ACT V
SCENE II. The Grecian camp. Before Calchas’
tent.
[Enter Diomedes.]
DIOMEDES
What, are you up here, ho! Speak.
CALCHAS
[Within.] Who calls?
DIOMEDES
Diomed. Calchas, I think. Where’s your daughter?
CALCHAS
[Within.] She comes to you.
[Enter Troilus and Ulysses, at a distance; after them Thersites.]
ULYSSES
Stand where the torch may not discover us.
[Enter Cressida.]
TROILUS
Cressid comes forth to him.
DIOMEDES
How now, my charge!
CRESSIDA
Now, my sweet guardian! Hark, a word with you.
[Whispers.]
TROILUS
Yea, so familiar?
ULYSSES
She will sing any man at first sight.
THERSITES
And any man may sing her, if he can take her cliff; she’s noted.
DIOMEDES
Will you remember?
DIOMEDES
Nay, but do, then;
And let your mind be coupled with your words.
TROILUS
What should she remember?
CRESSIDA
Sweet honey Greek, tempt me no more to folly.
CRESSIDA
I’ll tell you what—
DIOMEDES
Fo, fo! come, tell a pin; you are a forsworn.
CRESSIDA
In faith, I cannot. What would you have me do?
THERSITES
A juggling trick, to be secretly open.
DIOMEDES
What did you swear you would bestow on me?
CRESSIDA
I prithee, do not hold me to mine oath;
Bid me do anything but that, sweet Greek.
DIOMEDES
No, no, good night; I’ll be your fool no more.
CRESSIDA
Hark! a word in your ear.
TROILUS
O plague and madness!
ULYSSES
You are moved, Prince; let us depart, I pray,
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 withered truth!
ULYSSES
How now, my lord?
TROILUS
By Jove, I will be patient.
CRESSIDA
Guardian! Why, Greek!
DIOMEDES
Fo, fo! 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.
TROILUS
Nay, stay; by Jove, I will not speak a word:
There is between my will and all offences
A guard of patience. Stay a little while.
THERSITES
How the devil Luxury, with his 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, my 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?
TROILUS
I will be patient; outwardly I will.
CRESSIDA
You look upon that sleeve; behold it well.
He lov’d me—O false wench!—Give’t me again.
CRESSIDA
It is no matter, now I have’t again.
I will not meet with you tomorrow night.
I prithee, Diomed, visit me no more.
THERSITES
Now she sharpens. Well said, whetstone.
DIOMEDES
I shall have it.
CRESSIDA
O all you gods! O pretty, pretty pledge!
Thy master now lies thinking on 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 lov’d me better than you will.
But, now you have it, take it.
CRESSIDA
By all Diana’s waiting women yond,
And by herself, I will not tell you whose.
DIOMEDES
Tomorrow will I wear it on my helm,
And grieve his spirit that dares not challenge it.
TROILUS
Wert thou the devil and wor’st it on thy horn,
It should be challeng’d.
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 plagu’d.
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 sway’d by eyes are 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.
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 th’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 believ’d for womanhood.
Think, we had mothers; do not give advantage
To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme,
For depravation, to square the 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 god’s delight,
If there be rule in unity itself,
This was 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
Without 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 orifice for a point as subtle
As Ariachne’s broken woof to enter.
Instance, O instance! strong as Pluto’s gates:
Cressid is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven.
Instance, O instance! strong as heaven itself:
The bonds of heaven are slipp’d, dissolv’d, and loos’d;
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 given to Diomed.
ULYSSES
May worthy Troilus be half attach’d
With that which here his passion doth express?
TROILUS
Ay, Greek; and that shall be divulged well
In characters as red as Mars his heart
Inflam’d 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 compos’d by Vulcan’s skill
My sword should bite it. Not 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
In his descent than shall my prompted sword
Falling on Diomed.
THERSITES
He’ll tickle it for his 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 guard, stays to conduct you home.
TROILUS
Have with you, Prince. My courteous lord, adieu.
Fairwell, revolted fair! and, Diomed,
Stand fast, and 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 anything 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.]