| ACT III 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! | 5 |
| 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, | 10 |
| 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! | 15 |
| 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 | 20 |
| 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, | 25 |
| 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 | 30 |
| 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: | 35 |
| 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. | 40 |
| 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 | 45 |
| 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 | 50 |
| 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 | 55 |
| 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? | 60 |
| 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? | 65 |
| 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. | 70 |
| 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 | 75 |
| 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. | 80 |
| 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, | 85 |
| 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 | 90 |
| 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. | 95 |
| 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 | 100 |
| 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 | 105 |
| 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. | 110 |
| 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 | 115 |
| 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? | 120 |
| 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 | 125 |
| 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. | 130 |
| 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! | 135 |
| 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. | 140 |
| 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. | 145 |
| 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 | 150 |
| 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, | 155 |
| 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 | 160 |
| 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. | 165 |
| 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, | 170 |
| 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, | 175 |
| 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, | 180 |
| 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, | 185 |
| 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,' | 190 |
| '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 | 195 |
| 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. | 200 |
| 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! | 205 |
| And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here |
| Bed, chamber, Pandar to provide this gear! |
| [Exeunt] |
Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida: Scenes and Commentary