Troilus And Cressida

1 Enter Pandarus and Troilus’ Boy, meeting.
2 PANDARUS.
3 How now! Where’s thy master? At my cousin Cressida’s?
4 BOY.
5 No, sir; he stays for you to conduct him thither.
6 Enter Troilus.
7 PANDARUS.
8 O, here he comes. How now, how now?
9 TROILUS.
10 Sirrah, walk off.
11 [_Exit_ Boy.]
12 PANDARUS.
13 Have you seen my cousin?
14 TROILUS.
15 No, Pandarus. I stalk about her door
16 Like a strange soul upon the Stygian banks
17 Staying for waftage. O, be thou my Charon,
18 And give me swift transportance to these fields
19 Where I may wallow in the lily beds
20 Propos’d for the deserver! O gentle Pandar,
21 from Cupid’s shoulder pluck his painted wings,
22 and fly with me to Cressid!
23 PANDARUS.
24 Walk here i’ th’ orchard, I’ll bring her straight.
25 [_Exit_.]
26 TROILUS.
27 I am giddy; expectation whirls me round.
28 Th’imaginary relish is so sweet
29 That it enchants my sense; what will it be
30 When that the wat’ry palate tastes indeed
31 Love’s thrice-repured nectar? Death, I fear me;
32 Sounding destruction; or some joy too fine,
33 Too subtle-potent, tun’d too sharp in sweetness,
34 For the capacity of my ruder powers.
35 I fear it much; and I do fear besides
36 That I shall lose distinction in my joys;
37 As doth a battle, when they charge on heaps
38 The enemy flying.
39 Re-enter Pandarus.
40 PANDARUS.
41 She’s making her ready, she’ll come straight; you must be witty now.
42 She does so blush, and fetches her wind so short, as if she were fray’d
43 with a sprite. I’ll fetch her. It is the prettiest villain; she fetches
44 her breath as short as a new-ta’en sparrow.
45 [_Exit_.]
46 TROILUS.
47 Even such a passion doth embrace my bosom.
48 My heart beats thicker than a feverous pulse,
49 And all my powers do their bestowing lose,
50 Like vassalage at unawares encount’ring
51 The eye of majesty.
52 Re-enter Pandarus with Cressida.
53 PANDARUS.
54 Come, come, what need you blush? Shame’s a baby. Here she is now; swear
55 the oaths now to her that you have sworn to me.—What, are you gone
56 again? You must be watch’d ere you be made tame, must you? Come your
57 ways, come your ways; and you draw backward, we’ll put you i’ th’
58 fills. Why do you not speak to her? Come, draw this curtain and let’s
59 see your picture. Alas the day, how loath you are to offend daylight!
60 And ’twere dark, you’d close sooner. So, so; rub on, and kiss the
61 mistress. How now, a kiss in fee-farm! Build there, carpenter; the air
62 is sweet. Nay, you shall fight your hearts out ere I part you. The
63 falcon as the tercel, for all the ducks i’ th’ river. Go to, go to.
64 TROILUS.
65 You have bereft me of all words, lady.
66 PANDARUS.
67 Words pay no debts, give her deeds; but she’ll bereave you o’ th’ deeds
68 too, if she call your activity in question. What, billing again? Here’s
69 ‘In witness whereof the parties interchangeably.’ Come in, come in;
70 I’ll go get a fire.
71 [_Exit_.]
72 CRESSIDA.
73 Will you walk in, my lord?
74 TROILUS.
75 O Cressid, how often have I wish’d me thus!
76 CRESSIDA.
77 Wish’d, my lord! The gods grant—O my lord!
78 TROILUS.
79 What should they grant? What makes this pretty abruption? What too
80 curious dreg espies my sweet lady in the fountain of our love?
81 CRESSIDA.
82 More dregs than water, if my fears have eyes.
83 TROILUS.
84 Fears make devils of cherubins; they never see truly.
85 CRESSIDA.
86 Blind fear, that seeing reason leads, finds safer footing than blind
87 reason stumbling without fear. To fear the worst oft cures the worse.
88 TROILUS.
89 O, let my lady apprehend no fear! In all Cupid’s pageant there is
90 presented no monster.
91 CRESSIDA.
92 Nor nothing monstrous neither?
93 TROILUS.
94 Nothing, but our undertakings when we vow to weep seas, live in fire,
95 eat rocks, tame tigers; thinking it harder for our mistress to devise
96 imposition enough than for us to undergo any difficulty imposed. This
97 is the monstruosity in love, lady, that the will is infinite, and the
98 execution confin’d; that the desire is boundless, and the act a slave
99 to limit.
100 CRESSIDA.
101 They say all lovers swear more performance than they are able, and yet
102 reserve an ability that they never perform; vowing more than the
103 perfection of ten, and discharging less than the tenth part of one.
104 They that have the voice of lions and the act of hares, are they not
105 monsters?
106 TROILUS.
107 Are there such? Such are not we. Praise us as we are tasted, allow us
108 as we prove; our head shall go bare till merit crown it. No perfection
109 in reversion shall have a praise in present. We will not name desert
110 before his birth; and, being born, his addition shall be humble. Few
111 words to fair faith: Troilus shall be such to Cressid as what envy can
112 say worst shall be a mock for his truth; and what truth can speak
113 truest not truer than Troilus.
114 CRESSIDA.
115 Will you walk in, my lord?
116 Re-enter Pandarus.
117 PANDARUS.
118 What, blushing still? Have you not done talking yet?
119 CRESSIDA.
120 Well, uncle, what folly I commit, I dedicate to you.
121 PANDARUS.
122 I thank you for that; if my lord get a boy of you, you’ll give him me.
123 Be true to my lord; if he flinch, chide me for it.
124 TROILUS.
125 You know now your hostages: your uncle’s word and my firm faith.
126 PANDARUS.
127 Nay, I’ll give my word for her too: our kindred, though they be long
128 ere they are wooed, they are constant being won; they are burs, I can
129 tell you; they’ll stick where they are thrown.
130 CRESSIDA.
131 Boldness comes to me now and brings me heart.
132 Prince Troilus, I have lov’d you night and day
133 For many weary months.
134 TROILUS.
135 Why was my Cressid then so hard to win?
136 CRESSIDA.
137 Hard to seem won; but I was won, my lord,
138 With the first glance that ever—pardon me.
139 If I confess much, you will play the tyrant.
140 I love you now; but till now not so much
141 But I might master it. In faith, I lie;
142 My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown
143 Too headstrong for their mother. See, we fools!
144 Why have I blabb’d? Who shall be true to us,
145 When we are so unsecret to ourselves?
146 But, though I lov’d you well, I woo’d you not;
147 And yet, good faith, I wish’d myself a man,
148 Or that we women had men’s privilege
149 Of speaking first. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue,
150 For in this rapture I shall surely speak
151 The thing I shall repent. See, see, your silence,
152 Cunning in dumbness, from my weakness draws
153 My very soul of counsel. Stop my mouth.
154 TROILUS.
155 And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence.
156 PANDARUS.
157 Pretty, i’ faith.
158 CRESSIDA.
159 My lord, I do beseech you, pardon me;
160 ’Twas not my purpose thus to beg a kiss.
161 I am asham’d. O heavens! what have I done?
162 For this time will I take my leave, my lord.
163 TROILUS.
164 Your leave, sweet Cressid!
165 PANDARUS.
166 Leave! And you take leave till tomorrow morning—
167 CRESSIDA.
168 Pray you, content you.
169 TROILUS.
170 What offends you, lady?
171 CRESSIDA.
172 Sir, mine own company.
173 TROILUS.
174 You cannot shun yourself.
175 CRESSIDA.
176 Let me go and try.
177 I have a kind of self resides with you;
178 But an unkind self, that itself will leave
179 To be another’s fool. I would be gone.
180 Where is my wit? I know not what I speak.
181 TROILUS.
182 Well know they what they speak that speak so wisely.
183 CRESSIDA.
184 Perchance, my lord, I show more craft than love;
185 And fell so roundly to a large confession
186 To angle for your thoughts; but you are wise—
187 Or else you love not; for to be wise and love
188 Exceeds man’s might; that dwells with gods above.
189 TROILUS.
190 O that I thought it could be in a woman—
191 As, if it can, I will presume in you—
192 To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love;
193 To keep her constancy in plight and youth,
194 Outliving beauty’s outward, with a mind
195 That doth renew swifter than blood decays!
196 Or that persuasion could but thus convince me
197 That my integrity and truth to you
198 Might be affronted with the match and weight
199 Of such a winnowed purity in love.
200 How were I then uplifted! But, alas,
201 I am as true as truth’s simplicity,
202 And simpler than the infancy of truth.
203 CRESSIDA.
204 In that I’ll war with you.
205 TROILUS.
206 O virtuous fight,
207 When right with right wars who shall be most right!
208 True swains in love shall in the world to come
209 Approve their truth by Troilus, when their rhymes,
210 Full of protest, of oath, and big compare,
211 Want similes, truth tir’d with iteration—
212 As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,
213 As sun to day, as turtle to her mate,
214 As iron to adamant, as earth to th’ centre—
215 Yet, after all comparisons of truth,
216 As truth’s authentic author to be cited,
217 ‘As true as Troilus’ shall crown up the verse
218 And sanctify the numbers.
219 CRESSIDA.
220 Prophet may you be!
221 If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,
222 When time is old and hath forgot itself,
223 When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,
224 And blind oblivion swallow’d cities up,
225 And mighty states characterless are grated
226 To dusty nothing—yet let memory
227 From false to false, among false maids in love,
228 Upbraid my falsehood when th’ have said ‘As false
229 As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth,
230 As fox to lamb, or wolf to heifer’s calf,
231 Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son’—
232 Yea, let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood,
233 ‘As false as Cressid.’
234 PANDARUS.
235 Go to, a bargain made; seal it, seal it; I’ll be the witness. Here I
236 hold your hand; here my cousin’s. If ever you prove false one to
237 another, since I have taken such pains to bring you together, let all
238 pitiful goers-between be call’d to the world’s end after my name—call
239 them all Pandars; let all constant men be Troiluses, all false women
240 Cressids, and all brokers between Pandars. Say ‘Amen.’
241 TROILUS.
242 Amen.
243 CRESSIDA.
244 Amen.
245 PANDARUS.
246 Amen. Whereupon I will show you a chamber and a bed; which bed, because
247 it shall not speak of your pretty encounters, press it to death. Away!
248 [_Exeunt Troilus and Cressida_.]
249 And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here,
250 Bed, chamber, pander, to provide this gear!
251 [_Exit_.]