ACT V - Scene II Troilus and Cressida

Nay, but do, then;
And let your mind be coupled with your words.

I prithee, do not hold me to mine oath;
Bid me do any thing but that, sweet Greek.

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.

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

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

Doth that grieve thee?
O wither’d truth!

By Jove,
I will be patient.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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?

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 square the general sex
By Cressid’s rule: rather think this not Cressid.

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
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.

May worthy Troilus be half attach’d
With that which here his passion doth express?

Ay, 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.

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

O, contain yourself;
Your passion draws ears hither.

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.

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