ARKCODEX
Act V, Scene 2
1The same. Before Calchas’ tent.
2Enter Diomedes.
3DiomedesWhat, are you up here, ho? speak.
4CalchasWithin. Who calls?
5DiomedesCalchas, I think. Where’s your daughter?
6CalchasWithin. She comes to you.
7Enter Troilus and Ulysses, at a distance; after them, Thersites.
8UlyssesStand where the torch may not discover us.
9Enter Cressida.
10TroilusCressid comes forth to him.
11DiomedesHow now, my charge!
12CressidaNow, my sweet guardian! Hark, a word with you. Whispers.
13TroilusYea, so familiar!
14UlyssesShe will sing any man at first sight.
15ThersitesAnd any man may sing her, if he can take her cliff; she’s noted.
16DiomedesWill you remember?
17CressidaRemember! yes.
18DiomedesNay, but do, then;
And let your mind be coupled with your words.
19TroilusWhat should she remember?
20UlyssesList.
21CressidaSweet honey Greek, tempt me no more to folly.
22ThersitesRoguery!
23DiomedesNay, then—
24CressidaI’ll tell you what—
25DiomedesFoh, foh! come, tell a pin: you are forsworn.
26CressidaIn faith, I cannot: what would you have me do?
27ThersitesA juggling trick—to be secretly open.
28DiomedesWhat did you swear you would bestow on me?
29CressidaI prithee, do not hold me to mine oath;
Bid me do any thing but that, sweet Greek.
30DiomedesGood night.
31TroilusHold, patience!
32UlyssesHow now, Trojan!
33CressidaDiomed—
34DiomedesNo, no, good night: I’ll be your fool no more.
35TroilusThy better must.
36CressidaHark, one word in your ear.
37TroilusO plague and madness!
38UlyssesYou 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.
39TroilusBehold, I pray you!
40UlyssesNay, good my lord, go off:
You flow to great distraction; come, my lord.
41TroilusI pray thee, stay.
42UlyssesYou have not patience; come.
43TroilusI pray you, stay; by hell and all hell’s torments,
I will not speak a word!
44DiomedesAnd so, good night.
45CressidaNay, but you part in anger.
46TroilusDoth that grieve thee?
O wither’d truth!
47UlyssesWhy, how now, lord!
48TroilusBy Jove,
I will be patient.
49CressidaGuardian!—why, Greek!
50DiomedesFoh, foh! adieu; you palter.
51CressidaIn faith, I do not: come hither once again.
52UlyssesYou shake, my lord, at something: will you go?
You will break out.
53TroilusShe strokes his cheek!
54UlyssesCome, come.
55TroilusNay, 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.
56ThersitesHow the devil Luxury, with his fat rump and potato-finger, tickles these together! Fry, lechery, fry!
57DiomedesBut will you, then?
58CressidaIn faith, I will, la; never trust me else.
59DiomedesGive me some token for the surety of it.
60CressidaI’ll fetch you one. Exit.
61UlyssesYou have sworn patience.
62TroilusFear me not, sweet lord;
I will not be myself, nor have cognition
Of what I feel: I am all patience.
63Reenter Cressida.
64ThersitesNow the pledge; now, now, now!
65CressidaHere, Diomed, keep this sleeve.
66TroilusO beauty! where is thy faith?
67UlyssesMy lord—
68TroilusI will be patient; outwardly I will.
69CressidaYou look upon that sleeve; behold it well.
He loved me—O false wench!—Give’t me again.
70DiomedesWhose was’t?
71CressidaIt is no matter, now I have’t again.
I will not meet with you to-morrow night:
I prithee, Diomed, visit me no more.
72ThersitesNow she sharpens: well said, whetstone!
73DiomedesI shall have it.
74CressidaWhat, this?
75DiomedesAy, that.
76CressidaO, 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.
77DiomedesI had your heart before, this follows it.
78TroilusI did swear patience.
79CressidaYou shall not have it, Diomed; faith, you shall not;
I’ll give you something else.
80DiomedesI will have this: whose was it?
81CressidaIt is no matter.
82DiomedesCome, tell me whose it was.
83Cressida’Twas one’s that loved me better than you will.
But, now you have it, take it.
84DiomedesWhose was it?
85CressidaBy all Diana’s waiting-women yond,
And by herself, I will not tell you whose.
86DiomedesTo-morrow will I wear it on my helm,
And grieve his spirit that dares not challenge it.
87TroilusWert thou the devil, and worest it on thy horn,
It should be challenged.
88CressidaWell, well, ’tis done, ’tis past: and yet it is not;
I will not keep my word.
89DiomedesWhy, then, farewell;
Thou never shalt mock Diomed again.
90CressidaYou shall not go: one cannot speak a word,
But it straight starts you.
91DiomedesI do not like this fooling.
92ThersitesNor I, by Pluto: but that that likes not you pleases me best.
93DiomedesWhat, shall I come? the hour?
94CressidaAy, come:—O Jove!—do come:—I shall be plagued.
95DiomedesFarewell till then.
96CressidaGood 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.
97ThersitesA proof of strength she could not publish more,
Unless she said “My mind is now turn’d whore.”
98UlyssesAll’s done, my lord.
99TroilusIt is.
100UlyssesWhy stay we, then?
101TroilusTo 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?
102UlyssesI cannot conjure, Trojan.
103TroilusShe was not, sure.
104UlyssesMost sure she was.
105TroilusWhy, my negation hath no taste of madness.
106UlyssesNor mine, my lord: Cressid was here but now.
107TroilusLet it not be believed 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.
108UlyssesWhat hath she done, prince, that can soil our mothers?
109TroilusNothing at all, unless that this were she.
110ThersitesWill he swagger himself out on’s own eyes?
111TroilusThis 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
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 orifex 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, 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.
112UlyssesMay worthy Troilus be half attach’d
With that which here his passion doth express?
113TroilusAy, Greek; and that shall be 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.
114ThersitesHe’ll tickle it for his concupy.
115TroilusO Cressid! O false Cressid! false, false, false!
Let all untruths stand by thy stained name,
And they’ll seem glorious.
116UlyssesO, contain yourself;
Your passion draws ears hither.
117Enter Aeneas.
118AeneasI have been seeking you this hour, my lord:
Hector, by this, is arming him in Troy;
Ajax, your guard, stays to conduct you home.
119TroilusHave with you, prince. My courteous lord, adieu.
Farewell, revolted fair! and, Diomed,
Stand fast, and wear a castle on thy head!
120UlyssesI’ll bring you to the gates.
121TroilusAccept distracted thanks. Exeunt Troilus, Aeneas, and Ulysses.
122ThersitesWould 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.