William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition (346 page)

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Authors: William Shakespeare

Tags: #Drama, #Literary Criticism, #Shakespeare

BOOK: William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition
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HELEN Dear lord, you are full of fair words.
PANDARUS You speak your fair pleasure, sweet Queen. (
To Paris
) Fair prince, here is good broken music.
PARIS You have broke it, cousin, and by my life you shall make it whole again. You shall piece it out with a piece of your performance.—Nell, he is full of harmony.
PANDARUS Truly, lady, no.
HELEN O sir.
⌈
She tickles him
⌉
 
PANDARUS Rude, in sooth, in good sooth very rude.
PARIS Well said, my lord. Will you say so in fits?
PANDARUS I have business to my lord, dear Queen.—My lord, will you vouchsafe me a word?
HELEN Nay, this shall not hedge us out. We’ll hear you sing, certainly.
PANDARUS Well, sweet Queen, you are pleasant with me.—But marry, thus, my lord: my dear lord and most esteemed friend, your brother Troilus—
HELEN My lord Pandarus, honey-sweet lord.
PANDARUS Go to, sweet Queen, go tot—commends himself most affectionately to you.
HELEN You shall not bob us out of our melody. If you do, our melancholy upon your head.
PANDARUS Sweet Queen, sweet Queen, that’s a sweet
Queen. Ay, faith—
HELEN And to make a sweet lady sad is a sour offence.
PANDARUS Nay, that shall not serve your turn; that shall it not, in truth, la. Nay, I care not for such words. No, no.—And, my lord, he desires you that, if the King call for him at supper, you will make his excuse.
HELEN My lord Pandarus.
PANDARUS What says my sweet Queen, my very very sweet Queen?
PARIS What exploit’s in hand? Where sups he tonight?
HELEN Nay, but my lord—
PANDARUS What says my sweet Queen? My cousin will fall out with you.
HELEN (
to Paris
) You must not know where he sups.
PARIS I’ll lay my life, with my dispenser Cressida.
PANDARUS No, no! No such matter. You are wide. Come, your dispenser is sick.
PARIS Well, I’ll make’s excuse.
PANDARUS Ay, good my lord. Why should you say
Cressida? No, your poor dispenser’s sick.
PARIS ‘I spy.’
PANDARUS You spy? What do you spy?—⌈
To a musician⌉
Come, give me an instrument.—Now, sweet Queen.
HELEN Why, this is kindly done!
PANDARUS My niece is horrible in love with a thing you have, sweet Queen.
HELEN She shall have it, my lord—if it be not my lord Paris.
PANDARUS He? No, she’ll none of him. They two are twain.
HELEN Falling in, after falling out, may make them three.
PANDARUS Come, come, I’ll hear no more of this. I’ll sing you a song now.
HELEN Ay, ay, prithee. Now by my troth, sweet lord, thou hast a fine forehead.
⌈
She strokes his forehead⌉
 
PANDARUS Ay, you may, you may.
HELEN Let thy song be love. ‘This love will undo us all.’
O Cupid, Cupid, Cupid!
PANDARUS Love? Ay, that it shall, i’faith.
PARIS Ay, good now, ‘Love, love, nothing but love’.
PANDARUS In good truth, it begins so.
(
Sings
)
Love, love, nothing but love, still love, still more!
For O love’s bow
Shoots buck and doe.
The shaft confounds
Not that it wounds,
 
But tickles still the sore.
These lovers cry ‘O! O!’, they die.
Yet that which seems the wound to kill
Doth turn ‘O! O!’ to ‘ha ha he!’
So dying love lives still.
‘O! O!’ a while, but ‘ha ha ha!’
‘O! O!’ groans out for ‘ha ha ha!’—
 
Heigh-ho.
HELEN In love—ay, faith, to the very tip of the nose.
PARIS He eats nothing but doves, love, and that breeds hot blood, and hot blood begets hot thoughts, and hot thoughts beget hot deeds, and hot deeds is love.
PANDARUS Is this the generation of love: hot blood, hot thoughts, and hot deeds? Why, they are vipers. Is love a generation of vipers?
⌈
Alarum⌉
 
Sweet lord, who’s afield today?
PARIS Hector, Deiphobus, Helenus, Antenor, and all the gallantry of Troy. I would fain have armed today, but my Nell would not have it so. How chance my brother Troilus went not?
HELEN He hangs the lip at something. You know all, Lord
Pandarus.
PANDARUS Not I, honey-sweet Queen. I long to hear how they sped today.—You’ll remember your brother’s excuse?
PARIS To a hair.
PANDARUS Farewell, sweet Queen.
HELEN Commend me to your niece.
PANDARUS I will, sweet Queen. Exit
Sound a retreat
 
PARIS
They’re come from field. Let us to Priam’s hall
To greet the warriors. Sweet Helen, I must woo you
To help unarm our Hector. His stubborn buckles,
With these your white enchanting fingers touched,
Shall more obey than to the edge of steel
Or force of Greekish sinews. You shall do more
Than all the island kings: disarm great Hector.
HELEN
’Twill make us proud to be his servant, Paris;
Yea, what he shall receive of us in duty
Gives us more palm in beauty than we have—
Yea, overshines ourself.
PARIS Sweet above thought, I love thee!
Exeunt
3.2
Enter Pandarus ⌈at one door⌉ and Troilus’ man ⌈at another door
⌉
 
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-repurèd nectar? Death, I fear me,
Swooning 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.
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 spirit. 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.
Enter Pandarus, with Cressida ⌈veiled⌉
 
PANDARUS
(
to Cressida
) 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. An you draw backward, we’ll put you i‘th’ thills.
(To Troilus)
Why do you not speak to her? (To Cressida) Come, draw this curtain, and let’s see your picture. ⌈
He unveils her
⌉ Alas the day! How loath you are to offend daylight! An’t were dark, you’d close sooner. So, so.
(To Troilus)
Rub on, and kiss the mistress. (
They kiss
) 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.
(They kiss)
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 lordl
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 cherubims; 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?
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 (to Cressida)
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, in my weakness draws
My soul of counsel from me. Stop my mouth.

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