Act 5, Scene 2

The Grecian camp. Before CALCHAS' tent

[Enter DIOMEDES.]
Diomedes
2834 What, are you up here, ho! Speak.
[Within.]
Calchas
2835 Who calls?
Diomedes
2836 Diomed. Calchas, I think. Where's your daughter?
[Within.]
Calchas
2837 She comes to you.
[Enter TROILUS and ULYSSES, at a distance; after them THERSITES.]
Ulysses
2838 Stand where the torch may not discover us.
[Enter CRESSIDA.]
Troilus
2839 Cressid comes forth to him.
Diomedes
2840 How now, my charge!
Cressida
2841 Now, my sweet guardian! Hark, a word with you.
[Whispers.]
Troilus
2842 Yea, so familiar!
Ulysses
2843 She will sing any man at first sight.
Thersites
2844 And any man may sing her, if he can take her cliff; she's noted.
Diomedes
2845 Will you remember?
Cressida
2846 Remember! Yes.
Diomedes
2847 Nay, but do, then;
2848 And let your mind be coupled with your words.
Troilus
2849 What should she remember?
Ulysses
2850 List!
Cressida
2851 Sweet honey Greek, tempt me no more to folly.
Thersites
2852 Roguery!
Diomedes
2853 Nay, then
Cressida
2854 I'll tell you what—
Diomedes
2855 Fo, fo! come, tell a pin; you are a forsworn.
Cressida
2856 In faith, I cannot. What would you have me do?
Thersites
2857 A juggling trick, to be secretly open.
Diomedes
2858 What did you swear you would bestow on me?
Cressida
2859 I prithee, do not hold me to mine oath;
2860 Bid me do anything but that, sweet Greek.
Diomedes
2861 Good night.
Troilus
2862 Hold, patience!
Ulysses
2863 How now, Trojan!
Cressida
2864 Diomed!
Diomedes
2865 No, no, good night; I'll be your fool no more.
Troilus
2866 Thy better must.
Cressida
2867 Hark! one word in your ear.
Troilus
2868 O plague and madness!
Ulysses
2869 You are moved, Prince; let us depart, I pray you,
2870 Lest your displeasure should enlarge itself
2871 To wrathful terms. This place is dangerous;
2872 The time right deadly; I beseech you, go.
Troilus
2873 Behold, I pray you.
Ulysses
2874 Nay, good my lord, go off;
2875 You flow to great distraction; come, my lord.
Troilus
2876 I pray thee stay.
Ulysses
2877 You have not patience; come.
Troilus
2878 I pray you, stay; by hell and all hell's torments,
2879 I will not speak a word.
Diomedes
2880 And so, good night.
Cressida
2881 Nay, but you part in anger.
Troilus
2882 Doth that grieve thee? O withered truth!
Ulysses
2883 How now, my lord?
Troilus
2884 By Jove, I will be patient.
Cressida
2885 Guardian! Why, Greek!
Diomedes
2886 Fo, fo! adieu! you palter.
Cressida
2887 In faith, I do not. Come hither once again.
Ulysses
2888 You shake, my lord, at something; will you go?
2889 You will break out.
Troilus
2890 She strokes his cheek.
Ulysses
2891 Come, come.
Troilus
2892 Nay, stay; by Jove, I will not speak a word:
2893 There is between my will and all offences
2894 A guard of patience. Stay a little while.
Thersites
2895 How the devil Luxury, with his fat rump and potato
2896 finger, tickles these together! Fry, lechery, fry!
Diomedes
2897 But will you, then?
Cressida
2898 In faith, I will, la; never trust me else.
Diomedes
2899 Give me some token for the surety of it.
Cressida
2900 I'll fetch you one.
[Exit.]
Ulysses
2901 You have sworn patience.
Troilus
2902 Fear me not, my lord;
2903 I will not be myself, nor have cognition
2904 Of what I feel. I am all patience.
[Re-enter CRESSIDA.]
Thersites
2905 Now the pledge; now, now, now!
Cressida
2906 Here, Diomed, keep this sleeve.
Troilus
2907 O beauty! where is thy faith?
Ulysses
2908 My lord!
Troilus
2909 I will be patient; outwardly I will.
Cressida
2910 You look upon that sleeve; behold it well.
2911 He lov'd me O false wench! Give't me again.
Diomedes
2912 Whose was't?
Cressida
2913 It is no matter, now I have't again.
2914 I will not meet with you to-morrow night.
2915 I prithee, Diomed, visit me no more.
Thersites
2916 Now she sharpens. Well said, whetstone.
Diomedes
2917 I shall have it.
Cressida
2918 What, this?
Diomedes
2919 Ay, that.
Cressida
2920 O all you gods! O pretty, pretty pledge!
2921 Thy master now lies thinking on his bed
2922 Of thee and me, and sighs, and takes my glove,
2923 And gives memorial dainty kisses to it,
2924 As I kiss thee. Nay, do not snatch it from me;
2925 He that takes that doth take my heart withal.
Diomedes
2926 I had your heart before; this follows it.
Troilus
2927 I did swear patience.
Cressida
2928 You shall not have it, Diomed; faith, you shall not;
2929 I'll give you something else.
Diomedes
2930 I will have this. Whose was it?
Cressida
2931 It is no matter.
Diomedes
2932 Come, tell me whose it was.
Cressida
2933 'Twas one's that lov'd me better than you will.
2934 But, now you have it, take it.
Diomedes
2935 Whose was it?
Cressida
2936 By all Diana's waiting women yond,
2937 And by herself, I will not tell you whose.
Diomedes
2938 To-morrow will I wear it on my helm,
2939 And grieve his spirit that dares not challenge it.
Troilus
2940 Wert thou the devil and wor'st it on thy horn,
2941 It should be challeng'd.
Cressida
2942 Well, well, 'tis done, 'tis past; and yet it is not;
2943 I will not keep my word.
Diomedes
2944 Why, then farewell;
2945 Thou never shalt mock Diomed again.
Cressida
2946 You shall not go. One cannot speak a word
2947 But it straight starts you.
Diomedes
2948 I do not like this fooling.
Thersites
2949 Nor I, by Pluto; but that that likes not you
2950 Pleases me best.
Diomedes
2951 What, shall I come? The hour?
Cressida
2952 Ay, come-O Jove! Do come. I shall be plagu'd.
Diomedes
2953 Farewell till then.
Cressida
2954 Good night. I prithee come.
[Exit DIOMEDES.]
Cressida
2955 Troilus, farewell! One eye yet looks on thee;
2956 But with my heart the other eye doth see.
2957 Ah, poor our sex! this fault in us I find,
2958 The error of our eye directs our mind.
2959 What error leads must err; O, then conclude,
2960 Minds sway'd by eyes are full of turpitude.
[Exit.]
Thersites
2961 A proof of strength she could not publish more,
2962 Unless she said 'My mind is now turn'd whore.'
Ulysses
2963 All's done, my lord.
Troilus
2964 It is.
Ulysses
2965 Why stay we, then?
Troilus
2966 To make a recordation to my soul
2967 Of every syllable that here was spoke.
2968 But if I tell how these two did co-act,
2969 Shall I not lie in publishing a truth?
2970 Sith yet there is a credence in my heart,
2971 An esperance so obstinately strong,
2972 That doth invert th' attest of eyes and ears;
2973 As if those organs had deceptious functions
2974 Created only to calumniate.
2975 Was Cressid here?
Ulysses
2976 I cannot conjure, Trojan.
Troilus
2977 She was not, sure.
Ulysses
2978 Most sure she was.
Troilus
2979 Why, my negation hath no taste of madness.
Ulysses
2980 Nor mine, my lord. Cressid was here but now.
Troilus
2981 Let it not be believ'd for womanhood.
2982 Think, we had mothers; do not give advantage
2983 To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme,
2984 For depravation, to square the general sex
2985 By Cressid's rule. Rather think this not Cressid.
Ulysses
2986 What hath she done, Prince, that can soil our mothers?
Troilus
2987 Nothing at all, unless that this were she.
Thersites
2988 Will he swagger himself out on's own eyes?
Troilus
2989 This she? No; this is Diomed's Cressida.
2990 If beauty have a soul, this is not she;
2991 If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimony,
2992 If sanctimony be the god's delight,
2993 If there be rule in unity itself,
2994 This was not she. O madness of discourse,
2995 That cause sets up with and against itself!
2996 Bi-fold authority! where reason can revolt
2997 Without perdition, and loss assume all reason
2998 Without revolt: this is, and is not, Cressid.
2999 Within my soul there doth conduce a fight
3000 Of this strange nature, that a thing inseparate
3001 Divides more wider than the sky and earth;
3002 And yet the spacious breadth of this division
3003 Admits no orifice for a point as subtle
3004 As Ariachne's broken woof to enter.
3005 Instance, O instance! strong as Pluto's gates:
3006 Cressid is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven.
3007 Instance, O instance! strong as heaven itself:
3008 The bonds of heaven are slipp'd, dissolv'd, and loos'd;
3009 And with another knot, five-finger-tied,
3010 The fractions of her faith, orts of her love,
3011 The fragments, scraps, the bits, and greasy relics
3012 Of her o'er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed.
Ulysses
3013 May worthy Troilus be half-attach'd
3014 With that which here his passion doth express?
Troilus
3015 Ay, Greek; and that shall be divulged well
3016 In characters as red as Mars his heart
3017 Inflam'd with Venus. Never did young man fancy
3018 With so eternal and so fix'd a soul.
3019 Hark, Greek: as much as I do Cressid love,
3020 So much by weight hate I her Diomed.
3021 That sleeve is mine that he'll bear on his helm;
3022 Were it a casque compos'd by Vulcan's skill
3023 My sword should bite it. Not the dreadful spout
3024 Which shipmen do the hurricano call,
3025 Constring'd in mass by the almighty sun,
3026 Shall dizzy with more clamour Neptune's ear
3027 In his descent than shall my prompted sword
3028 Falling on Diomed.
Thersites
3029 He'll tickle it for his concupy.
Troilus
3030 O Cressid! O false Cressid! false, false, false!
3031 Let all untruths stand by thy stained name,
3032 And they'll seem glorious.
Ulysses
3033 O, contain yourself;
3034 Your passion draws ears hither.
[Enter AENEAS.]
Aeneas
3035 I have been seeking you this hour, my lord.
3036 Hector, by this, is arming him in Troy;
3037 Ajax, your guard, stays to conduct you home.
Troilus
3038 Have with you, Prince. My courteous lord, adieu.
3039 Fairwell, revolted fair! and, Diomed,
3040 Stand fast and wear a castle on thy head.
Ulysses
3041 I'll bring you to the gates.
Troilus
3042 Accept distracted thanks.
[Exeunt TROILUS, AENEAS. and ULYSSES.]
Thersites
3043 Would I could meet that rogue Diomed! I would croak like
3044 a raven; I would bode, I would bode. Patroclus will give me
3045 anything for the intelligence of this whore; the parrot will not
3046 do more for an almond than he for a commodious drab. Lechery,
3047 lechery! Still wars and lechery! Nothing else holds fashion. A
3048 burning devil take them!
[Exit.]

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Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 2838stage direction note
“Stand where the torch may not discover us”
Ulysses is directing Troilus to stand in shadow beyond the reach of the torch-light. Elizabethan performances used real torches to signal night scenes and to light action; here the prop creates a plausible hiding-place. The whole scene is structured as a voyeuristic eavesdrop — two Trojans and Thersites watching and commenting while Cressida and Diomedes negotiate in the lit space outside the tent.
TLN 2840archaic vocab
“my charge”
'Charge' here means a person placed in someone's care — a ward or dependent. Diomedes was assigned by Agamemnon to escort Cressida from Troy to the Greek camp; she is his 'charge,' his responsibility. His immediate 'How now, my charge!' converts that guardianship into easy intimacy — a small but pointed signal that his claim on her has already shifted from official duty to something personal.
TLN 2855archaic vocab
“come, tell a pin; you are a forsworn”
'Tell a pin' is a contemptuous idiom meaning 'tell that to a pin' — i.e. your excuses are worth nothing, not even a pin. 'Forsworn' means oath-breaker: Cressida has sworn to give Diomedes a token (the sleeve Troilus gave her) and is now wriggling out of it. Diomedes's short, hard reply dismisses her hesitation and pushes her back toward the promised gift.
TLN 2886archaic vocab
“adieu! you palter”
'Palter' means to shuffle, equivocate, or deal dishonestly — to keep changing position to avoid committing. Diomedes's accusation is that Cressida keeps saying she will give him the sleeve and then pulling back, which is a kind of bad faith. The word carries a stronger moral charge than 'waver': to palter with someone is to deceive them through evasion.
TLN 2895historical topical
“the devil Luxury, with his fat rump and potato finger”
'Luxury' here means Lechery personified — a morality-play devil of lust, with a fat, grotesque body. The 'potato finger' is a contemporary joke: sweet potatoes had only recently reached England from the Americas and were thought to be powerful aphrodisiacs. Thersites is picturing the god of lechery fondling Cressida and Diomedes together with a stumpy potato-finger.
TLN 2906historical topical
“keep this sleeve”
A detachable sleeve was the standard Elizabethan love-token exchanged between knights and their ladies: a knight wore his lady's token on his helmet or armour in battle as a public declaration of her favour. Troilus had given Cressida this sleeve; she now gives it to Diomedes. It is the most visible possible act of transfer — from Troilus's gift to Diomedes's trophy — and Troilus, hidden, sees it happen.
TLN 2936classical allusion
“By all Diana's waiting women yond”
Diana was the Roman goddess of the moon and chastity; her 'waiting women yond' are the stars, imagined as her attendant nymphs in the night sky above. Cressida swears by them — which is itself ironic: she is swearing an oath of secrecy to Diomedes by the goddess of chastity and her star-companions, at the very moment she is breaking faith with Troilus.
classical Diana, virgin goddess of the moon
TLN 2938historical topical
“To-morrow will I wear it on my helm, And grieve his spirit that dares not challenge it”
Wearing a lady's token on one's helmet in battle was a public chivalric claim of her favour. By announcing he will display the sleeve on his helm, Diomedes is issuing an open challenge to whoever gave it — daring that man to fight him for it. This follows the tournament convention: if a knight challenged the wearer of his lady's token for wearing it falsely, a fight to the death could result. Troilus, overhearing, immediately vows to accept that challenge.
TLN 2949classical allusion
“by Pluto; but that that likes not you Pleases me best”
Pluto was the Roman god of the underworld, an appropriately dark oath for Thersites, whose commentary throughout the scene runs toward death and damnation. The quip — 'what you dislike, I enjoy' — is his signature style: he takes pleasure in watching others suffer. He swears by the god of the dead because he is, essentially, rooting for the worst outcome.
TLN 2955rhetorical device
“One eye yet looks on thee; But with my heart the other eye doth see”
Cressida's couplets are a brief soliloquy in which she divides herself: one eye still faces Troilus (the past), while her heart directs the other eye toward Diomedes (the future). She uses the split-eye image to describe internal division — head pulled one way by habit, will pulled another. This is her only moment of self-diagnosis in the scene, and it immediately precedes the play's harshest male commentary on her.
TLN 2966archaic vocab
“To make a recordation to my soul Of every syllable that here was spoke”
'Recordation' means the act of recording or committing to memory — a formal, Latinate word for recollection. Troilus is saying he wants to imprint every word of this scene on his soul like a legal record. The grandiosity of the vocabulary ('recordation,' 'syllable') against the emotional devastation underneath is characteristic of Troilus's response to betrayal: he reaches for formal, distancing diction when ordinary speech would break him.
TLN 2970syntax grammar
“Sith yet there is a credence in my heart, An esperance so obstinately strong”
'Sith' is an archaic form of 'since.' 'Credence' means belief or credit — a readiness to believe. 'Esperance' is hope (from French esperance), used as a formal, elevated word. The sentence means: 'Since there is still a belief in my heart, a hope so stubbornly strong, that it overturns the evidence of my own eyes and ears.' Troilus is describing the breakdown between what he knows and what he can bring himself to accept.
TLN 2989rhetorical device
“This is Diomed's Cressida”
Troilus's famous speech beginning 'This she? No; this is Diomed's Cressida' tries to resolve an impossible contradiction by splitting Cressida in two: the woman he loved, and the woman who is betraying him. His logic is: if souls guide vows, and beauty has a soul, then this faithless woman cannot be the Cressida he knew. The speech is one of Shakespeare's most extreme representations of the mind refusing what the eyes have seen.
historical Cressida and the 'false woman' tradition
TLN 3003classical allusion
“no orifice for a point as subtle As Ariachne's broken woof to enter”
Arachne was the master weaver of Greek myth who challenged the goddess Athena and was turned into a spider as punishment; her 'woof' is the threads woven across the loom. 'Ariachne' blends 'Ariadne' (who gave Theseus a thread to navigate the labyrinth) with 'Arachne' — possibly a deliberate fusion, possibly a scribal error. The image means: the gap between his two contradictory beliefs admits nothing, not even the finest thread. Troilus is saying the division is total yet allows no passage between its two sides.
TLN 3005rhetorical device
“Instance, O instance! strong as Pluto's gates”
'Instance' here means a proof or piece of evidence. Troilus cites two contradictory instances, each 'strong' — the first ('Pluto's gates,' the gates of the underworld: absolutely shut, impossible to pass) proves Cressida is his by the bonds of heaven; the second ('strong as heaven itself') proves those bonds are now dissolved and she belongs to Diomedes. The repetition of the same rhetorical form for opposite conclusions — 'Instance, O instance! strong as X: proof A. Instance, O instance! strong as Y: proof not-A' — enacts the 'bi-fold authority' he just named.
TLN 3010rhetorical device
“The fractions of her faith, orts of her love, The fragments, scraps, the bits, and greasy relics Of her o'er-eaten faith”
'Orts' are scraps of food left over from a meal — table leavings. 'Fractions' means broken pieces. Troilus heaps up synonyms for leftover food-scraps (fractions, orts, fragments, scraps, bits, greasy relics) and applies them to Cressida's faith, as if her love for Diomedes is made up of what remains of her love for him — stale, used, disgusting. The cluster of food-waste words is sustained and deliberate: love's remains are garbage.
TLN 3016classical allusion
“in characters as red as Mars his heart Inflam'd with Venus”
Mars was the Roman god of war and Venus the goddess of love; their famous adulterous affair was a commonplace of classical and Renaissance poetry. Troilus will write his hatred of Diomedes and his love for Cressida in letters 'red as Mars his heart inflamed with Venus' — war-passion coloured by love-passion. The mythological pair condenses both his grief and his coming violence into a single image.
TLN 3022classical allusion
“Were it a casque compos'd by Vulcan's skill”
A 'casque' is a helmet. Vulcan (Greek Hephaestus) was the divine smith of the gods, whose workmanship was supposed to be indestructible — he forged the armour of Achilles in Homer's Iliad. Troilus is saying that even if the helmet bearing Cressida's sleeve were made by the god of the forge, his sword would still cut through it. The hyperbole reaches for the very limit of human and divine craft to measure his resolve.
TLN 3023historical topical
“the dreadful spout Which shipmen do the hurricano call, Constring'd in mass by the almighty sun, Shall dizzy with more clamour Neptune's ear”
'Hurricano' (hurricane) was a New World word for a tropical storm's waterspout, recently borrowed into English from Spanish huracán. Sailors returning from the Americas used it, and writers quickly adopted it. 'Constring'd in mass' means compressed or condensed in bulk — the sea-water drawn up into the whirling column by the sun's heat. Troilus is comparing the noise of his sword's descent on Diomedes to the crashing of a waterspout as it falls back into the sea, so loud it deafens the god Neptune.
TLN 3030cultural context
“O false Cressid! false, false, false! Let all untruths stand by thy stained name”
Troilus's outburst invokes the proverbial tradition in which 'Cressida' had become a byword for female faithlessness — calling all other betrayals minor beside hers. The tradition he is both enacting and extending runs from Chaucer through Henryson's Testament of Cresseid to dozens of Elizabethan allusions. But the play frames his condemnation as a critical problem: the equally faithless Troilus, who vowed eternal constancy and has already told Helen he cares nothing for the war, and the predatory Diomedes, go unshamed — only Cressida is made the emblem of all untruth.
historical Cressida and the 'false woman' traditionhistorical A woman's honour: chastity and the double standard
TLN 3039archaic vocab
“revolted fair”
'Revolted' means one who has defected or turned traitor — in the political sense, a rebel who goes over to the enemy. 'Fair' is a noun here meaning a fair or beautiful woman. So 'revolted fair' = 'you, the beautiful one who has defected.' The word choice is pointed: it treats Cressida's change of attachment as treason — the same verb used for political betrayal — which echoes her father Calchas's literal defection to the Greeks.
TLN 3043historical topical
“I would croak like a raven; I would bode, I would bode”
The raven's croak was a standard omen of death and disaster in both classical and English popular belief — a bird that 'boded' (foretold) misfortune. Thersites says he would croak like a raven over Diomedes's coming downfall, because Patroclus will pay handsomely for news of the affair. The raven-as-omen is here used comically, but it also keeps the scene's bitter atmosphere in view: Thersites sees ruin everywhere and finds it amusing.