Pan. Go to, sweet queen, go to:-commends how they sped to-day.-You'll remember your brohimself most affectionately to you. ther's excuse? Helen. You shall not bob us out of our melody; Helen. And to make a sweet lady sad, is a sour offence. Pan. Nay, that shall not serve your turn; that shall it not, in truth, la. Nay, I care not for such words: no, no.-And, my lord, he desires you, that, if the king call for him at supper, you will make his excuse. Helen. My lord Pandarus,— Pan. What say my sweet queen,-my very very sweet queen ? Par. What exploit's in hand? where sups he tonight ? Helen. Nay, but my lord,———— Pan. What says my sweet queen ?-My cousin will fall out with you. You must not know where he sups. Par. I'll lay my life, with my disposer Cressida. Pan. No, no, no such matter, you are wide; come, your disposer is sick. Par. Well, I'll make excuse. To help unarm our Hector: his stubborn buckles, Yea, what he shall receive of us in duty, Par. Sweet, above thought I love thee. [Exeunt. Serv. No, sir; he stays for you to conduct him Pan. You spy! what do you spy ?--Come, give thither. me an instrument.-Now, sweet queen. Helen. Why, this is kindly done. Pan. My niece is horribly in love with a thing you have, sweet queen. Helen. She shall have it, my lord, if it be not iny lord Paris. Pan. He! no, she'll none of him; they two are twain. Helen. Falling in, after falling out, may make them three. Pan. Come, come, I'll hear no more of this; I'll sing you a song now. Helen. Ay, ay, pr'ythee now. By my troth, sweet lord, thou hast a fine forehead, Pan. Ay, you may, you may. Helen. Let thy song be love; this love will undo us all. O, Cupid, Cupid, Cupid! Pan. Love! ay, that it shall, i' faith. Enter Troilus. Pan. O, here he comes.-How now, how now? Pan. Walk here i'the orchard, I'll bring her That it enchants my sense; What will it be, Par. Ay, good now, love, love, nothing but love. When that the watry palate tastes indeed Pan. In good troth, it begins so : Love, love, nothing but love, still more! Shoots buck and doe: The shaft confounds, Not that it wounds, But tickles still the sore. These lovers cry-Oh! oh! they die! Helen. In love, i' faith, to the very tip of the nose. Par. He eats nothing but doves, love; and that breeds hot blood, and hot blood begets hot thoughts, and hot thoughts beget hot deeds, and hot deeds is love. Pan. Is this the generation of love? hot blood, hot thoughts, and hot deeds?-Why, they are vipers: Is love a generation of vipers? Sweet lord, who's afield to-day? Par. Hector, Deiphobus, Helenus, Antenor, and all the gallantry of Troy: I would fain have armed to-night, but my Nell would not have it so. How chance my brother Troilus went not? Helen. He hangs the lip at something ;-you know all, lord Pandarus. Pan. Not I, honey-sweet queen.-I long to hear Love's thrice-reputed nectar? death, I fear me ; I fear it much; and I do fear besides, Re-enter Pandarus. Pan. 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 newta'en sparrow. [Exit Pandarus. Tro. Even such a passion doth embrace my bo som: My heart beats thicker than a feverous pulse Enter Pandarus and Cressida. Pan. 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 't were | But I might master it :-in faith, I lie; dark, you'd close sooner. So, so; rub on, and kiss My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown the mistress. How now, a kiss in fee-farm! build Too headstrong for their mother: See, we fools! there, carpenter; the air is sweet. Nay, you shall Why have I blabb'd? who shall be true to us, fight your hearts out, ere I part you. The falcon When we are so unsecret to ourselves? as the tercel, for all the ducks i'the river: go to, But, though I lov'd you well, I woo'd you not; go to. 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. Tro. And shall, albeit sweet musick issues thence. Tro. You have bereft me of all words, lady. Pan. Words pay no debts, give her deeds: but she'll bereave you of the deeds too, if she call your activity in question. What, billing again? Here's -In witness whereof the parties interchangeablyCome in, come in; I'll go get a fire. [Exit Pandarus. Cres. Will you walk in, my lord? Tro. O Cressida, how often have I wished me thus? Pan. Pretty, i'faith. Cres. My lord, I do beseech you, pardon me: Cres. Wished, my lord?-The gods grant-O'Twas not my purpose, thus to beg a kiss: my lord! Tro. What should they grant? what makes this pretty abruption? What too curious dreg espies my sweet lady in the fountain of our love? Cres. More dregs than water, if my fears have eyes. Tro. Fears make devils cherubins; they never see truly. Cres. Blind fear, that seeing reason leads, finds safer footing than blind reason stumbling without fear: To fear the worst, oft cures the worst. Tro. O, let my lady apprehend no fear: in all Cupid's pageant there is presented no monster. Cres. Nor nothing monstrous neither? Tro. 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 slave to limit. Cres. 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? Tro. 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. Cres. Will you walk in, my lord? Re-enter Pandarus. Pan. What, blushing still? have you not done talking yet? Cres. Well, uncle, what folly I commit, I dedicate to you. Pan. 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. Tro., You know now your hostages; your uncle's word, and my firm faith. Pan. Nay, I'll give my word for her too; our Prince Troilus, I have lov'd you night and day, Tro. Why was my Cressid then so hard to win? With the first glance that ever-Pardon me ;- I am asham'd;-O heavens! what have i done?— Pan. Leave! an you take leave till to-morrow morning, Cres. Pray you, content you. Yourself. Cres. Let me go and try: You cannot shun I have a kind of self resides with you: Cres. Perchance, my lord, I show more craft than And fell so roundly to a large confession, O virtuous fight, When right with right wars who shall be most right! True swains in love shall, in the world to come, Full of protest, of oath, and big compare, Cres. Prophet may you be! If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth, As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth, Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son; Agam. We'll execute your purpose, and put on Pan. 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 You know my mind, I'll fight no more 'gainst 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. Tro. Amen. Cres. Amen. Enter Agamemnon, Ulysses, Diomedes, Nestor, Cal. Now, princes, for the service I have done The advantage of the time prompts me aloud As new into the world, strange, unacquainted: To give me now a little benefit, Out of those many register'd in promise, Cal. You have a Trojan prisoner, call'd Antenor, In change of him: let him be sent, great princes, Agam. Dio. This shall I undertake; and 'tis a burden [Exeunt Diomedes and Calchas. Enter Achilles and Patroclus, before their tent. Ulyss. Achilles stands i'the entrance of his tent: Please it our general to pass strangely by him, I will come last: 'Tis like, he'll question me, Troy. Agam. What says Achilles? would he aught with us? Nest. Would you, my lord, aught with the general ? To send their smiles before them to Achilles ; Achil. What, am I poor of late? 'Tis certain, greatness, once fallen out with for tune, Must fall out with men too: What the declin'd is, As feel in his own fall: for men, like butterflies, Which when they fall, as being slippery standers, out Something not worth in me such rich beholding Achil. Why such unplausive eyes are bent, why turn'd on For speculation turn's not to itself, him: If so, I have derision med'cinable, To use between your strangeness and his pride, Till it hath travell'd, and is married there It is familiar; but at the author's drift: (Though in and of him there be much consisting, Heavens, what a man is there! a very horse; Most abject in regard, and dear in use! How some men creep in skittish fortune's hall, Achil. I do believe it: for they pass'd by me, A great-sized monster of ingratitudes : Achil. I have strong reasons. Ulyss. Of this my privacy But 'gainst your privacy The reasons are more potent and heroical: Ulyss. Is that a wonder? Ha! known? The providence that's in a watchful state, Does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles. [Brit. Patr. To this effect, Achilles, have I mov'd you: Those scraps are good deeds past: which are In time of action. I stand condemn'd for this; devour'd As fast as they are made, forgot as soon In monumental mockery. Take the instant way; Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank, Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours: seek past; And give to dust, that is a little gilt, More laud than gilt o'er-dusted. The present eye praises the present object: And drave great Mars to faction. They think, my little stomach to the war, Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold, Achil. I see, my reputation is at stake; Those wounds heal ill, that men do give themselves : Omission to do what is necessary Achil. Go call Thersites hither, sweet Patroclus. To see great Hector in his weeds of peace; Ther. He must fight singly to-morrow with Hector; and is so prophetically proud of an heroical cudgelling, that he raves in saying nothing. Achil. How can that be? Ther. Why, he stalks up and down like a peacock, a stride, and a stand: ruminates, like an hostess, that hath no arithmetick but her brain to set down her reckoning: bites his lip with a politick regard, as who should say there were wit in this head, an 'twould out; and so there is; but it lies as coldly in him as fire in a flint, which will not show without knocking. The man's undone for ever; for if Hector break not his neck i'the combat, he'll break it himself in vain-glory. He knows not me: I said, Good-morrow, Ajax; and he replies, Thanks, Agamemnon. What think you of this man, that takes me for the general? He is grown a very land-fish, languageless, a monster. A plague of opinion! a man may wear it on both sides, like a leather jerkin. Achil. Thou must be my ambassador to him, Thersites. Ther. Who, I? why, he'll answer nobody; he professes not answering; speaking is for beggars: he wears his tongue in his arms. I will put on his presence; let Patroclus make demands to me, you shall see the pageant of Ajax. Achil. To him, Patroclus: Tell him,-I humbly desire the valiant Ajax, to invite the most valorous Hector to come unarmed to my tent; and to procure safe conduct for his person, of the magnanimous, and most illustrious, six-or-seven-times-honoured captain-general of the Grecian army, Agamemnon. Do this. Patr. Jove bless great Ajax. Ther. Humph! Patr. I come from the worthy Achilles, Ther. Ha! Patr. Who most humbly desires you, to invite Hector to his tent!. Ther. Humph! But when I meet you arm'd, as black defiance, Dio. The one and other Diomed embraces. Ene. And thou shalt hunt a lion, that will fly Dio. We do; and long to know each other worse. Ene. I was sent for to the king; but why, I Par. His purpose meets you; 'Twas to bring this Patr. And to procure safe conduct from Aga- To Calchas' house; and there to render him, memnon. Patr. Your answer, sir. Ther. Fare you well, with all my heart. Achil. Why, but he is not in this tune, is he? Ther. No, but he's out o'tune thus. What musick will be in him when Hector has knocked out his brains, I know not: But, I am sure, none; unless the fiddler Apollo get his sinews to make catlings on. Achil. Come, thou shalt bear a letter to him straight. Ther. Let me bear another to his horse; for that's the more capable creature. Achil. My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr'd; And I myself see not the bottom of it. [Exeunt Achilles and Patroclus. Ther. 'Would the fountain of your mind were clear again, that I might water an ass at it! I had rather be a tick in a sheep, than such a valiant ig[Exit. norance. ACT IV. SCENE I.-Troy. A Street. Enter, at one side, Æneas, and Servant with a torch; Par. See, ho! who's that there? Ene. Is the prince there in person? ness For the enfreed Antenor, the fair Cressid: Ene. The bitter disposition of the time [Exit. Par. And tell me, noble Diomed; 'faith, tell me Even in the soul of sound good-fellowship,- Both alike: Dio. Par. You are too bitter to your country woman. For every false drop in her bawdy veins A Grecian's life hath sunk; for every scruple A Trojan hath been slain; since she could speak, Should rob my bed-mate of my company. Dio. That's my mind too-Good morrow, lord Eneas. Here lies our way. [Exeunt. SCENE II.-The same. Court before the House of Enter Troilus and Cressida. Tro. Dear, trouble not yourself; the morn is cold. |