1    How now! where's thy master? at my cousin
2    Cressida's?

3    No, sir; he stays for you to conduct him thither.

4    O, here he comes.
Enter TROILUS
5    How now, how now!

6    Sirrah, walk off.

7    Have you seen my cousin?

8    No, Pandarus: I stalk about her door,
9    Like a strange soul upon the Stygian banks
10   Staying for waftage. O, be thou my Charon,
11   And give me swift transportance to those fields
12   Where I may wallow in the lily-beds
13   Proposed for the deserver! O gentle Pandarus,
14   From Cupid's shoulder pluck his painted wings
15   And fly with me to Cressid!

16   Walk here i' the orchard, I'll bring her straight.

17   I am giddy; expectation whirls me round.
18   The imaginary relish is so sweet
19   That it enchants my sense: what will it be,
20   When that the watery palate tastes indeed
21   Love's thrice repured nectar? death, I fear me,
22   Swooning destruction, or some joy too fine,
23   Too subtle-potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness,
24   For the capacity of my ruder powers:
25   I fear it much; and I do fear besides,
26   That I shall lose distinction in my joys;
27   As doth a battle, when they charge on heaps
28   The enemy flying.

29   She's making her ready, she'll come straight: you
30   must be witty now. She does so blush, and fetches
31   her wind so short, as if she were frayed with a
32   sprite: I'll fetch her. It is the prettiest
33   villain: she fetches her breath as short as a
34   new-ta'en sparrow.

35   Even such a passion doth embrace my bosom:
36   My heart beats thicker than a feverous pulse;
37   And all my powers do their bestowing lose,
38   Like vassalage at unawares encountering
39   The eye of majesty.

40   Come, come, what need you blush? shame's a baby.
41   Here she is now: swear the oaths now to her that
42   you have sworn to me. What, are you gone again?
43   you must be watched ere you be made tame, must you?
44   Come your ways, come your ways; an you draw backward,
45   we'll put you i' the fills. Why do you not speak to
46   her? Come, draw this curtain, and let's see your
47   picture. Alas the day, how loath you are to offend
48   daylight! an 'twere dark, you'ld close sooner.
49   So, so; rub on, and kiss the mistress. How now!
50   a kiss in fee-farm! build there, carpenter; the air
51   is sweet. Nay, you shall fight your hearts out ere
52   I part you. The falcon as the tercel, for all the
53   ducks i' the river: go to, go to.

54   You have bereft me of all words, lady.

55   Words pay no debts, give her deeds: but she'll
56   bereave you o' the deeds too, if she call your
57   activity in question. What, billing again? Here's
58   'In witness whereof the parties interchangeably'--
59   Come in, come in: I'll go get a fire.

60   Will you walk in, my lord?

61   O Cressida, how often have I wished me thus!

62   Wished, my lord! The gods grant,--O my lord!

63   What should they grant? what makes this pretty
64   abruption? What too curious dreg espies my sweet
65   lady in the fountain of our love?

66   More dregs than water, if my fears have eyes.

67   Fears make devils of cherubims; they never see truly.

68   Blind fear, that seeing reason leads, finds safer
69   footing than blind reason stumbling without fear: to
70   fear the worst oft cures the worse.

71   O, let my lady apprehend no fear: in all Cupid's
72   pageant there is presented no monster.

73   Nor nothing monstrous neither?

74   Nothing, but our undertakings; when we vow to weep
75   seas, live in fire, eat rocks, tame tigers; thinking
76   it harder for our mistress to devise imposition
77   enough than for us to undergo any difficulty imposed.
78   This is the monstruosity in love, lady, that the will
79   is infinite and the execution confined, that the
80   desire is boundless and the act a slave to limit.

81   They say all lovers swear more performance than they
82   are able and yet reserve an ability that they never
83   perform, vowing more than the perfection of ten and
84   discharging less than the tenth part of one. They
85   that have the voice of lions and the act of hares,
86   are they not monsters?

87   Are there such? such are not we: praise us as we
88   are tasted, allow us as we prove; our head shall go
89   bare till merit crown it: no perfection in reversion
90   shall have a praise in present: we will not name
91   desert before his birth, and, being born, his addition
92   shall be humble. Few words to fair faith: Troilus
93   shall be such to Cressid as what envy can say worst
94   shall be a mock for his truth, and what truth can
95   speak truest not truer than Troilus.

96   Will you walk in, my lord?

97   What, blushing still? have you not done talking yet?

98   Well, uncle, what folly I commit, I dedicate to you.

99   I thank you for that: if my lord get a boy of you,
100  you'll give him me. Be true to my lord: if he
101  flinch, chide me for it.

102  You know now your hostages; your uncle's word and my
103  firm faith.

104  Nay, I'll give my word for her too: our kindred,
105  though they be long ere they are wooed, they are
106  constant being won: they are burs, I can tell you;
107  they'll stick where they are thrown.

108  Boldness comes to me now, and brings me heart.
109  Prince Troilus, I have loved you night and day
110  For many weary months.

111  Why was my Cressid then so hard to win?

112  Hard to seem won: but I was won, my lord,
113  With the first glance that ever--pardon me--
114  If I confess much, you will play the tyrant.
115  I love you now; but not, till now, so much
116  But I might master it: in faith, I lie;
117  My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown
118  Too headstrong for their mother. See, we fools!
119  Why have I blabb'd? who shall be true to us,
120  When we are so unsecret to ourselves?
121  But, though I loved you well, I woo'd you not;
122  And yet, good faith, I wish'd myself a man,
123  Or that we women had men's privilege
124  Of speaking first. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue,
125  For in this rapture I shall surely speak
126  The thing I shall repent. See, see, your silence,
127  Cunning in dumbness, from my weakness draws
128  My very soul of counsel! stop my mouth.

129  And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence.

130  Pretty, i' faith.

131  My lord, I do beseech you, pardon me;
132  'Twas not my purpose, thus to beg a kiss:
133  I am ashamed. O heavens! what have I done?
134  For this time will I take my leave, my lord.

135  Your leave, sweet Cressid!

136  Leave! an you take leave till to-morrow morning,--

137  Pray you, content you.

138  What offends you, lady?

139  Sir, mine own company.

140  You cannot shun Yourself.

141  Let me go and try:
142  I have a kind of self resides with you;
143  But an unkind self, that itself will leave,
144  To be another's fool. I would be gone:
145  Where is my wit? I know not what I speak.

146  Well know they what they speak that speak so wisely.

147  Perchance, my lord, I show more craft than love;
148  And fell so roundly to a large confession,
149  To angle for your thoughts: but you are wise,
150  Or else you love not, for to be wise and love
151  Exceeds man's might; that dwells with gods above.

152  O that I thought it could be in a woman--
153  As, if it can, I will presume in you--
154  To feed for aye her ramp and flames of love;
155  To keep her constancy in plight and youth,
156  Outliving beauty's outward, with a mind
157  That doth renew swifter than blood decays!
158  Or that persuasion could but thus convince me,
159  That my integrity and truth to you
160  Might be affronted with the match and weight
161  Of such a winnow'd purity in love;
162  How were I then uplifted! but, alas!
163  I am as true as truth's simplicity
164  And simpler than the infancy of truth.

165  In that I'll war with you.

166  O virtuous fight,
167  When right with right wars who shall be most right!
168  True swains in love shall in the world to come
169  Approve their truths by Troilus: when their rhymes,
170  Full of protest, of oath and big compare,
171  Want similes, truth tired with iteration,
172  As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,
173  As sun to day, as turtle to her mate,
174  As iron to adamant, as earth to the centre,
175  Yet, after all comparisons of truth,
176  As truth's authentic author to be cited,
177  'As true as Troilus' shall crown up the verse,
178  And sanctify the numbers.

179  Prophet may you be!
180  If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,
181  When time is old and hath forgot itself,
182  When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,
183  And blind oblivion swallow'd cities up,
184  And mighty states characterless are grated
185  To dusty nothing, yet let memory,
186  From false to false, among false maids in love,
187  Upbraid my falsehood! when they've said 'as false
188  As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth,
189  As fox to lamb, as wolf to heifer's calf,
190  Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son,'
191  'Yea,' let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood,
192  'As false as Cressid.'

193  Go to, a bargain made: seal it, seal it; I'll be the
194  witness. Here I hold your hand, here my cousin's.
195  If ever you prove false one to another, since I have
196  taken such pains to bring you together, let all
197  pitiful goers-between be called to the world's end
198  after my name; call them all Pandars; let all
199  constant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids,
200  and all brokers-between Pandars! say, amen.

201  Amen.

202  Amen.

203  Amen. Whereupon I will show you a chamber with a
204  bed; which bed, because it shall not speak of your
205  pretty encounters, press it to death: away!
206  And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here
207  Bed, chamber, Pandar to provide this gear!