home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
The Illustrated Works of Shakespeare
/
Illustrated Works of Shakespeare, The (1990)(Animated Pixels)[!][CDTV-PC].iso
/
shakes
/
text
/
22
/
03_02
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1991-04-10
|
10KB
|
268 lines
Troy. Pandarus' Orchard.
Enter PANDARUS and Troilus' MAN, meeting.
Pandarus How now, where's thy master? At my cousin Cressida's?
Man No, sir, he stays for you to conduct him thither.
Enter TROILUS.
Pandarus O here he comes. How now, how now?
Troilus Sirrah, walk off.
[Exit MAN.
Pandarus Have you seen my cousin?
Troilus No, Pandarus; I stalk about her door
Like a strange soul upon the Stygian banks
Staying for waftage. O be thou my Charon,
And give me swift transportance to those fields
Where I may wallow in the lily beds
Proposed for the deserver! O gentle Pandar,
From Cupid's shoulder pluck his painted wings
And fly with me to Cressid.
Pandarus Walk here i'th' orchard; I'll bring her straight.
[Exit.
Troilus I am giddy; expectation whirls me round.
Th' imaginary relish is so sweet
That it enchants my sense. What will it be
When that the wat'ry palates taste indeed
Love's thrice-repurd nectar? Death, I fear me,
Sounding destruction, or some joy too fine,
Too subtle-potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness
For the capacity of my ruder powers.
I fear it much; and I do fear besides
That I shall lose distinction in my joys,
As doth a battle, when they charge on heaps
The enemy flying.
Re-enter PANDARUS.
Pandarus She's making her ready, she'll come straight. You must be
witty now; she does so blush, and fetches her wind so short
as if she were frayed with a sprite. I'll fetch her. It is
the prettiest villain! She fetches her breath as short as a
new ta'en sparrow.
[Exit.
Troilus Even such a passion doth embrace my bosom.
My heart beats thicker than a feverous pulse,
And all my powers do their bestowing lose,
Like vassalage at unawares encount'ring
The eye of majesty.
Re-enter PANDARUS, and CRESSIDA veiled.
Pandarus Come, come, what need you blush? Shame's a baby.
[To TROILUS.] Here she is now; swear the oaths now to her
that you have sworn to me.
[To CRESSIDA.] What, are you gone again? You must be watched
ere you be made tame, must you? Come your ways, come your
ways; and you draw backward we'll put you i'th' fills.
[To TROILUS.] Why do you not speak to her?
[To CRESSIDA.] Come, draw this curtain, and let's see your
picture. Alas the day, how loath you are to offend daylight!
And 'twere dark, you'd close sooner.
[To TROILUS.] So, so; rub on and kiss the mistress. How now,
a kiss in fee-farm! Build there, carpenter, the air is
sweet. Nay, you shall fight your hearts out ere I part you.
The falcon as the tercel, for all the ducks i'th' river. Go
to, go to.
Troilus You have bereft me of all words, lady.
Pandarus Words pay no debts, give her deeds; but she'll bereave you
o'th' deeds too, if she call your activity in question.
What, billing again? Here's "In witness whereof the parties
interchangeably" - Come in, come in; I'll go get a fire.
[Exit.
Cressida Will you walk in, my lord?
Troilus O Cressida, how often have I wished me thus!
Cressida Wished, my lord? The gods grant - O my lord!
Troilus What should they grant? What makes this pretty abruption?
What too curious dreg espies my sweet lady in the fountain
of our love?
Cressida More dregs than water, if my fears have eyes.
Troilus Fears make devils of cherubins; they never see truly.
Cressida Blind fear, that seeing reason leads, finds safer footing
than blind reason stumbling without fear. To fear the worst
oft cures the worse.
Troilus O let my lady apprehend no fear; in all Cupid's pageant
there is presented no monster.
Cressida Nor nothing monstrous neither?
Troilus Nothing but our undertakings, when we vow to weep seas, live
in fire, eat rocks, tame tigers; thinking it harder for our
mistress to devise imposition enough than for us to undergo
any difficulty imposed. This is the monstruosity in love,
lady: that the will is infinite, and the execution confined;
that the desire is boundless, and the act a slave to limit.
Cressida They say all lovers swear more performance than they are
able, and yet reserve an ability that they never perform;
vowing more than the perfection of ten, and discharging less
than the tenth part of one. They that have the voice of
lions and the act of hares, are they not monsters?
Troilus Are there such? Such are not we. Praise us as we are tasted,
allow us as we prove. Our head shall go bare till merit
crown it. No perfection in reversion shall have a praise in
present. We will not name desert before his birth, and,
being born, his addition shall be humble. Few words to fair
faith. Troilus shall be such to Cressid as what envy can say
worst shall be a mock for his truth, and what truth can
speak truest, not truer than Troilus.
Cressida Will you walk in, my lord?
Re-enter PANDARUS.
Pandarus What, blushing still? Have you not done talking yet?
Cressida Well, uncle, what folly I commit, I dedicate to you.
Pandarus I thank you for that: if my lord get a boy of you, you'll
give him me. Be true to my lord; if he flinch, chide me for
it.
Troilus You know now your hostages: your uncle's word, and my firm
faith.
Pandarus Nay, I'll give my word for her too. Our kindred, though they
be long ere they are wooed, they are constant being won:
they are burrs, I can tell you - they'll stick where they
are thrown.
Cressida Boldness comes to me now, and brings me heart.
Prince Troilus, I have loved you night and day
For many weary months.
Troilus Why was my Cressid then so hard to win?
Cressida Hard to seem won; but I was won, my lord,
With the first glance that ever - pardon me,
If I confess much you will play the tyrant.
I love you now, but till now not so much
But I might master it. In faith I lie:
My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown
Too headstrong for their mother. See, we fools!
Why have I blabbed? Who shall be true to us
When we are so unsecret to ourselves?
But, though I loved you well, I wooed you not;
And yet, good faith, I wished myself a man,
Or that we women had men's privilege
Of speaking first. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue,
For in this rapture I shall surely speak
The thing I shall repent. See, see, your silence,
Cunning in dumbness, from my weakness draws
My very soul of counsel from me. Stop my mouth.
Troilus And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence.
[Kisses her.
Pandarus Pretty, i'faith.
Cressida My lord, I do beseech you pardon me;
'Twas not my purpose thus to beg a kiss.
I am ashamed. O heavens! what have I done?
For this time will I take my leave, my lord.
Troilus Your leave, sweet Cressid?
Pandarus Leave? And you take leave till tomorrow morning-
Cressida Pray you content you.
Troilus What offends you, lady?
Cressida Sir, mine own company.
Troilus You cannot shun yourself.
Cressida Let me go and try.
I have a kind of self resides with you,
But an unkind self, that itself will leave
To be another's fool. Where is my wit?
I would be gone; I speak I know not what.
Troilus Well know they what they speak that speak so wisely.
Cressida Perchance, my lord, I show more craft than love,
And fell so roundly to a large confession
To angle for your thoughts. But you are wise,
Or else you love not; for to be wise and love
Exceeds man's might - that dwells with gods above.
Troilus O that I thought it could be in a woman
- As, if it can, I will presume in you-
To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love,
To keep her constancy in plight and youth,
Outliving beauty's outward, with a mind
That doth renew swifter than blood decays;
Or that persuasion could but thus convince me
That my integrity and truth to you
Might be affronted with the match and weight
Of such a winnowed purity in love:
How were I then uplifted! But alas,
I am as true as truth's simplicity,
And simpler than the infancy of truth.
Cressida In that I'll war with you.
Troilus O virtuous fight,
When right with right wars who shall be most right!
True swains in love shall in the world to come
Approve their truths by Troilus; when their rhymes,
Full of protest, of oath, and big compare,
Wants similes, truth tired with iteration,
- As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,
As sun to day, as turtle to her mate,
As iron to adamant, as earth to th' centre-
Yet, after all comparisons of truth,
As truth's authentic author to be cited,
"As true as Troilus" shall crown up the verse
And sanctify the numbers.
Cressida Prophet may you be!
If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,
When time is old and hath forgot itself,
When water-drops have worn the stones of Troy,
And blind oblivion swallowed cities up,
And mighty states characterless are grated
To dusty nothing, yet let memory
From false to false among false maids in love,
Upbraid my falsehood. When they've said "As false
As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth,
As fox to lamb, or wolf to heifer's calf,
Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son",
Yea, let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood,
"As false as Cressid".
Pandarus Go to, a bargain made. Seal it, seal it, I'll be the
witness. Here I hold your hand, here my cousin's. If ever
you prove false one to another, since I have taken such
pains to bring you together, let all pitiful goers-between
be called to the world's end after my name: call them all
Pandars. Let all constant men be Troiluses, all false women
Cressids, and all brokers-between Pandars. Say Amen.
Troilus Amen.
Cressida Amen.
Pandarus Amen. Whereupon I will show you a chamber with bed; which
bed, because it shall not speak of your pretty encounters,
press it to death. Away.
[Exeunt TROILUS and CRESSIDA.
And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here
Bed, chamber, and pander to provide this gear!
[Exit.