Troilus and Cressida V.ii - Everything2.com

You are moved, prince; let us depart, I pray you,
Lest your displeasure should enlarge itself
To wrathful terms: this place is dangerous;
The time right deadly; I beseech you, go.

TROILUS

Behold, I pray you!

ULYSSES

Nay, good my lord, go off:
You flow to great distraction; come, my lord.

TROILUS

I pray thee, stay.

ULYSSES

You have not patience; come.

TROILUS

I pray you, stay; by hell and all hell's torments
I will not speak a word!

DIOMEDES

And so, good night.

CRESSIDA

Nay, but you part in anger.

TROILUS

Doth that grieve thee?
O wither'd truth!

ULYSSES

Why, how now, lord!

TROILUS

By Jove,
I will be patient.

CRESSIDA

Guardian!--why, Greek!

DIOMEDES

Foh, foh! adieu; you palter.

CRESSIDA

In faith, I do not: come hither once again.

ULYSSES

You shake, my lord, at something: will you go?
You will break out.

TROILUS

She strokes his cheek!

ULYSSES

Come, come.

TROILUS

Nay, stay; by Jove, I will not speak a word:
There is between my will and all offences
A little while.

THERSITES

How the devil fat rump and
potato-finger, tickles these together! Fry, lechery, fry!

DIOMEDES

But will you, then?

CRESSIDA

In faith, I will, la; never trust me else.

DIOMEDES

Give me some token for the surety of it.

CRESSIDA

I'll fetch you one.

Exit

ULYSSES

You have sworn patience.

TROILUS

Fear me not, sweet lord;
I will not be myself, nor have cognition
Of what I feel: I am all patience.

Re-enter CRESSIDA

THERSITES

Now the pledge; now, now, now!

CRESSIDA

Here, Diomed, keep this sleeve.

TROILUS

O beauty! where is thy faith?

ULYSSES

My lord,--

TROILUS

I will be patient; outwardly I will.

CRESSIDA

You look upon that sleeve; behold it well.
He loved me--O false wench!--Give't me again.

DIOMEDES

Whose was't?

CRESSIDA

It is no matter, now I have't again.
I will not meet with you to-morrow night:
I prithee, Diomed, visit me no more.

THERSITES

Now she sharpens: well said, whetstone!

DIOMEDES

I shall have it.

CRESSIDA

What, this?

DIOMEDES

Ay, that.

CRESSIDA

O, all you gods! O pretty, pretty pledge!
Thy master now lies thinking in his bed
Of thee and me, and sighs, and takes my glove,
And gives memorial dainty kisses to it,
As I kiss thee. Nay, do not snatch it from me;
He that takes that doth take my heart withal.

DIOMEDES

I had your heart before, this follows it.

TROILUS

I did swear patience.

CRESSIDA

You shall not have it, Diomed; faith, you shall not;
I'll give you something else.

DIOMEDES

I will have this: whose was it?

CRESSIDA

It is no matter.

DIOMEDES

Come, tell me whose it was.

CRESSIDA

'Twas one's that loved me better than you will.
But, now you have it, take it.

DIOMEDES

Whose was it?

CRESSIDA

By all Diana's waiting-women yond,
And by herself, I will not tell you whose.

DIOMEDES

To-morrow will I helm,
And grieve his spirit that dares not challenge it.

TROILUS

Wert thou the devil, and worest it on thy horn,
It should be challenged.

CRESSIDA

Well, well, 'tis done, 'tis past: and yet it is not;
I will not keep my word.

DIOMEDES

Why, then, farewell;
Thou never shalt mock Diomed again.

CRESSIDA

You shall not go: one cannot speak a word,
But it straight starts you.

DIOMEDES

I do not like this fooling.

THERSITES

Nor I, by Pluto: but that that likes not you pleases me best.

DIOMEDES

What, shall I come? the hour?

CRESSIDA

Ay, come:--O Jove!--do come:--I shall be plagued.

DIOMEDES

Farewell till then.

CRESSIDA

Good night: I prithee, come.

Exit DIOMEDES

Troilus, farewell! one eye yet looks on thee
But with my heart the other eye doth see.
Ah, poor our sex! this fault in us I find,
The error of our eye directs our mind:
What error leads must err; O, then conclude
Minds full of turpitude.

Exit

THERSITES

A proof of strength she could not publish more,
Unless she said ' My mind is now turn'd whore.'

ULYSSES

All's done, my lord.

TROILUS

It is.

ULYSSES

Why stay we, then?

TROILUS

To make a recordation to my soul
Of every syllable that here was spoke.
But if I tell how these two did co-act,
Shall I not lie in publishing a truth?
Sith yet there is a credence in my heart,
An esperance so obstinately strong,
That doth invert the attest of eyes and ears,
As if those organs had deceptious functions,
Created only to calumniate.
Was Cressid here?

ULYSSES

I cannot conjure, Trojan.

TROILUS

She was not, sure.

ULYSSES

Most sure she was.

TROILUS

Why, my negation hath no taste of madness.

ULYSSES

Nor mine, my lord: Cressid was here but now.

TROILUS

Let it not be believed for womanhood!
Think, we had mothers; do not give advantage
To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme,
For depravation, to general sex
By Cressid's rule: rather think this not Cressid.

ULYSSES

What hath she done, prince, that can soil our mothers?

TROILUS

Nothing at all, unless that this were she.

THERSITES

Will he swagger himself out on's own eyes?

TROILUS

This she? no, this is Diomed's Cressida:
If beauty have a soul, this is not she;
If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimonies,
If sanctimony be the gods' delight,
If there be rule in unity itself,
This is not she. O madness of discourse,
That cause sets up with and against itself!
Bi-fold authority! where reason can revolt
Without perdition, and loss assume all reason
revolt: this is, and is not, Cressid.
Within my soul there doth conduce a fight
Of this strange nature that a thing inseparate
Divides more wider than the sky and earth,
And yet the spacious breadth of this division
Admits no orifex for a point as subtle
As Ariachne's broken woof to enter.
instance! strong as Pluto's gates;
Cressid is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven:
instance! strong as heaven itself;
The bonds of heaven are slipp'd, dissolved, and loosed;
And with another knot, five-finger-tied,
The fractions of her faith, orts of her love,
The fragments, scraps, the bits and greasy relics
Of her o'er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed.

ULYSSES

May worthy Troilus be half attach'd
With that which here his express?

TROILUS

Ay, divulged well
In characters as red as Mars his heart
Inflamed with Venus: never did young man fancy
With so eternal and so fix'd a soul.
Hark, Greek: as much as I do Cressid love,
So much by weight hate I her Diomed:
That sleeve is mine that he'll bear on his helm;
Were it a casque composed by Vulcan's skill,
My sword should bite it: not the dreadful spout
Which shipmen do the hurricano call,
Constringed in mass by the almighty sun,
Shall dizzy with more clamour Neptune's ear
In his descent than shall my prompted sword
Falling on Diomed.

THERSITES

He'll concupy.

TROILUS

O Cressid! O false Cressid! false, false, false!
Let all untruths stand by thy stained name,
And they'll seem glorious.

ULYSSES

O, contain yourself
Your passion draws ears hither.

Enter AENEAS

AENEAS

I have been seeking you this hour, my lord:
Hector, by this, is arming him in Troy;
Ajax, your home.

TROILUS

Have with you, prince. My courteous lord, adieu.
Farewell, revolted fair! and, Diomed,
Stand wear a castle on thy head!

ULYSSES

I'll bring you to the gates.

TROILUS

Accept distracted thanks.

Exeunt TROILUS, AENEAS, and ULYSSES

THERSITES

Would I could meet that rogue Diomed! I would
croak like a raven; I would bode, I would bode.
Patroclus will give me any thing for the
intelligence of this whore: the parrot will not
do more for an almond than he for a commodious drab.
Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery; nothing
else holds fashion: a burning devil take them!

Exit