SCENE II. The same. Pandarus' orchard. Troilus and Cressida  Shakespeare homepage  |  Troiles and Cressida  | Act 3, Scene 2 

 Previous scene  |  Next scene  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  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; 

 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. 

 TROILUS  And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence. 

 PANDARUS  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  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  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: 

 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, 

 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; 

 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 

 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  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, 

 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, 

 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! 

 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 

 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, 

 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. 

 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, 

 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 

 pretty encounters, press it to death: away! 

 And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here 

 Bed, chamber, Pandar to provide this gear! 



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