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Troilus and Cressida: Act 5 Scene 2

Scene II The same. Before Calchas' tent.

[Enter DIOMEDES]

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.

[Enter TROILUS and ULYSSES, at a distance;

after them, THERSITES]

ULYSSES

Stand where the torch may not discover us.

[Enter CRESSIDA]

TROILUS

Cressid comes forth to him.

DIOMEDES

How now, my charge!

CRESSIDA

Now, my sweet guardian! Hark, a word with you.

[Whispers]

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;

she's noted.

DIOMEDES

Will you remember?

CRESSIDA

Remember! yes.

DIOMEDES

Nay, but do, then;

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;

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,

Lest your displeasure should enlarge itself

To wrathful terms: this place is dangerous;

The time right deadly; I beseech you, go.

TROILUS

Behold, I pray you!

ULYSSES

Nay, good my lord, go off:

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

I will not speak a word!

DIOMEDES

And so, good night.

CRESSIDA

Nay, but you part in anger.

TROILUS

Doth that grieve thee?

O wither'd truth!

ULYSSES

Why, how now, lord!

TROILUS

By Jove,

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?

You will break out.

TROILUS

She strokes his cheek!

ULYSSES

Come, come.

TROILUS

Nay, stay; by Jove, I will not speak a word:

There is between my will and all offences

A guard of patience: stay a little while.

THERSITES

How the devil Luxury, with his fat rump and

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.

[Exit]

ULYSSES

You have sworn patience.

TROILUS

Fear me not, sweet lord;

I will not be myself, nor have cognition

Of what I feel: I am all patience.

[Re-enter CRESSIDA]

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.

He loved me--O false wench!--Give't me again.

DIOMEDES

Whose was't?

CRESSIDA

It is no matter, now I have't again.

I will not meet with you to-morrow night:

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!

Thy master now lies thinking in his bed

Of thee and me, and sighs, and takes my glove,

And gives memorial dainty kisses to it,

As I kiss thee. Nay, do not snatch it from me;

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;

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.

But, now you have it, take it.

DIOMEDES

Whose was it?

CRESSIDA

By all Diana's waiting-women yond,

And by herself, I will not tell you whose.

DIOMEDES

To-morrow will I wear it on my helm,

And grieve his spirit that dares not challenge it.

TROILUS

Wert thou the devil, and worest it on thy horn,

It should be challenged.

CRESSIDA

Well, well, 'tis done, 'tis past: and yet it is not;

I will not keep my word.

DIOMEDES

Why, then, farewell;

Thou never shalt mock Diomed again.

CRESSIDA

You shall not go: one cannot speak a word,

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.

[Exit DIOMEDES]

Troilus, farewell! one eye yet looks on thee

But with my heart the other eye doth see.

Ah, poor our sex! this fault in us I find,

The error of our eye directs our mind:

What error leads must err; O, then conclude

Minds sway'd by eyes are full of turpitude.

[Exit]

THERSITES

A proof of strength she could not publish more,

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

Of every syllable that here was spoke.

But if I tell how these two did co-act,

Shall I not lie in publishing a truth?

Sith yet there is a credence in my heart,

An esperance so obstinately strong,

That doth invert the attest of eyes and ears,

As if those organs had deceptious functions,

Created only to calumniate.

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!

Think, we had mothers; do not give advantage

To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme,

For depravation, to square the general sex

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:

If beauty have a soul, this is not she;

If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimonies,

If sanctimony be the gods' delight,

If there be rule in unity itself,

This is not she. O madness of discourse,

That cause sets up with and against itself!

Bi-fold authority! where reason can revolt

Without perdition, and loss assume all reason

Without revolt: this is, and is not, Cressid.

Within my soul there doth conduce a fight

Of this strange nature that a thing inseparate

Divides more wider than the sky and earth,

And yet the spacious breadth of this division

Admits no orifex for a point as subtle

As Ariachne's broken woof to enter.

Instance, O instance! strong as Pluto's gates;

Cressid is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven:

Instance, O instance! strong as heaven itself;

The bonds of heaven are slipp'd, dissolved, and loosed;

And with another knot, five-finger-tied,

The fractions of her faith, orts of her love,

The fragments, scraps, the bits and greasy relics

Of her o'er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed.

ULYSSES

May worthy Troilus be half attach'd

With that which here his passion doth express?

TROILUS

Ay, Greek; and that shall be divulged well

In characters as red as Mars his heart

Inflamed with Venus: never did young man fancy

With so eternal and so fix'd a soul.

Hark, Greek: as much as I do Cressid love,

So much by weight hate I her Diomed:

That sleeve is mine that he'll bear on his helm;

Were it a casque composed by Vulcan's skill,

My sword should bite it: not the dreadful spout

Which shipmen do the hurricano call,

Constringed in mass by the almighty sun,

Shall dizzy with more clamour Neptune's ear

In his descent than shall my prompted sword

Falling on Diomed.

THERSITES

He'll tickle it for his concupy.

TROILUS

O Cressid! O false Cressid! false, false, false!

Let all untruths stand by thy stained name,

And they'll seem glorious.

ULYSSES

O, contain yourself

Your passion draws ears hither.

[Enter AENEAS]

AENEAS

I have been seeking you this hour, my lord:

Hector, by this, is arming him in Troy;

Ajax, your guard, stays to conduct you home.

TROILUS

Have with you, prince. My courteous lord, adieu.

Farewell, revolted fair! and, Diomed,

Stand fast, and wear a castle on thy head!

ULYSSES

I'll bring you to the gates.

TROILUS

Accept distracted thanks.

[Exeunt TROILUS, AENEAS, and ULYSSES]

THERSITES

Would I could meet that rogue Diomed! I would

croak like a raven; I would bode, I would bode.

Patroclus will give me any thing for the

intelligence of this whore: the parrot will not

do more for an almond than he for a commodious drab.

Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery; nothing

else holds fashion: a burning devil take them!

[Exit]