O Cupid, Cupid, Cupid!
PANDARUS Love? Ay, that it shall, i’faith.
PARIS Ay, good now, ‘Love, love, nothing but love’.
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PANDARUS In good truth, it begins so. [Sings.]
Love, love, nothing but love, still love, still more!
For, O, love’s bow
Shoots buck and doe.
The shaft confounds
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Not that it wounds,
But tickles still the sore.
These lovers cry, ‘O! O!’, they die!
Yet that which seems the wound to kill
Doth turn ‘O! O!’ to ‘Ha, ha, he!’
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So dying love lives still.
‘O! O!’ a while, but ‘Ha, ha, ha!’
‘O! O!’ groans out for ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ –
Heigh-ho!
HELEN In love, i’faith, to the very tip of the nose.
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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
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generation of vipers? – Sweet lord, who’s afield today?
PARIS Hector, Deiphobus, Helenus, Antenor and all the
gallantry of Troy. I would fain have armed today, but
my Nell would not have it so. How chance my brother
TROILUS went not?
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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 today. – You’ll remember your
brother’s excuse?
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PARIS To a hair.
PANDARUS Farewell, sweet queen.
HELEN Commend me to your niece.
PANDARUS I will, sweet queen. Exit. Sound a retreat.
PARIS They’re come from field. Let us to Priam’s hall
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To greet the warriors. Sweet Helen, I must woo you
To help unarm our Hector. His stubborn buckles,
With these your white enchanting fingers touched,
Shall more obey than to the edge of steel
Or force of Greekish sinews. You shall do more
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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.
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PARIS Sweet, above thought I love thee. Exeunt.
3.2 Enter PANDARUS and Troilus’ 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.
Enter TROILUS.
PANDARUS O, here he comes. – How now, how now?
TROILUS [to his Boy] Sirrah, walk off. Exit Boy.
5
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
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Where I may wallow in the lily-beds
Proposed for the deserver! O gentle Pandar,
From Cupid’s shoulder pluck his painted wings
And fly with me to Cressid!
PANDARUS Walk here i’th’ orchard. I’ll bring her straight.
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Exit.
TROILUS I am giddy; expectation whirls me round.
Th’imaginary relish is so sweet
That it enchants my sense. What will it be,
When that the wat’ry palates taste indeed
Love’s thrice-repured nectar? Death, I fear me,
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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,
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As doth a battle, when they charge on heaps
The enemy flying.
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.
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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,
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Like vassalage at unawares encount’ring
The eye of majesty.
Enter PANDARUS, and CRESSIDA veiled.
PANDARUS Come, come, what need you blush? Shame’s
a baby. [to Troilus] Here she is now. Swear the oaths
now to her that you have sworn to me. [Cressida draws
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back.] 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’th’ thills. [to Troilus] Why do you not speak to her?
[to Cressida] Come, draw this curtain, and let’s see
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your picture. [She is unveiled.] Alas the day, how
loath you are to offend daylight! An ’twere dark, you’d
close sooner. [to Troilus] So, so, rub on, and kiss the
mistress. [They kiss.] How now, a kiss in fee-farm?
Build there, carpenter, the air is sweet. Nay, you shall
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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
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activity in question. [They kiss.] What, billing again?
Here’s ‘In witness whereof the parties inter-
changeably’. 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!
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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?
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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CRESSIDA Will you walk in, my lord?
Enter PANDARUS.
PANDARUS What, blushing still? Have you not done
talking yet?
CRESSIDA Well, uncle, what folly I commit, I dedicate
to you.
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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 [to Cressida] You know now your hostages:
your uncle’s word and my firm faith.
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PANDARUS Nay, I’ll give my word for her too. Our
kindred, though they be long ere they be 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.
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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;
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If I confess much, you will play the tyrant.
I love you now, but till now not 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!
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Why have I blabbed? Who shall be true to us
When we are so unsecret to ourselves?
But though I loved you well, I wooed you not;
And yet, good faith, I wished myself a man,
Or that we women had men’s privilege
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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, in my weakness draws
My soul of counsel from me! Stop my mouth.
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TROILUS
And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence.
[Kisses her.]
PANDARUS Pretty, i’faith.
CRESSIDA [to Troilus]
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?
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For this time will I take my leave, my lord.
TROILUS Your leave, sweet Cressid?
PANDARUS Leave? An you take leave till tomorrow morning –
CRESSIDA Pray you, content you.
TROILUS What offends you, lady?
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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
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To be another’s fool. Where is my wit?
I would be gone. I speak I know not what.
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
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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 –
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To feed for aye her lamp 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
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The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 513
