Act III, Scene 2

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. 1650

• 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 1660
  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. 1665

[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 1670
  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, 1675
  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 1680
  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. 1685

[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 1690
  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? 1695
  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 1700
  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 1705
  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 1710
  '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! 1715

• 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. 1720

• 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 1725
  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 1730
  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 1735
  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? 1740

• 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 1745
  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? 1750

[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 1755
  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 1760
  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. 1765

• 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 1770
  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? 1775
  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 1780
  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. 1785

• 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! 1790

• 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. 1795

• 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. 1800

• 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 1805
  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, 1810
  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 1815
  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. 1820

• 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, 1825
  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, 1830
  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, 1835
  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, 1840
  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,' 1845
  '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 1850
  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. 1855

• 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! 1860
  And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here
  Bed, chamber, Pandar to provide this gear!

[Exeunt]