TPTT The History of Troilus and Cressida: ACT III
Introduction
PROLOGUE
ACT I
ACT II
ACT III
SCENE I. Troy. Priam's palace.
SCENE II. The same. Pandarus' orchard.
SCENE III. The Grecian camp. Before Achilles' tent.
ACT IV
ACT V
About the Play
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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

5     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
10    Staying for waftage. O, be thou my Charon,
      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
15    And fly with me to Cressid!
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,
20    When that the watery palate tastes indeed
      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:
25    I fear it much; and I do fear besides,
      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
30    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.
Exit
TROILUS
35    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
      The eye of majesty.
Re-enter PANDARUS with CRESSIDA
PANDARUS
40    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,
45    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 'twere dark, you'ld close sooner.
      So, so; rub on, and kiss the mistress. How now!
50    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
      ducks i' the river: go to, go to.
TROILUS
      You have bereft me of all words, lady.
PANDARUS
55    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
      'In witness whereof the parties interchangeably'--
      Come in, come in: I'll go get a fire.
Exit
CRESSIDA
60    Will you walk in, my lord?
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
65    lady in the fountain of our love?
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
70    fear the worst oft cures the worse.
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
75    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
80    desire is boundless and the act a slave to limit.
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
85    that have the voice of lions and the act of hares,
      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
90    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
95    speak truest not truer than Troilus.
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,
100   you'll give him me. Be true to my lord: if he
      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,
105   though they be long ere they are wooed, they are
      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
110   For many weary months.
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.
115   I love you now; but not, till now, so much
      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,
120   When we are so unsecret to ourselves?
      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,
125   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.
TROILUS
      And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence.
PANDARUS
130   Pretty, i' faith.
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
135   Your leave, sweet Cressid!
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
140   You cannot shun Yourself.
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:
145   Where is my wit? I know not what I speak.
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,
150   Or else you love not, for to be wise and love
      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;
155   To keep her constancy in plight and youth,
      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
160   Might be affronted with the match and weight
      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
165   In that I'll war with you.
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,
170   Full of protest, of oath and big compare,
      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,
175   Yet, after all comparisons of truth,
      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!
180   If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,
      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
185   To dusty nothing, yet let memory,
      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,
190   Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son,'
      '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.
195   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 end
      after my name; call them all Pandars; let all
      constant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids,
200   and all brokers-between Pandars! say, amen.
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
205   pretty encounters, press it to death: away!
      And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here
      Bed, chamber, Pandar to provide this gear!
Exeunt
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