Troilus and Cressida

epub:type="z3998:persona">Troilus

O Pandarus! I tell thee, Pandarus⁠—
When I do tell thee, there my hopes lie drown’d,
Reply not in how many fathoms deep
They lie indrench’d. I tell thee I am mad
In Cressid’s love: thou answer’st “she is fair;”
Pour’st in the open ulcer of my heart
Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice,
Handlest in thy discourse, O, that her hand,
In whose comparison all whites are ink,
Writing their own reproach, to whose soft seizure
The cygnet’s down is harsh and spirit of sense
Hard as the palm of ploughman: this thou tell’st me,
As true thou tell’st me, when I say I love her;
But, saying thus, instead of oil and balm,
Thou lay’st in every gash that love hath given me
The knife that made it.

Pandarus I speak no more than truth. Troilus Thou dost not speak so much. Pandarus Faith, I’ll not meddle in’t. Let her be as she is: if she be fair, ’tis the better for her; an she be not, she has the mends in her own hands. Troilus Good Pandarus, how now, Pandarus! Pandarus I have had my labour for my travail; ill-thought on of her and ill-thought on of you; gone between and between, but small thanks for my labour. Troilus What, art thou angry, Pandarus? what, with me? Pandarus Because she’s kin to me, therefore she’s not so fair as Helen: an she were not kin to me, she would be as fair on Friday as Helen is on Sunday. But what care I? I care not an she were a black-a-moor; ’tis all one to me. Troilus Say I she is not fair? Pandarus I do not care whether you do or no. She’s a fool to stay behind her father; let her to the Greeks; and so I’ll tell her the next time I see her: for my part, I’ll meddle nor make no more i’ the matter. Troilus Pandarus⁠— Pandarus Not I. Troilus Sweet Pandarus⁠— Pandarus Pray you, speak no more to me: I will leave all as I found it, and there an end. Exit Pandarus. An alarum. Troilus

Peace, you ungracious clamours! peace, rude sounds!
Fools on both sides! Helen must needs be fair,
When with your blood you daily paint her thus.
I cannot fight upon this argument;
It is too starved a subject for my sword.
But Pandarus⁠—O gods, how do you plague me!
I cannot come to Cressid but by Pandar;
And he’s as tetchy to be woo’d to woo,
As she is stubborn-chaste against all suit.
Tell me, Apollo, for thy Daphne’s love,
What Cressid is, what Pandar, and what we?
Her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl:
Between our Ilium and where she resides,
Let it be call’d the wild and wandering flood,
Ourself the merchant, and this sailing Pandar
Our doubtful hope, our convoy and our bark.

Alarum. Enter Aeneas. Aeneas How now, Prince Troilus! wherefore not afield? Troilus

Because not there: this woman’s answer sorts,
For womanish it is to be from thence.
What news, Aeneas, from the field to-day?

Aeneas That Paris is returned home and hurt. Troilus By whom, Aeneas? Aeneas Troilus, by Menelaus. Troilus

Let Paris bleed: ’tis but a scar to scorn;
Paris is gored with Menelaus’ horn. Alarum.

Aeneas Hark, what good sport is out of town to-day! Troilus

Better at home, if “would I might” were “may.”
But to the sport abroad: are you bound thither?

Aeneas In all swift haste. Troilus Come, go we then together. Exeunt.

Scene II

The Same. A street.

	Enter Cressida and Alexander.
Cressida	Who were those went by?
Alexander	Queen Hecuba and Helen.
Cressida	And whither go they?
Alexander	Up to the eastern tower, Whose height commands as subject all the vale, To see the battle. Hector, whose patience Is, as a virtue, fix’d, to-day was moved: He chid Andromache and struck his armourer, And, like as there were husbandry in war, Before the sun rose he was harness’d light, And to the field goes he; where every flower Did, as a prophet, weep what it foresaw In Hector’s wrath.
Cressida	What was his cause of anger?
Alexander	The noise goes, this: there is among the Greeks A lord of Trojan blood, nephew to Hector; They call him Ajax.
Cressida	Good; and what of him?
Alexander	They say he is a very man per se, And stands alone.
Cressida	So do all men, unless they are drunk, sick, or have no legs.
Alexander	This man, lady, hath robbed many beasts of their particular additions; he is as valiant as the lion, churlish as the bear, slow as the elephant: a man into whom nature hath so crowded humours that his valour is crushed into folly, his folly sauced with discretion: there is no man hath a virtue that he hath not a glimpse of, nor any man an attaint but he carries some stain of it: he is melancholy without cause, and merry against the hair: he hath the joints of every thing, but everything so out of joint that he is a gouty Briareus, many hands and no use, or purblind Argus, all eyes and no sight.
Cressida	But how should this man, that makes me smile, make Hector angry?
Alexander	They say he yesterday coped Hector in the battle and struck him down, the disdain and shame whereof hath ever since kept Hector fasting and waking.
Cressida	Who comes here?
Alexander	Madam, your uncle Pandarus.
	Enter Pandarus.
Cressida	Hector’s a gallant man.
Alexander	As may be in the world, lady.
Pandarus	What’s that? what’s that?
Cressida	Good morrow, uncle Pandarus.
Pandarus	Good morrow, cousin Cressid: what do you talk of? Good morrow, Alexander. How do you, cousin? When were you at Ilium?
Cressida	This morning, uncle.
Pandarus	What were you talking of when I came? Was Hector armed and gone ere ye came to Ilium? Helen was not up, was she?
Cressida	Hector was gone, but Helen was not up.
Pandarus	Even so: Hector was stirring early.
Cressida	That were we talking of, and of his anger.
Pandarus	Was he angry?
Cressida	So he says here.
Pandarus	True, he was so: I know the cause too: he’ll lay about him to-day, I can tell them that: and there’s Troilus will not come far behind him; let them take heed of Troilus, I can tell them that too.
Cressida	What, is he angry too?
Pandarus	Who, Troilus? Troilus