Act III
Scene I
Troy. Priam’s palace.
Enter a Servant and Pandarus. | |
Pandarus | Friend, you! pray you, a word: do not you follow the young Lord Paris? |
Servant | Ay, sir, when he goes before me. |
Pandarus | You depend upon him, I mean? |
Servant | Sir, I do depend upon the lord. |
Pandarus | You depend upon a noble gentleman; I must needs praise him. |
Servant | The lord be praised! |
Pandarus | You know me, do you not? |
Servant | Faith, sir, superficially. |
Pandarus | Friend, know me better; I am the Lord Pandarus. |
Servant | I hope I shall know your honour better. |
Pandarus | I do desire it. |
Servant | You are in the state of grace. |
Pandarus | Grace! not so, friend; honour and lordship are my titles. Music within. What music is this? |
Servant | I do but partly know, sir: it is music in parts. |
Pandarus | Know you the musicians? |
Servant | Wholly, sir. |
Pandarus | Who play they to? |
Servant | To the hearers, sir. |
Pandarus | At whose pleasure, friend |
Servant | At mine, sir, and theirs that love music. |
Pandarus | Command, I mean, friend. |
Servant | Who shall I command, sir? |
Pandarus | Friend, we understand not one another: I am too courtly and thou art too cunning. At whose request do these men play? |
Servant | That’s to’t indeed, sir: marry, sir, at the request of Paris my lord, who’s there in person; with him, the mortal Venus, the heart-blood of beauty, love’s invisible soul— |
Pandarus | Who, my cousin Cressida? |
Servant | No, sir, Helen: could you not find out that by her attributes? |
Pandarus | It should seem, fellow, that thou hast not seen the Lady Cressida. I come to speak with Paris from the Prince Troilus: I will make a complimental assault upon him, for my business seethes. |
Servant | Sodden business! there’s a stewed phrase indeed! |
Enter Paris and Helen, attended. | |
Pandarus | Fair be to you, my lord, and to all this fair company! fair desires, in all fair measure, fairly guide them! especially to you, fair queen! fair thoughts be your fair pillow! |
Helen | Dear lord, you are full of fair words. |
Pandarus | You speak your fair pleasure, sweet queen. Fair prince, here is good broken music. |
Paris | You have broke it, cousin: and, by my life, you shall make it whole again; you shall piece it out with a piece of your performance. Nell, he is full of harmony. |
Pandarus | Truly, lady, no. |
Helen | O, sir— |
Pandarus | Rude, in sooth; in good sooth, very rude. |
Paris | Well said, my lord! well, you say so in fits. |
Pandarus | I have business to my lord, dear queen. My lord, will you vouchsafe me a word? |
Helen | Nay, this shall not hedge us out: we’ll hear you sing, certainly. |
Pandarus | Well, sweet queen, you are pleasant with me. But, marry, thus, my lord: my dear lord and most esteemed friend, your brother Troilus— |
Helen | My Lord Pandarus; honey-sweet lord— |
Pandarus | Go to, sweet queen, to go:—commends himself most affectionately to you— |
Helen | You shall not bob us out of our melody: if you do, our melancholy upon your head! |
Pandarus | Sweet queen, sweet queen! that’s a sweet queen, i’ faith. |
Helen | And to make a sweet lady sad is a sour offence. |
Pandarus | Nay, that shall not serve your turn; that shall not, in truth, la. Nay, I care not for such words; no, no. And, my lord, he desires you, that if the king call for him at supper, you will make his excuse. |
Helen | My Lord Pandarus— |
Pandarus | What says my sweet queen, my very very sweet queen? |
Paris | What exploit’s in hand? where sups he to-night? |
Helen | Nay, but, my lord— |
Pandarus | What says my sweet queen? My cousin will fall out with you. You must not know where he sups. |
Paris | I’ll lay my life, with my disposer Cressida. |
Pandarus | No, no, no such matter; you are wide: come, your disposer is sick. |
Paris | Well, I’ll make excuse. |
Pandarus | Ay, good my lord. Why should you say Cressida? no, your poor disposer’s sick. |
Paris | I spy. |
Pandarus | You spy! what do you spy? Come, give me an 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.
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 afield 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,
|
Helen |
’Twill make us proud to be his servant, Paris;
|
Paris | Sweet, above thought I love thee. Exeunt. |
Scene II
The same. Pandarus’ orchard.
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. |
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,
|
Pandarus | Walk here i’ the orchard, I’ll bring her straight. Exit. |
Troilus |
I am giddy; expectation whirls me round.
|
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:
|
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 cherubins; 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.
|
Troilus | Why was my Cressid then so hard to win? |
Cressida |
Hard to seem won: but I was won, my lord,
|
Troilus | And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence. |
Pandarus | Pretty, i’ faith. |
Cressida |
My lord, I do beseech you, pardon me;
|
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
|
Cressida |
Let me go and try:
|
Troilus | Well know they what they speak that speak so wisely. |
Cressida |
Perchance, my lord, I show more craft than love;
|
Troilus |
O that I thought it could be in a woman—
|
Cressida | In that I’ll war with you. |
Troilus |
O virtuous fight,
|
Cressida |
Prophet may you be!
|
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
|
Scene III
The Grecian camp. Before Achilles’ tent.
Enter Agamemnon, Ulysses, Diomedes, Nestor, Ajax, Menelaus, and Calchas. | |
Calchas |
Now, princes, for the service I have done you,
|
Agamemnon | What wouldst thou of us, Trojan? make demand. |
Calchas |
You have a Trojan prisoner, call’d Antenor,
|
Agamemnon |
Let Diomedes bear him,
|
Diomedes |
This shall I undertake; and ’tis a burden
|
Enter Achilles and Patroclus, before their tent. | |
Ulysses |
Achilles stands i’ the entrance of his tent:
|
Agamemnon |
We’ll execute your purpose, and put on
|
Achilles |
What, comes the general to speak with me?
|
Agamemnon | What says Achilles? would he aught with us? |
Nestor | Would you, my lord, aught with the general? |
Achilles | No. |
Nestor | Nothing, my lord. |
Agamemnon | The better. Exeunt Agamemnon and Nestor. |
Achilles | Good day, good day. |
Menelaus | How do you? how do you? Exit. |
Achilles | What, does the cuckold scorn me? |
Ajax | How now, Patroclus! |
Achilles | Good morrow, Ajax. |
Ajax | Ha? |
Achilles | Good morrow. |
Ajax | Ay, and good next day too. Exit. |
Achilles | What mean these fellows? Know they not Achilles? |
Patroclus |
They pass by strangely: they were used to bend,
|
Achilles |
What, am I poor of late?
|
Ulysses | Now, great Thetis’ son! |
Achilles | What are you reading? |
Ulysses |
A strange fellow here
|
Achilles |
This is not strange, Ulysses.
|
Ulysses |
I do not strain at the position—
|
Achilles |
I do believe it; for they pass’d by me
|
Ulysses |
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
|
Achilles |
Of this my privacy
|
Ulysses |
But ’gainst your privacy
|
Achilles | Ha! known! |
Ulysses |
Is that a wonder?
|
Patroclus |
To this effect, Achilles, have I moved you:
|
Achilles | Shall Ajax fight with Hector? |
Patroclus | Ay, and perhaps receive much honour by him. |
Achilles |
I see my reputation is at stake;
|
Patroclus |
O, then, beware;
|
Achilles |
Go call Thersites hither, sweet Patroclus:
|
Enter Thersites. | |
A labour saved! | |
Thersites | A wonder! |
Achilles | What? |
Thersites | Ajax goes up and down the field, asking for himself. |
Achilles | How so? |
Thersites | He must fight singly to-morrow with Hector, and is so prophetically proud of an heroical cudgelling that he raves in saying nothing. |
Achilles | How can that be? |
Thersites | Why, he stalks up and down like a peacock—a stride and a stand: ruminates like an hostess that hath no arithmetic but her brain to set down her reckoning: bites his lip with a politic regard, as who should say “There were wit in this head, an ’twould out;” and so there is, but it lies as coldly in him as fire in a flint, which will not show without knocking. The man’s undone forever; for if Hector break not his neck i’ the combat, he’ll break’t himself in vain-glory. He knows not me: I said “Good morrow, Ajax;” and he replies “Thanks, Agamemnon.” What think you of this man that takes me for the general? He’s grown a very land-fish, languageless, a monster. A plague of opinion! a man may wear it on both sides, like a leather jerkin. |
Achilles | Thou must be my ambassador to him, Thersites. |
Thersites | Who, I? why, he’ll answer nobody; he professes not answering: speaking is for beggars; he wears his tongue in’s arms. I will put on his presence: let Patroclus make demands to me, you shall see the pageant of Ajax. |
Achilles | To him, Patroclus; tell him I humbly desire the valiant Ajax to invite the most valorous Hector to come unarmed to my tent, and to procure safe-conduct for his person of the magnanimous and most illustrious six-or-seven-times-honoured captain-general of the Grecian army, Agamemnon, et cetera. Do this. |
Patroclus | Jove bless great Ajax! |
Thersites | Hum! |
Patroclus | I come from the worthy Achilles— |
Thersites | Ha! |
Patroclus | Who most humbly desires you to invite Hector to his tent— |
Thersites | Hum! |
Patroclus | And to procure safe-conduct from Agamemnon. |
Thersites | Agamemnon! |
Patroclus | Ay, my lord. |
Thersites | Ha! |
Patroclus | What say you to’t? |
Thersites | God b’ wi’ you, with all my heart. |
Patroclus | Your answer, sir. |
Thersites | If to-morrow be a fair day, by eleven o’clock it will go one way or other: howsoever, he shall pay for me ere he has me. |
Patroclus | Your answer, sir. |
Thersites | Fare you well, with all my heart. |
Achilles | Why, but he is not in this tune, is he? |
Thersites | No, but he’s out o’ tune thus. What music will be in him when Hector has knocked out his brains, I know not; but, I am sure, none, unless the fiddler Apollo get his sinews to make catlings on. |
Achilles | Come, thou shalt bear a letter to him straight. |
Thersites | Let me bear another to his horse; for that’s the more capable creature. |
Achilles |
My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr’d;
|
Thersites | Would the fountain of your mind were clear again, that I might water an ass at it! I had rather be a tick in a sheep than such a valiant ignorance. Exit. |