instrument. Now, sweet queen.
HELEN Why, this is kindly done.
PANDARUS My niece is horribly in love with a thing you have,
sweet queen.
HELEN She shall have it, my lord, if it be not my lord Paris.
PANDARUS He! no, she’ll none of him; they two are twain.
HELEN Falling in, after falling out, may make them three.
PANDARUS Come, come, I’ll hear no more of this; I’ll sing
you a song now.
HELEN Ay, ay, prithee now. By my troth, sweet lord, thou
hast a fine forehead.
PANDARUS Ay, you may, you may.
HELEN Let thy song be love: this love will undo us all.
O Cupid, Cupid, Cupid!
PANDARUS Love! ay, that it shall, i’ faith.
PARIS Ay, good now, love, love, nothing but love.
PANDARUS In good troth, it begins so.
Sings
Love, love, nothing but love, still more!
For, O, love’s bow
Shoots buck and doe:
The shaft confounds,
Not that it wounds,
But tickles still the sore.
These lovers cry Oh! oh! they die!
Yet that which seems the wound to kill,
Doth turn oh! oh! to ha! ha! he!
So dying love lives still:
Oh! oh! a while, but ha! ha! ha!
Oh! oh! groans out for ha! ha! ha!
Heigh-ho!
HELEN In love, i’ faith, to the very tip of the nose.
PARIS 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.
PANDARUS 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
a-field to-day?
PARIS Hector, Deiphobus, Helenus, Antenor, and all the
gallantry of Troy: I would fain have armed to-day,
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.
PANDARUS Not I, honey-sweet queen. I long to hear how they
sped to-day. You’ll remember your brother’s excuse?
PARIS To a hair.
PANDARUS Farewell, sweet queen.
HELEN Commend me to your niece.
PANDARUS I will, sweet queen.
Exit
A retreat sounded
PARIS They’re come from field: let us to Priam’s hall,
To greet the warriors. Sweet Helen, I must woo you
To help unarm our Hector: his stubborn buckles,
With these your white enchanting fingers touch’d,
Shall more obey than to the edge of steel
Or force of Greekish sinews; you shall do more
Than all the island kings,–disarm great Hector.
HELEN ‘Twill make us proud to be his servant, Paris;
Yea, what he shall receive of us in duty
Gives us more palm in beauty than we have,
Yea, overshines ourself.
PARIS Sweet, above thought I love thee.
Exeunt
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.
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
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.
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
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,
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
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:
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.
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 ’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
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
‘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!
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.
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
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
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
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?
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
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?
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
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
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.
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
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?
But, though I loved you well, I woo’d you not;