Act 3, Scene 1

Troy. PRIAM'S palace

[Music sounds within. Enter PANDARUS and a SERVANT.]
Pandarus
1401 Friend, you—pray you, a word. Do you not follow the young
1402 Lord Paris?
Servant
1403 Ay, sir, when he goes before me.
Pandarus
1404 You depend upon him, I mean?
Servant
1405 Sir, I do depend upon the lord.
Pandarus
1406 You depend upon a notable gentleman; I must needs praise
1407 him.
Servant
1408 The lord be praised!
Pandarus
1409 You know me, do you not?
Servant
1410 Faith, sir, superficially.
Pandarus
1411 Friend, know me better: I am the Lord Pandarus.
Servant
1412 I hope I shall know your honour better.
Pandarus
1413 I do desire it.
Servant
1414 You are in the state of grace.
Pandarus
1415 Grace! Not so, friend; honour and lordship are my titles.
1416 What music is this?
Servant
1417 I do but partly know, sir; it is music in parts.
Pandarus
1418 Know you the musicians?
Servant
1419 Wholly, sir.
Pandarus
1420 Who play they to?
Servant
1421 To the hearers, sir.
Pandarus
1422 At whose pleasure, friend?
Servant
1423 At mine, sir, and theirs that love music.
Pandarus
1424 Command, I mean, friend.
Servant
1425 Who shall I command, sir?
Pandarus
1426 Friend, we understand not one another: I am too courtly,
1427 and thou art too cunning. At whose request do these men play?
Servant
1428 That's to't, indeed, sir. Marry, sir, at the request of
1429 Paris my lord, who is there in person; with him the mortal Venus,
1430 the heart-blood of beauty, love's invisible soul—
Pandarus
1431 Who, my cousin, Cressida?
Servant
1432 No, sir, Helen. Could not you find out that by her attributes?
Pandarus
1433 It should seem, fellow, that thou hast not seen the Lady
1434 Cressida. I come to speak with Paris from the Prince Troilus; I
1435 will make a complimental assault upon him, for my business
1436 seethes.
Servant
1437 Sodden business! There's a stew'd phrase indeed!
[Enter PARIS and HELEN, attended.]
Pandarus
1438 Fair be to you, my lord, and to all this fair company!
1439 Fair desires, in all fair measure, fairly guide them—especially
1440 to you, fair queen! Fair thoughts be your fair pillow.
Helen
1441 Dear lord, you are full of fair words.
Pandarus
1442 You speak your fair pleasure, sweet queen. Fair prince,
1443 here is good broken music.
Paris
1444 You have broke it, cousin; and by my life, you shall make it
1445 whole again; you shall piece it out with a piece of your
1446 performance.
Helen
1447 He is full of harmony.
Pandarus
1448 Truly, lady, no.
Helen
1449 O, sir—
Pandarus
1450 Rude, in sooth; in good sooth, very rude.
Paris
1451 Well said, my lord. Well, you say so in fits.
Pandarus
1452 I have business to my lord, dear queen. My lord, will you
1453 vouchsafe me a word?
Helen
1454 Nay, this shall not hedge us out. We'll hear you sing,
1455 certainly—
Pandarus
1456 Well sweet queen, you are pleasant with me. But, marry,
1457 thus, my lord: my dear lord and most esteemed friend, your
1458 brother Troilus—
Helen
1459 My Lord Pandarus, honey-sweet lord—
Pandarus
1460 Go to, sweet queen, go to—commends himself most
1461 affectionately to you—
Helen
1462 You shall not bob us out of our melody. If you do, our
1463 melancholy upon your head!
Pandarus
1464 Sweet queen, sweet queen; that's a sweet queen, i' faith.
Helen
1465 And to make a sweet lady sad is a sour offence.
Pandarus
1466 Nay, that shall not serve your turn; that shall it not,
1467 in truth, la. Nay, I care not for such words; no, no.—And, my
1468 lord, he desires you that, if the King call for him at supper,
1469 you will make his excuse.
Helen
1470 My Lord Pandarus!
Pandarus
1471 What says my sweet queen, my very very sweet queen?
Paris
1472 What exploit's in hand? Where sups he to-night?
Helen
1473 Nay, but, my lord—
Pandarus
1474 What says my sweet queen?-My cousin will fall out with
1475 you.
Helen
1476 You must not know where he sups.
Paris
1477 I'll lay my life, with my disposer Cressida.
Pandarus
1478 No, no, no such matter; you are wide. Come, your disposer
1479 is sick.
Paris
1480 Well, I'll make's excuse.
Pandarus
1481 Ay, good my lord. Why should you say Cressida?
1482 No, your poor disposer's sick.
Paris
1483 I spy.
Pandarus
1484 You spy! What do you spy?—Come, give me an instrument.
1485 Now, sweet queen.
Helen
1486 Why, this is kindly done.
Pandarus
1487 My niece is horribly in love with a thing you have, sweet
1488 queen.
Helen
1489 She shall have it, my lord, if it be not my Lord Paris.
Pandarus
1490 He! No, she'll none of him; they two are twain.
Helen
1491 Falling in, after falling out, may make them three.
Pandarus
1492 Come, come. I'll hear no more of this; I'll sing you a
1493 song now.
Helen
1494 Ay, ay, prithee now. By my troth, sweet lord, thou hast a
1495 fine forehead.
Pandarus
1496 Ay, you may, you may.
Helen
1497 Let thy song be love. This love will undo us all. O Cupid,
1498 Cupid, Cupid!
Pandarus
1499 Love! Ay, that it shall, i' faith.
Paris
1500 Ay, good now, love, love, nothing but love.
Pandarus
1501 In good troth, it begins so.
[Sings.]
Pandarus
1502 Love, love, nothing but love, still love, still more!
1503 For, oh, love's bow
1504 Shoots buck and doe;
1505 The shaft confounds
1506 Not that it wounds,
1507 But tickles still the sore.
1508 These lovers cry, O ho, they die!
1509 Yet that which seems the wound to kill
1510 Doth turn O ho! to ha! ha! he!
1511 So dying love lives still.
1512 O ho! a while, but ha! ha! ha!
1513 O ho! groans out for ha! ha! ha!-hey ho!
Helen
1514 In love, i' faith, to the very tip of the nose.
Paris
1515 He eats nothing but doves, love; and that breeds hot blood,
1516 and hot blood begets hot thoughts, and hot thoughts beget hot
1517 deeds, and hot deeds is love.
Pandarus
1518 Is this the generation of love: hot blood, hot thoughts,
1519 and hot deeds? Why, they are vipers. Is love a generation of
1520 vipers? Sweet lord, who's a-field today?
Paris
1521 Hector, Deiphobus, Helenus, Antenor, and all the gallantry
1522 of Troy. I would fain have arm'd to-day, but my Nell would not
1523 have it so. How chance my brothe
Helen
1524 He hangs the lip at something. You know all, Lord Pandarus.
Pandarus
1525 Not I, honey-sweet queen. I long to hear how they spend
1526 to-day. You'll remember your brother's excuse?
Paris
1527 To a hair.
Pandarus
1528 Farewell, sweet queen.
Helen
1529 Commend me to your niece.
Pandarus
1530 I will, sweet queen.
[Exit. Sound a retreat.]
Paris
1531 They're come from the field. Let us to Priam's hall
1532 To greet the warriors. Sweet Helen, I must woo you
1533 To help unarm our Hector. His stubborn buckles,
1534 With these your white enchanting fingers touch'd,
1535 Shall more obey than to the edge of steel
1536 Or force of Greekish sinews; you shall do more
1537 Than all the island kings—disarm great Hector.
Helen
1538 'Twill make us proud to be his servant, Paris;
1539 Yea, what he shall receive of us in duty
1540 Gives us more palm in beauty than we have,
1541 Yea, overshines ourself.
Paris
1542 Sweet, above thought I love thee.Exeunt

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Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 1405wordplay
“I do depend upon the lord”
The Servant plays on two meanings of 'depend upon': to be in the service of (to follow or wait upon a lord), and to rely on or trust in. When Pandarus says 'You depend upon him,' he means 'you are in his household'; the Servant plays innocent and answers in the religious sense — 'I depend upon [i.e., trust in] the Lord' — before Pandarus catches the ambiguity and rephrases.
TLN 1414wordplay
“You are in the state of grace”
'Grace' has two meanings here: a title of honour (addressed to a duke or archbishop), and the theological condition of God's saving favour. Pandarus wants to be greeted by his titles ('honour and lordship'); the Servant offers him instead a compliment that sounds devout — being 'in a state of grace' — which Pandarus brushes aside because it is not the social rank he craves.
TLN 1417wordplay
“it is music in parts”
The Servant answers 'Do you know the musicians?' with 'Wholly, sir' — meaning he knows them completely. He then answers 'What music is this?' with 'it is music in parts,' meaning it is polyphonic music (composed for separate vocal or instrumental parts). Both answers are technically correct while being deliberately unhelpful; the Servant is playing on 'wholly' (completely) versus 'in parts' (partly, in separate sections).
TLN 1429classical allusion
“the mortal Venus, the heart-blood of beauty, love's invisible soul”
The Servant heaps extravagant compliments on the woman Paris is entertaining, calling her the mortal (human, earthly) equivalent of Venus, the goddess of love and beauty. 'Heart-blood of beauty' means the very life and essence of beauty; 'love's invisible soul' means the inward animating spirit of love made flesh. Pandarus assumes it must be Cressida — then is deflated when the Servant says it is Helen. The joke undercuts both women: the praise is absurd flattery, and Pandarus thinks his niece deserves it more.
classical Helen of Troy
TLN 1435wordplay
“my business seethes”
Pandarus means his business is urgent — it 'boils,' it cannot wait. 'Seethe' meant to boil or stew, and was commonly used for both cooking and for any great agitation. The Servant immediately pounces on the culinary sense: 'Sodden business! There's a stew'd phrase indeed!' — 'sodden' means boiled or cooked, and 'stew'd' means both simmered (as a stew) and connected to a 'stew' (Elizabethan slang for a brothel). The Servant is calling Pandarus's language both overcooked and smutty.
TLN 1438rhetorical device
“Fair be to you, my lord, and to all this fair company”
Pandarus pours out 'fair' again and again across three lines ('Fair be to you,' 'fair company,' 'fair desires,' 'fair queen,' 'fair thoughts,' 'fair pillow') -- a torrent of insistent repetition (anaphora/ploce) that inflates a routine courtly greeting into comic excess. Helen's reply, 'you are full of fair words,' immediately calls out the inflation.
TLN 1477archaic vocab
“with my disposer Cressida”
Paris calls Cressida his 'disposer' — someone who has the disposal or management of him, a person at whose pleasure he acts. The word means, roughly, 'the one who directs or governs me.' Paris uses it lightly and knowingly: if Troilus is supping with Cressida, the woman has him under her management, much as Helen ('my Nell') has already kept Paris from arming today.
TLN 1503classical allusion
“love's bow Shoots buck and doe”
Pandarus's song invokes Cupid, the Roman god of love, who fired arrows to kindle desire indiscriminately in men ('buck') and women ('doe') alike. The song then turns overtly bawdy: the 'shaft' does not simply 'wound' but 'tickles still the sore,' 'dying love lives still,' and 'O ho!' turns to 'ha ha he' — all conventional wordplay encoding orgasm ('to die' was Elizabethan slang for sexual climax). The song is a deliberately coarse parody of the Petrarchan love-lyric.
classical Cupid's golden and leaden arrows
TLN 1515historical topical
“He eats nothing but doves, love; and that breeds hot blood”
Elizabethan medical theory, derived from Galen's ancient humoral system, held that different foods produced different qualities of blood — and therefore different temperaments. Doves were associated with Venus and with warm, amorous desire; eating them was supposed to 'heat the blood' and so kindle sexual appetite. Paris's chain — doves breed hot blood, hot blood breeds hot thoughts, hot thoughts breed hot deeds — is a parody of the pseudo-medical logic that connected diet, temperament, and sex.
TLN 1531stage direction note
“Let us to Priam's hall To greet the warriors”
A trumpet call signals the armies withdrawing from the field at day's end. Paris's closing lines — asking Helen to help 'unarm' Hector by touching his 'stubborn buckles' with her 'white enchanting fingers' — present Helen as a figure whose beauty can do what force cannot. It is a courtly, flattering speech, but its context is damning: the warriors risked their lives while Paris and Helen played at bawdy games indoors, and now Paris wants Helen to perform one courteous act as the soldiers return.
historical The matter of Troy and its tangled sources