SCENE II. The same. Before Calchas' tent. Troilus and Cressida  Shakespeare homepage  |  Troiles and Cressida  | Act 5, Scene 2 

 Previous scene  |  Next scene  SCENE II. The same. Before Calchas' tent. 

 Enter DIOMEDES  DIOMEDES  What, are you up here, ho? speak. 

 CALCHAS  [Within]  Who calls? 

 DIOMEDES  Calchas, I think. Where's your daughter? 

 CALCHAS  [Within]  She comes to you. 



 Enter TROILUS and ULYSSES, at a distance; after them, THERSITES  ULYSSES  Stand where the torch may not discover us. 



 Enter CRESSIDA  TROILUS  Cressid comes forth to him. 

 DIOMEDES  How now, my charge! 

 CRESSIDA  Now, my sweet guardian! Hark, a word with you. 



 Whispers  TROILUS  Yea, so familiar! 

 ULYSSES  She will sing any man at first sight. 

 THERSITES  And any man may sing her, if he can take her cliff; 

 she's noted. 

 DIOMEDES  Will you remember? 

 CRESSIDA  Remember! yes. 

 DIOMEDES  Nay, but do, then; 

 And let your mind be coupled with your words. 

 TROILUS  What should she remember? 

 ULYSSES  List. 

 CRESSIDA  Sweet honey Greek, tempt me no more to folly. 

 THERSITES  Roguery! 

 DIOMEDES  Nay, then,-- 

 CRESSIDA  I'll tell you what,-- 

 DIOMEDES  Foh, foh! come, tell a pin: you are forsworn. 

 CRESSIDA  In faith, I cannot: what would you have me do? 

 THERSITES  A juggling trick,--to be secretly open. 

 DIOMEDES  What did you swear you would bestow on me? 

 CRESSIDA  I prithee, do not hold me to mine oath; 

 Bid me do any thing but that, sweet Greek. 

 DIOMEDES  Good night. 

 TROILUS  Hold, patience! 

 ULYSSES  How now, Trojan! 

 CRESSIDA  Diomed,-- 

 DIOMEDES  No, no, good night: I'll be your fool no more. 

 TROILUS  Thy better must. 

 CRESSIDA  Hark, one word in your ear. 

 TROILUS  O plague and madness! 

 ULYSSES  You are moved, prince; let us depart, I pray you, 

 Lest your displeasure should enlarge itself 

 To wrathful terms: this place is dangerous; 

 The time right deadly; I beseech you, go. 

 TROILUS  Behold, I pray you! 

 ULYSSES  Nay, good my lord, go off: 

 You flow to great distraction; come, my lord. 

 TROILUS  I pray thee, stay. 

 ULYSSES  You have not patience; come. 

 TROILUS  I pray you, stay; by hell and all hell's torments 

 I will not speak a word! 

 DIOMEDES  And so, good night. 

 CRESSIDA  Nay, but you part in anger. 

 TROILUS  Doth that grieve thee? 

 O wither'd truth! 

 ULYSSES  Why, how now, lord! 

 TROILUS  By Jove, 

 I will be patient. 

 CRESSIDA  Guardian!--why, Greek! 

 DIOMEDES  Foh, foh! adieu; you palter. 

 CRESSIDA  In faith, I do not: come hither once again. 

 ULYSSES  You shake, my lord, at something: will you go? 

 You will break out. 

 TROILUS  She strokes his cheek! 

 ULYSSES  Come, come. 

 TROILUS  Nay, stay; by Jove, I will not speak a word: 

 There is between my will and all offences 

 A guard of patience: stay a little while. 

 THERSITES  How the devil Luxury, with his fat rump and 

 potato-finger, tickles these together! Fry, lechery, fry! 

 DIOMEDES  But will you, then? 

 CRESSIDA  In faith, I will, la; never trust me else. 

 DIOMEDES  Give me some token for the surety of it. 

 CRESSIDA  I'll fetch you one. 



 Exit  ULYSSES  You have sworn patience. 

 TROILUS  Fear me not, sweet lord; 

 I will not be myself, nor have cognition 

 Of what I feel: I am all patience. 



 Re-enter CRESSIDA  THERSITES  Now the pledge; now, now, now! 

 CRESSIDA  Here, Diomed, keep this sleeve. 

 TROILUS  O beauty! where is thy faith? 

 ULYSSES  My lord,-- 

 TROILUS  I will be patient; outwardly I will. 

 CRESSIDA  You look upon that sleeve; behold it well. 

 He loved me--O false wench!--Give't me again. 

 DIOMEDES  Whose was't? 

 CRESSIDA  It is no matter, now I have't again. 

 I will not meet with you to-morrow night: 

 I prithee, Diomed, visit me no more. 

 THERSITES  Now she sharpens: well said, whetstone! 

 DIOMEDES  I shall have it. 

 CRESSIDA  What, this? 

 DIOMEDES  Ay, that. 

 CRESSIDA  O, all you gods! O pretty, pretty pledge! 

 Thy master now lies thinking in his bed 

 Of thee and me, and sighs, and takes my glove, 

 And gives memorial dainty kisses to it, 

 As I kiss thee. Nay, do not snatch it from me; 

 He that takes that doth take my heart withal. 

 DIOMEDES  I had your heart before, this follows it. 

 TROILUS  I did swear patience. 

 CRESSIDA  You shall not have it, Diomed; faith, you shall not; 

 I'll give you something else. 

 DIOMEDES  I will have this: whose was it? 

 CRESSIDA  It is no matter. 

 DIOMEDES  Come, tell me whose it was. 

 CRESSIDA  'Twas one's that loved me better than you will. 

 But, now you have it, take it. 

 DIOMEDES  Whose was it? 

 CRESSIDA  By all Diana's waiting-women yond, 

 And by herself, I will not tell you whose. 

 DIOMEDES  To-morrow will I wear it on my helm, 

 And grieve his spirit that dares not challenge it. 

 TROILUS  Wert thou the devil, and worest it on thy horn, 

 It should be challenged. 

 CRESSIDA  Well, well, 'tis done, 'tis past: and yet it is not; 

 I will not keep my word. 

 DIOMEDES  Why, then, farewell; 

 Thou never shalt mock Diomed again. 

 CRESSIDA  You shall not go: one cannot speak a word, 

 But it straight starts you. 

 DIOMEDES  I do not like this fooling. 

 THERSITES  Nor I, by Pluto: but that that likes not you pleases me best. 

 DIOMEDES  What, shall I come? the hour? 

 CRESSIDA  Ay, come:--O Jove!--do come:--I shall be plagued. 

 DIOMEDES  Farewell till then. 

 CRESSIDA  Good night: I prithee, come. 



 Exit DIOMEDES  Troilus, farewell! one eye yet looks on thee 

 But with my heart the other eye doth see. 

 Ah, poor our sex! this fault in us I find, 

 The error of our eye directs our mind: 

 What error leads must err; O, then conclude 

 Minds sway'd by eyes are full of turpitude. 



 Exit  THERSITES  A proof of strength she could not publish more, 

 Unless she said ' My mind is now turn'd whore.' 

 ULYSSES  All's done, my lord. 

 TROILUS  It is. 

 ULYSSES  Why stay we, then? 

 TROILUS  To make a recordation to my soul 

 Of every syllable that here was spoke. 

 But if I tell how these two did co-act, 

 Shall I not lie in publishing a truth? 

 Sith yet there is a credence in my heart, 

 An esperance so obstinately strong, 

 That doth invert the attest of eyes and ears, 

 As if those organs had deceptious functions, 

 Created only to calumniate. 

 Was Cressid here? 

 ULYSSES  I cannot conjure, Trojan. 

 TROILUS  She was not, sure. 

 ULYSSES  Most sure she was. 

 TROILUS  Why, my negation hath no taste of madness. 

 ULYSSES  Nor mine, my lord: Cressid was here but now. 

 TROILUS  Let it not be believed for womanhood! 

 Think, we had mothers; do not give advantage 

 To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme, 

 For depravation, to square the general sex 

 By Cressid's rule: rather think this not Cressid. 

 ULYSSES  What hath she done, prince, that can soil our mothers? 

 TROILUS  Nothing at all, unless that this were she. 

 THERSITES  Will he swagger himself out on's own eyes? 

 TROILUS  This she? no, this is Diomed's Cressida: 

 If beauty have a soul, this is not she; 

 If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimonies, 

 If sanctimony be the gods' delight, 

 If there be rule in unity itself, 

 This is not she. O madness of discourse, 

 That cause sets up with and against itself! 

 Bi-fold authority! where reason can revolt 

 Without perdition, and loss assume all reason 

 Without revolt: this is, and is not, Cressid. 

 Within my soul there doth conduce a fight 

 Of this strange nature that a thing inseparate 

 Divides more wider than the sky and earth, 

 And yet the spacious breadth of this division 

 Admits no orifex for a point as subtle 

 As Ariachne's broken woof to enter. 

 Instance, O instance! strong as Pluto's gates; 

 Cressid is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven: 

 Instance, O instance! strong as heaven itself; 

 The bonds of heaven are slipp'd, dissolved, and loosed; 

 And with another knot, five-finger-tied, 

 The fractions of her faith, orts of her love, 

 The fragments, scraps, the bits and greasy relics 

 Of her o'er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed. 

 ULYSSES  May worthy Troilus be half attach'd 

 With that which here his passion doth express? 

 TROILUS  Ay, Greek; and that shall be divulged well 

 In characters as red as Mars his heart 

 Inflamed with Venus: never did young man fancy 

 With so eternal and so fix'd a soul. 

 Hark, Greek: as much as I do Cressid love, 

 So much by weight hate I her Diomed: 

 That sleeve is mine that he'll bear on his helm; 

 Were it a casque composed by Vulcan's skill, 

 My sword should bite it: not the dreadful spout 

 Which shipmen do the hurricano call, 

 Constringed in mass by the almighty sun, 

 Shall dizzy with more clamour Neptune's ear 

 In his descent than shall my prompted sword 

 Falling on Diomed. 

 THERSITES  He'll tickle it for his concupy. 

 TROILUS  O Cressid! O false Cressid! false, false, false! 

 Let all untruths stand by thy stained name, 

 And they'll seem glorious. 

 ULYSSES  O, contain yourself 

 Your passion draws ears hither. 



 Enter AENEAS  AENEAS  I have been seeking you this hour, my lord: 

 Hector, by this, is arming him in Troy; 

 Ajax, your guard, stays to conduct you home. 

 TROILUS  Have with you, prince. My courteous lord, adieu. 

 Farewell, revolted fair! and, Diomed, 

 Stand fast, and wear a castle on thy head! 

 ULYSSES  I'll bring you to the gates. 

 TROILUS  Accept distracted thanks. 



 Exeunt TROILUS, AENEAS, and ULYSSES  THERSITES  Would I could meet that rogue Diomed! I would 

 croak like a raven; I would bode, I would bode. 

 Patroclus will give me any thing for the 

 intelligence of this whore: the parrot will not 

 do more for an almond than he for a commodious drab. 

 Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery; nothing 

 else holds fashion: a burning devil take them! 



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