consort with me in loud and dear petition,
Pursue we him on knees; for I have dream’d
Of bloody turbulence, and this whole night
Hath nothing been but shapes and forms of slaughter.