Excerpt from Troilus and Cressida - anthology. Against the backdrop of the Trojan War, Prince Troilus has become infatuated with Cressida. The young woman is niece to Pandarus, one of the lords whom Troilus knows well from the battlefield. Cressida has long admired Troilus but has been wary of showing her affection. However, when Pandarus steps in and arranges a secret tryst between the pair, she consents. As Act 3, Scene ii of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida begins, Pandarus awaits the arrival of Troilus, who is eagerly anticipating his meeting with Cressida. Pandarus fetches her in and fusses around the pair, making preparations for their night together. The play is complex--critics have long argued over its genre, whether it is tragedy, comedy, or something different--and this scene demonstrates some of its ambiguity. Although on the surface the action is that of a romantic union, the talk is more of fear, falsehood, folly, doubt, and shame, than of love. Moreover, the presence of Pandarus undercuts any illusion that this is an idyllic, generous-spirited love-affair, despite Troilus's apparent concern with integrity, truth, and constancy. As the young couple walk in together to the bedchamber prepared for them, Pandarus joins their hands to seal the "bargain" of their love: instead of a priest to join them in the mutual service of marriage, they have only a businesslike "pander", or pimp, able to guarantee only temporal concerns. Troilus and Cressida Act 3, Scene ii Enter Pandarus and Troilus's Man, meeting PANDARUS. How now, where's thy master? At my cousin Cressida's? MAN. No, sir; he stays for you to conduct him thither. Enter Troilus PANDARUS. O, here he comes. How now, how now? TROILUS. Sirrah, walk off. Exit Man 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 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. 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 watery palate tastes indeed Love's thrice-repurèd 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. 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. 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. (To Cressida) 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'fills. (To Troilus) Why do you not speak to her? (To Cressida) Come, draw this curtain, and let's see your picture. 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. 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'th'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'th'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 worst. 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? Enter Pandarusi 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 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 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 soul of counsel from me!--Stop my mouth. TROILUS. And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence. He kisses her 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 tomorrow 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. 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 showed 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 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, That my integrity and truth to you Might be affronted with the match and weight Of such a winnowed 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 th'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 swallowed 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!-- Exeunt Troilus and Cressida And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here Bed, chamber, and Pandar to provide this gear! Exit
