Cres. I'll tell you what: Dio. Pho! pho! come, tell a pin: You are for sworn. Cres. In faith, I cannot: What would you have me do? Ther. A juggling trick, to be-secretly open. Dio. What did you swear you would bestow on me? Cres. I pr'ythee, do not hold me to mine oath; Bid me do any thing but that, sweet Greek. Dio. Good night. Tro. Ulyss. Cres. Hold, patience! How now, Trojan? Diomed, Dio. No, no, good night: I'll be your fool no more. Tro. Thy better must. Cres. Hark! one word in your ear. Tro. O plague and madness! Ulyss. You are mov'd, prince; let us depart, I pray you, Lest your displeasure should enlarge itself Ulyss. Now, good my lord, go off; You flow to great destruction; come, my lord. Tro. I pr'ythee, stay. Ulyss. You have not patience; come. Tro. I pray you, stay; by hell, and all hell's tor 2 i. e. your impetuosity exposes you to imminent peril. The folio reads distraction. Ulyss. I will be patient. Cres. Guardian !—why, Greek! Dio. Pho, pho! adieu; you palter 3. Cres. In faith, I do not; come hither once again. Ulyss. You shake, my lord, at something; will you go? You will break out. Tro. Ulyss. She strokes his cheek! Come, come. Tro. 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. Ther. How the devil luxury, with his fat rump, and potatoe finger, tickles these together! Fry, lechery, fry! Dio. But will you then? Cres. In faith, I will, la; never trust me else. 3 To palter is to equivocate, to shuffle. Thus in Macbeth :That palter with us in a double sense.' 4 Luxuria was the appropriate term of the old school divines for the sin of incontinence, which is accordingly called luxury by all our old English writers. The degrees of this sin and its partitions are enumerated by Richard Rolle, the Hermit of Hampole, in his Speculum Vitæ, MS. penes me. And Chaucer, in his Parson's Tale, makes it one of the seven deadly sins. Luxury, or lasciviousness, is said to have a potatoe-finger, because that root was thought to strengthen the bodie, and procure bodily lust." See vol. i. p. 281, note 2. Mr. Steevens under his Pseudonyme of Collins, has brought together a very curious string of quotations to show the idea our ancestors entertained of this root, and the mode in which it was used by them at its first introduction. A clamour has been raised against this note, which has been thought to have an immoral tendency. Mr. Pye justly censures the violence of the attack, and observes that Wesley, in his Journal, also justifies the writer. Surely Wesley would not willingly have promoted the cause of immorality? Whatever may be its tendency, the subject is certainly singularly curious and instructive. Dio. Give me some token for the surety of it. Cres. I'll fetch you one. Ulyss. You have sworn patience. Tro. [Exit. Fear me not, my lord; I will not be myself, nor have cognition Re-enter CRESSIDA. Ther. Now the pledge; now, now, now! Ulyss. Cres. No matter, now I hav't again. I will not meet with you to-morrow night: I pr'ythee, Diomed, visit me no more. Ther. Now she sharpens :-Well said, whetstone. Dio. I shall have it. Cres. Dio. What, this? Ay, that. Cres. 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, must take my heart withal. Dio. I had your heart before, this follows it. Tro. I did swear patience. 5 This sleeve was given by Troilus to Cressida at their parting, and she gave him a glove in return. It was probably such a sleeve as was formerly worn at tournaments: one of which Spenser describes in his View of the State of Ireland, p. 43, ed. 1663. Cres. You shall not have it, Diomed; 'faith you shall not; I'll give you something else. Dio. I will have this; Whose was it? Dio. Come, tell me whose it was. 'Tis no matter. Cres. "Twas one's that loved me better than you will. But, now you have it, take it. Dio. Whose was it? Cres. By all Diana's waiting-women yonder, And by herself, I will not tell you whose. Dio. To-morrow will I wear it on my helm; And grieve his spirit that dares not challenge it. Tro. Wert thou the devil, and wor'st it on thy horn, It should be challeng'd. Cres. Well, well, 'tis done, 'tis past,-And yet it is not; I will not keep my word. Dio. Why then, farewell; Thou never shalt mock Diomed again. Cres. You shall not go:-One cannot speak a word, But it straight starts you. Dio. I do not like this fooling. Ther. Nor I, by Pluto: but that that likes not you, pleases me best. Dio. What, shall I come? the hour? Cres. Do come: Ay, come:- -O Jove! -I shall be plagu❜d. 6 i. e. the stars which she points to. 'The silver-shining queen he would disdain; Her twinkling hand-maids too, by him defil'd, Through Night's black bosom should not peep again.' Milton, in his Elegy 1. v. 77, has imitated Shakspeare :cœlo scintillant astra sereno Endymioneæ turba ministra deæ.' Dio. Farewell till then. Cres. Good night. I pr'ythee, come. [Exit DIOMEdes. Troilus, farewell! one eye yet looks on thee; more 8, Unless she said, My mind is now turn'd whore. Tro. Ulyss. It is. Why stay we then? Tro. 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 and ears 9; eyes As if those organs had deceptious functions, 7 The characters of Cressida and Pandarus are more immediately formed from Chaucer than from Lydgate; for though the latter mentions them both characteristically, he does not sufficiently dwell on either to have furnished Shakspeare with many circumstances to be found in this tragedy. Lydgate, speaking of Cressida, says only, 'She gave her heart and love to Diomede, 8 She could not publish a stronger proof. 9 i, e. turns the very testimony of seeing and hearing against themselves. |