Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare
Act 5 - Scene 2
The same. Before Calchas’ tent.
Diomedes : What, are you up here, ho? speak.
Calchas : [Within] Who calls?
Diomedes : Calchas, I think. Where's your daughter?
Calchas : [Within] She comes to you.
[p][Enter TROILUS and ULYSSES, at a
distance;]
[p]after them, THERSITES]
Ulysses : Stand where the torch may not discover us.
Troilus : Cressid comes forth to him.
Diomedes : How now, my charge!
Cressida : Now, my sweet guardian! Hark, a word with you.
Troilus : Yea, so familiar!
Ulysses : She will sing any man at first sight.
Thersites : And any man may sing her, if he can take her cliff;
[p]she's noted.
Diomedes : Will you remember?
Cressida : Remember! yes.
Diomedes : Nay, but do, then;
[p]And let your mind be coupled with your words.
Troilus : What should she remember?
Ulysses : List.
Cressida : Sweet honey Greek, tempt me no more to folly.
Thersites : Roguery!
Diomedes : Nay, then,--
Cressida : I'll tell you what,--
Diomedes : Foh, foh! come, tell a pin: you are forsworn.
Cressida : In faith, I cannot: what would you have me do?
Thersites : A juggling trick,--to be secretly open.
Diomedes : What did you swear you would bestow on me?
Cressida : I prithee, do not hold me to mine oath;
[p]Bid me do any thing but
that, sweet Greek.
Diomedes : Good night.
Troilus : Hold, patience!
Ulysses : How now, Trojan!
Cressida : Diomed,--
Diomedes : No, no, good night: I'll be your fool no more.
Troilus : Thy better must.
Cressida : Hark, one word in your ear.
Troilus : O plague and madness!
Ulysses : You are moved, prince; let us depart, I pray you,
[p]Lest your
displeasure should enlarge itself
[p]To wrathful terms: this place is
dangerous;
[p]The time right deadly; I beseech you, go.
Troilus : Behold, I pray you!
Ulysses : Nay, good my lord, go off:
[p]You flow to great distraction; come, my
lord.
Troilus : I pray thee, stay.
Ulysses : You have not patience; come.
Troilus : I pray you, stay; by hell and all hell's torments
[p]I will not speak
a word!
Diomedes : And so, good night.
Cressida : Nay, but you part in anger.
Troilus : Doth that grieve thee?
[p]O wither'd truth!
Ulysses : Why, how now, lord!
Troilus : By Jove,
[p]I will be patient.
Cressida : Guardian!--why, Greek!
Diomedes : Foh, foh! adieu; you palter.
Cressida : In faith, I do not: come hither once again.
Ulysses : You shake, my lord, at something: will you go?
[p]You will break out.
Troilus : She strokes his cheek!
Ulysses : Come, come.
Troilus : Nay, stay; by Jove, I will not speak a word:
[p]There is between my
will and all offences
[p]A guard of patience: stay a little while.
Thersites : How the devil Luxury, with his fat rump and
[p]potato-finger, tickles
these together! Fry, lechery, fry!
Diomedes : But will you, then?
Cressida : In faith, I will, la; never trust me else.
Diomedes : Give me some token for the surety of it.
Cressida : I'll fetch you one.
Ulysses : You have sworn patience.
Troilus : Fear me not, sweet lord;
[p]I will not be myself, nor have
cognition
[p]Of what I feel: I am all patience.
Thersites : Now the pledge; now, now, now!
Cressida : Here, Diomed, keep this sleeve.
Troilus : O beauty! where is thy faith?
Ulysses : My lord,--
Troilus : I will be patient; outwardly I will.
Cressida : You look upon that sleeve; behold it well.
[p]He loved me--O false
wench!--Give't me again.
Diomedes : Whose was't?
Cressida : It is no matter, now I have't again.
[p]I will not meet with you
to-morrow night:
[p]I prithee, Diomed, visit me no more.
Thersites : Now she sharpens: well said, whetstone!
Diomedes : I shall have it.
Cressida : What, this?
Diomedes : Ay, that.
Cressida : O, all you gods! O pretty, pretty pledge!
[p]Thy master now lies
thinking in his bed
[p]Of thee and me, and sighs, and takes my
glove,
[p]And gives memorial dainty kisses to it,
[p]As I kiss thee.
Nay, do not snatch it from me;
[p]He that takes that doth take my
heart withal.
Diomedes : I had your heart before, this follows it.
Troilus : I did swear patience.
Cressida : You shall not have it, Diomed; faith, you shall not;
[p]I'll give you
something else.
Diomedes : I will have this: whose was it?
Cressida : It is no matter.
Diomedes : Come, tell me whose it was.
Cressida : 'Twas one's that loved me better than you will.
[p]But, now you have
it, take it.
Diomedes : Whose was it?
Cressida : By all Diana's waiting-women yond,
[p]And by herself, I will not tell
you whose.
Diomedes : To-morrow will I wear it on my helm,
[p]And grieve his spirit that
dares not challenge it.
Troilus : Wert thou the devil, and worest it on thy horn,
[p]It should be
challenged.
Cressida : Well, well, 'tis done, 'tis past: and yet it is not;
[p]I will not
keep my word.
Diomedes : Why, then, farewell;
[p]Thou never shalt mock Diomed again.
Cressida : You shall not go: one cannot speak a word,
[p]But it straight starts
you.
Diomedes : I do not like this fooling.
Thersites : Nor I, by Pluto: but that that likes not you pleases me best.
Diomedes : What, shall I come? the hour?
Cressida : Ay, come:--O Jove!--do come:--I shall be plagued.
Diomedes : Farewell till then.
Cressida : Good night: I prithee, come.
[p][Exit DIOMEDES]
[p]Troilus, farewell!
one eye yet looks on thee
[p]But with my heart the other eye doth
see.
[p]Ah, poor our sex! this fault in us I find,
[p]The error of our
eye directs our mind:
[p]What error leads must err; O, then
conclude
[p]Minds sway'd by eyes are full of turpitude.
Thersites : A proof of strength she could not publish more,
[p]Unless she said '
My mind is now turn'd whore.'
Ulysses : All's done, my lord.
Troilus : It is.
Ulysses : Why stay we, then?
Troilus : To make a recordation to my soul
[p]Of every syllable that here was
spoke.
[p]But if I tell how these two did co-act,
[p]Shall I not lie
in publishing a truth?
[p]Sith yet there is a credence in my
heart,
[p]An esperance so obstinately strong,
[p]That doth invert the
attest of eyes and ears,
[p]As if those organs had deceptious
functions,
[p]Created only to calumniate.
[p]Was Cressid here?
Ulysses : I cannot conjure, Trojan.
Troilus : She was not, sure.
Ulysses : Most sure she was.
Troilus : Why, my negation hath no taste of madness.
Ulysses : Nor mine, my lord: Cressid was here but now.
Troilus : Let it not be believed for womanhood!
[p]Think, we had mothers; do not
give advantage
[p]To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme,
[p]For
depravation, to square the general sex
[p]By Cressid's rule: rather
think this not Cressid.
Ulysses : What hath she done, prince, that can soil our mothers?
Troilus : Nothing at all, unless that this were she.
Thersites : Will he swagger himself out on's own eyes?
Troilus : This she? no, this is Diomed's Cressida:
[p]If beauty have a soul,
this is not she;
[p]If souls guide vows, if vows be
sanctimonies,
[p]If sanctimony be the gods' delight,
[p]If there be
rule in unity itself,
[p]This is not she. O madness of
discourse,
[p]That cause sets up with and against itself!
[p]Bi-fold
authority! where reason can revolt
[p]Without perdition, and loss
assume all reason
[p]Without revolt: this is, and is not,
Cressid.
[p]Within my soul there doth conduce a fight
[p]Of this
strange nature that a thing inseparate
[p]Divides more wider than the
sky and earth,
[p]And yet the spacious breadth of this
division
[p]Admits no orifex for a point as subtle
[p]As Ariachne's
broken woof to enter.
[p]Instance, O instance! strong as Pluto's
gates;
[p]Cressid is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven:
[p]Instance,
O instance! strong as heaven itself;
[p]The bonds of heaven are
slipp'd, dissolved, and loosed;
[p]And with another knot,
five-finger-tied,
[p]The fractions of her faith, orts of her
love,
[p]The fragments, scraps, the bits and greasy relics
[p]Of her
o'er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed.
Ulysses : May worthy Troilus be half attach'd
[p]With that which here his
passion doth express?
Troilus : Ay, Greek; and that shall be divulged well
[p]In characters as red as
Mars his heart
[p]Inflamed with Venus: never did young man
fancy
[p]With so eternal and so fix'd a soul.
[p]Hark, Greek: as much
as I do Cressid love,
[p]So much by weight hate I her Diomed:
[p]That
sleeve is mine that he'll bear on his helm;
[p]Were it a casque
composed by Vulcan's skill,
[p]My sword should bite it: not the
dreadful spout
[p]Which shipmen do the hurricano call,
[p]Constringed
in mass by the almighty sun,
[p]Shall dizzy with more clamour
Neptune's ear
[p]In his descent than shall my prompted
sword
[p]Falling on Diomed.
Thersites : He'll tickle it for his concupy.
Troilus : O Cressid! O false Cressid! false, false, false!
[p]Let all untruths
stand by thy stained name,
[p]And they'll seem glorious.
Ulysses : O, contain yourself
[p]Your passion draws ears hither.
Aeneas : I have been seeking you this hour, my lord:
[p]Hector, by this, is
arming him in Troy;
[p]Ajax, your guard, stays to conduct you home.
Troilus : Have with you, prince. My courteous lord, adieu.
[p]Farewell, revolted
fair! and, Diomed,
[p]Stand fast, and wear a castle on thy head!
Ulysses : I'll bring you to the gates.
Troilus : Accept distracted thanks.
Thersites : Would I could meet that rogue Diomed! I would
[p]croak like a raven; I
would bode, I would bode.
[p]Patroclus will give me any thing for
the
[p]intelligence of this whore: the parrot will not
[p]do more for
an almond than he for a commodious drab.
[p]Lechery, lechery; still,
wars and lechery; nothing
[p]else holds fashion: a burning devil take
them!
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Next: Act 5 - Scene 3
