Act 3, Scene 2

Troy. PANDARUS' orchard

[Enter PANDARUS and TROILUS' BOY, meeting.]
Pandarus
1543 How now! Where's thy master? At my cousin Cressida's?
Boy
1544 No, sir; he stays for you to conduct him thither.
[Enter TROILUS.]
Pandarus
1545 O, here he comes. How now, how now!
Troilus
1546 Sirrah, walk off.
[Exit Boy.]
Pandarus
1547 Have you seen my cousin?
Troilus
1548 No, Pandarus. I stalk about her door
1549 Like a strange soul upon the Stygian banks
1550 Staying for waftage. O, be thou my Charon,
1551 And give me swift transportance to these fields
1552 Where I may wallow in the lily beds
1553 Propos'd for the deserver! O gentle Pandar,
1554 from Cupid's shoulder pluck his painted wings,
1555 and fly with me to Cressid!
Pandarus
1556 Walk here i' th' orchard, I'll bring her straight.
[Exit.]
Troilus
1557 I am giddy; expectation whirls me round.
1558 Th' imaginary relish is so sweet
1559 That it enchants my sense; what will it be
1560 When that the wat'ry palate tastes indeed
1561 Love's thrice-repured nectar? Death, I fear me;
1562 Swooning destruction; or some joy too fine,
1563 Too subtle-potent, tun'd too sharp in sweetness,
1564 For the capacity of my ruder powers.
1565 I fear it much; and I do fear besides
1566 That I shall lose distinction in my joys;
1567 As doth a battle, when they charge on heaps
1568 The enemy flying.
[Re-enter PANDARUS.]
Pandarus
1569 She's making her ready, she'll come straight; you must be witty
1570 now. She does so blush, and fetches her wind so short, as
1571 if she were fray'd with a sprite. I'll fetch her. It is the
1572 prettiest villain; she fetches her breath as short as a new-ta'en
1573 sparrow.
[Exit.]
Troilus
1574 Even such a passion doth embrace my bosom.
1575 My heart beats thicker than a feverous pulse,
1576 And all my powers do their bestowing lose,
1577 Like vassalage at unawares encount'ring
1578 The eye of majesty.
[Re-enter PANDARUS With CRESSIDA.]
Pandarus
1579 Come, come, what need you blush? Shame's a baby.—Here she
1580 is now; swear the oaths now to her that you have sworn to me.—
1581 What, are you gone again? You must be watch'd ere you be made
1582 tame, must you? Come your ways, come your ways; an you draw
1583 backward, we'll put you i' th' fills.—Why do you not speak to
1584 her?—Come, draw this curtain and let's see your picture.
1585 Alas the day, how loath you are to offend daylight! An 'twere
1586 dark, you'd close sooner. So, so; rub on, and kiss the mistress
1587 How now, a kiss in fee-farm! Build there, carpenter; the air is
1588 sweet. Nay, you shall fight your hearts out ere I part you. The
1589 falcon as the tercel, for all the ducks i' th' river. Go to, go
1590 to.
Troilus
1591 You have bereft me of all words, lady.
Pandarus
1592 Words pay no debts, give her deeds; but she'll bereave
1593 you o' th' deeds too, if she call your activity in question.
1594 What, billing again? Here's 'In witness whereof the parties
1595 interchangeably.' Come in, come in; I'll go get a fire.
[Exit.]
Cressida
1596 Will you walk in, my lord?
Troilus
1597 O Cressid, how often have I wish'd me thus!
Cressida
1598 Wish'd, my lord! The gods grant—O my lord!
Troilus
1599 What should they grant? What makes this pretty abruption?
1600 What too curious dreg espies my sweet lady in the fountain of our
1601 love?
Cressida
1602 More dregs than water, if my fears have eyes.
Troilus
1603 Fears make devils of cherubims; they never see truly.
Cressida
1604 Blind fear, that seeing reason leads, finds safer footing
1605 than blind reason stumbling without fear. To fear the worst oft
1606 cures the worse.
Troilus
1607 O, let my lady apprehend no fear! In all Cupid's pageant
1608 there is presented no monster.
Cressida
1609 Nor nothing monstrous neither?
Troilus
1610 Nothing, but our undertakings when we vow to weep seas,
1611 live in fire, eat rocks, tame tigers; thinking it harder for our
1612 mistress to devise imposition enough than for us to undergo any
1613 difficulty imposed. This is the monstruosity in love, lady, that
1614 the will is infinite, and the execution confin'd; that the desire
1615 is boundless, and the act a slave to limit.
Cressida
1616 They say all lovers swear more performance than they are
1617 able, and yet reserve an ability that they never perform; vowing
1618 more than the perfection of ten, and discharging less than the
1619 tenth part of one. They that have the voice of lions and the act
1620 of hares, are they not monsters?
Troilus
1621 Are there such? Such are not we. Praise us as we are
1622 tasted, allow us as we prove; our head shall go bare till merit
1623 crown it. No perfection in reversion shall have a praise in
1624 present. We will not name desert before his birth; and, being
1625 born, his addition shall be humble. Few words to fair faith:
1626 Troilus shall be such to Cressid as what envy can say worst shall
1627 be a mock for his truth; and what truth can speak truest not
1628 truer than Troilus.
Cressida
1629 Will you walk in, my lord?
[Re-enter PANDARUS.]
Pandarus
1630 What, blushing still? Have you not done talking yet?
Cressida
1631 Well, uncle, what folly I commit, I dedicate to you.
Pandarus
1632 I thank you for that; if my lord get a boy of you, you'll
1633 give him me. Be true to my lord; if he flinch, chide me for it.
Troilus
1634 You know now your hostages: your uncle's word and my firm
1635 faith.
Pandarus
1636 Nay, I'll give my word for her too: our kindred, though
1637 they be long ere they are wooed, they are constant being won;
1638 they are burs, I can tell you; they'll stick where they are
1639 thrown.
Cressida
1640 Boldness comes to me now and brings me heart.
1641 Prince Troilus, I have lov'd you night and day
1642 For many weary months.
Troilus
1643 Why was my Cressid then so hard to win?
Cressida
1644 Hard to seem won; but I was won, my lord,
1645 With the first glance that ever-pardon me.
1646 If I confess much, you will play the tyrant.
1647 I love you now; but till now not so much
1648 But I might master it. In faith, I lie;
1649 My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown
1650 Too headstrong for their mother. See, we fools!
1651 Why have I blabb'd? Who shall be true to us,
1652 When we are so unsecret to ourselves?
1653 But, though I lov'd you well, I woo'd you not;
1654 And yet, good faith, I wish'd myself a man,
1655 Or that we women had men's privilege
1656 Of speaking first. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue,
1657 For in this rapture I shall surely speak
1658 The thing I shall repent. See, see, your silence,
1659 Cunning in dumbness, from my weakness draws
1660 My very soul of counsel. Stop my mouth.
Troilus
1661 And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence.
Pandarus
1662 Pretty, i' faith.
Cressida
1663 My lord, I do beseech you, pardon me;
1664 'Twas not my purpose thus to beg a kiss.
1665 I am asham'd. O heavens! what have I done?
1666 For this time will I take my leave, my lord.
Troilus
1667 Your leave, sweet Cressid!
Pandarus
1668 Leave! An you take leave till to-morrow morning—
Cressida
1669 Pray you, content you.
Troilus
1670 What offends you, lady?
Cressida
1671 Sir, mine own company.
Troilus
1672 You cannot shun yourself.
Cressida
1673 Let me go and try.
1674 I have a kind of self resides with you;
1675 But an unkind self, that itself will leave
1676 To be another's fool. I would be gone.
1677 Where is my wit? I know not what I speak.
Troilus
1678 Well know they what they speak that speak so wisely.
Cressida
1679 Perchance, my lord, I show more craft than love;
1680 And fell so roundly to a large confession
1681 To angle for your thoughts; but you are wise—
1682 Or else you love not; for to be wise and love
1683 Exceeds man's might; that dwells with gods above.
Troilus
1684 O that I thought it could be in a woman—
1685 As, if it can, I will presume in you—
1686 To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love;
1687 To keep her constancy in plight and youth,
1688 Outliving beauty's outward, with a mind
1689 That doth renew swifter than blood decays!
1690 Or that persuasion could but thus convince me
1691 That my integrity and truth to you
1692 Might be affronted with the match and weight
1693 Of such a winnowed purity in love.
1694 How were I then uplifted! but, alas,
1695 I am as true as truth's simplicity,
1696 And simpler than the infancy of truth.
Cressida
1697 In that I'll war with you.
Troilus
1698 O virtuous fight,
1699 When right with right wars who shall be most right!
1700 True swains in love shall in the world to come
1701 Approve their truth by Troilus, when their rhymes,
1702 Full of protest, of oath, and big compare,
1703 Want similes, truth tir'd with iteration—
1704 As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,
1705 As sun to day, as turtle to her mate,
1706 As iron to adamant, as earth to th' centre—
1707 Yet, after all comparisons of truth,
1708 As truth's authentic author to be cited,
1709 'As true as Troilus' shall crown up the verse
1710 And sanctify the numbers.
Cressida
1711 Prophet may you be!
1712 If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,
1713 When time is old and hath forgot itself,
1714 When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,
1715 And blind oblivion swallow'd cities up,
1716 And mighty states characterless are grated
1717 To dusty nothing—yet let memory
1718 From false to false, among false maids in love,
1719 Upbraid my falsehood when th' have said 'As false
1720 As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth,
1721 As fox to lamb, or wolf to heifer's calf,
1722 Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son'—
1723 Yea, let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood,
1724 'As false as Cressid.'
Pandarus
1725 Go to, a bargain made; seal it, seal it; I'll be the
1726 witness. Here I hold your hand; here my cousin's. If ever you
1727 prove false one to another, since I have taken such pains to
1728 bring you together, let all pitiful goers-between be call'd to
1729 the world's end after my name—call them all Pandars; let all
1730 constant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids, and all
1731 brokers between Pandars. Say 'Amen.'
Troilus
1732 Amen.
Cressida
1733 Amen.
Pandarus
1734 Amen. Whereupon I will show you a chamber and a bed; which bed,
1735 because it shall not speak of your pretty encounters, press it to
1736 death.
1737 Away! And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here,
1738 Bed, chamber, pander, to provide this gear!
[Exeunt.]

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Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 1549classical allusion
“strange soul upon the Stygian banks Staying for waftage”
The Styx was the river that the dead had to cross to reach the underworld; Charon the ferryman carried souls across it, but only after they had paid him with a coin and waited on the bank. Troilus casts himself as a soul stranded on the near side, unable to reach the fields beyond, and begs Pandarus to be his Charon and ferry him to Cressida.
TLN 1554classical allusion
“from Cupid's shoulder pluck his painted wings”
Cupid (Roman Eros) was the god of erotic love, conventionally depicted as a winged boy armed with arrows. Troilus's hyperbole -- steal Love's own wings and fly on them -- measures the urgency of his desire: he wants a speed beyond anything natural, even beyond what the god of love himself can manage.
classical Cupid's golden and leaden arrows
TLN 1560archaic vocab
“wat'ry palate tastes indeed Love's thrice-repured nectar”
'Thrice-repured' means purified or refined three times over -- like gold or sugar refined to the highest degree, far purer than ordinary. 'Nectar' is the drink of the gods in classical myth; here Troilus means love's pleasure imagined at its most rarefied. The line is saying: if the mere thought of Cressida is this overwhelming, what will the reality feel like?
TLN 1566syntax grammar
“I shall lose distinction in my joys As doth a battle”
'Lose distinction' means lose the ability to tell one feeling from another -- all the separate joys will blur into one overwhelming mass. The following simile develops it: when soldiers rush a fleeing enemy in a heap, the orderly formation collapses and you can no longer distinguish one man from another. Troilus fears his own emotions will do the same when the moment of meeting finally comes.
TLN 1575archaic vocab
“heart beats thicker than a feverous pulse”
'Thicker' here means more rapidly and heavily -- a feverish pulse is fast and hard, the physical sign of a body overwhelmed. The comparison with 'vassalage at unawares encount'ring the eye of majesty' extends the idea: a servant who suddenly finds himself face-to-face with the king loses all composure, just as Troilus loses his powers at the thought of Cressida. 'Bestowing' (line 1576) means their outward function or service -- his faculties fail to perform their normal office.
TLN 1584cultural context
“draw this curtain and let's see your picture”
Valuable paintings in Elizabethan and Jacobean houses were protected by a cloth curtain drawn across them; to reveal the painting a visitor would pull the curtain aside. Pandarus treats Cressida as a masterpiece to be unveiled -- reducing her to an object of display for Troilus's gaze. The compliment is real (he thinks her beautiful) but the framing is objectifying: she is a 'picture,' a possession to be shown.
TLN 1588cultural context
“The falcon as the tercel, for all the ducks i' th' river”
In falconry, the 'falcon' was the female bird (especially a female peregrine or merlin) and the 'tercel' (or tiercel) the male, which was smaller. 'The falcon as the tercel' means the female is a match for the male -- Cressida is Troilus's equal. 'For all the ducks' means they are matched against the whole river of ducks together: a sporting boast about what they can accomplish as a pair.
TLN 1613rhetorical device
“This is the monstruosity in love, lady, that the will is infinite, and the execution confin'd”
'Monstruosity' means a monstrous paradox or absurdity (not simply a monster). Troilus is making a philosophical point: the desire ('will') is boundless but the act of fulfilling it is always limited in time and capacity -- 'the act a slave to limit.' He defines love's essential frustration: nothing you actually do can ever measure up to what you wanted to do.
TLN 1654historical topical
“I wish'd myself a man, Or that we women had men's privilege Of speaking first”
Elizabethan conduct literature held that a woman who declared love openly was shameless; it was the man's right and duty to woo first, and a woman who spoke first was seen as compromising her chastity and honour. Cressida recognises that the social rules have forced her into confessing before he has, which makes her vulnerability in this scene far more than emotional -- it is a transgression of the rules that governed female 'honour.'
historical A woman's honour: chastity and the double standard
TLN 1682classical allusion
“to be wise and love Exceeds man's might; that dwells with gods above”
The proverb that no one can be both wise and in love was a classical commonplace, attributed to various ancient writers, and remained a stock figure in Renaissance poetry and drama. Cressida uses it here both to flatter Troilus -- you must be either wise or in love with me -- and to acknowledge her own loss of reason in the scene.
TLN 1700cultural context
“True swains in love shall in the world to come Approve their truth by Troilus”
Troilus predicts that future faithful lovers will swear by his name as the ultimate standard of constancy: 'as true as Troilus' will become the most powerful oath a lover can take, topping all the usual similes (as true as steel, as the sun, as a turtledove). The speech is deeply ironic for an audience that knows the rest of the story: Troilus will not remain by Cressida's side, and the tradition makes his name not a byword for faithfulness but for the faith of a man who is eventually betrayed.
historical The matter of Troy and its tangled sourceshistorical Cressida and the 'false woman' tradition
TLN 1704rhetorical device
“As true as steel, as plantage to the moon, As sun to day, as turtle to her mate, As iron to adamant”
Troilus strings together five classical similes for perfect constancy. 'Plantage' (plants, vegetation) were thought by Elizabethan natural philosophy to grow and wither with the moon. 'Turtle' is the turtledove, the proverbial bird of faithful love that supposedly died if its mate died. 'Adamant' (from Greek 'untameable') was the name for the hardest known substance -- sometimes identified with iron, sometimes with a mythical stone that draws iron to itself like a magnet.
TLN 1712cultural context
“If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth”
Cressida's long speech invoking geological time, the wearing-away of Troy's stones, and oblivion swallowing cities is a formal self-curse: if she is false, let memory record her name as the worst byword for female inconstancy, surpassing air, water, wind, sand, fox, wolf, and stepmother. The audience familiar with the inherited tradition -- Chaucer's poem, Henryson's grim sequel where Cressida dies leprous -- knows she is predicting exactly what will happen. The speech is simultaneously a vow of faithfulness and an unwitting prophecy.
historical Cressida and the 'false woman' traditionhistorical A woman's honour: chastity and the double standard
TLN 1728cultural context
“let all pitiful goers-between be call'd to the world's end after my name—call them all Pandars”
Pandarus here invents his own etymology: every future go-between who arranges illicit sex will be called a 'pander' (or 'pandar') from his name. English actually does use the word this way; Pandarus is right. The joke is that he says it with pride -- he is delighted at the prospect of immortality through brokerage. The play stages the origin of a real English common noun.
historical Pandarus and the word 'pander'