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.

Re-enter PANDARUS.

Pan. 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 sprite; I'll fetch her. It is the prettiest villain; she fetches her breath as short as a new-ta'en sparrow.

[Exit PANDARus. Tro. 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 encountering
The eye of majesty.

Enter PANDARUS and CRESSIDA.

Why

Pan. Come, come, what need you blush? shame's a baby. Here she is now; swear the oaths now to her, that you have sworn to me.-What, are you gone again? you must be watched1 ere you be made tame, must you? Come your ways, come your ways; an you draw backward, we'll put you i' the fills. do you not speak to her?-Come, draw the curtain, and let's see your picture. Alas the day, how loath you are to offend daylight! an 'twere dark, you'd close sooner. So, so; rub on, and kiss the mistress. How now, a kiss in fee-farm! build there, carpenter; the air is sweet. Nay, you shall fight your hearts out, ere

1 Hawks were tamed by keeping them from sleep.

2 i. e. the shafts.

3

3 The allusion is to bowling; what is now called the jack was formerly termed the mistress. A bowl that kisses the jack or mistress is in the most advantageous situation. Rub on is a term in the game. See Cymbeline, Act ii. Sc. 1.

4"A kiss in fee-farm" is a kiss of duration, that has bounds, a fee-farm being a grant of lands in fee; that is, forever reserving a certain rent.

I part you. The falcon as the tercel,1 for all the ducks i' the river; go to, go to.

Tro. You have bereft me of all words, lady.

Pan. Words pay no debts; give her deeds; but she'll bereave you of the deeds too, if she call your activity in question. What, billing again? Here's -In witness whereof the parties interchangeably 2Come in, come in; I'll go get a fire. [Exit PANDARUs. Cres. Will you walk in, my lord?

Tro. O Cressida, how often have I wished me thus? Cres. Wished, my lord?-The gods grant!-O my lord!

Tro. What should they grant? what makes this pretty abruption? What too curious dreg espies my sweet lady in the fountain of our love?

Cres. More dregs than water, if my fears have eyes. Tro. Fears make devils cherubins; they never see truly.

Cres. Blind fear, that seeing reason leads, finds safer footing than blind reason stumbling without fear. To fear the worst, oft cures the worst.

Tro. O, let my lady apprehend no fear; in all Cupid's pageant there is presented no monster.3

Cres. Nor nothing monstrous neither?

Tro. 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.

Cres. 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.

1 The tercel is the male, and the falcon the female hawk. Pandarus backs the falcon against the tercel for any stake.

2 Thus in a future page :-"Go to, a bargain made; seal it.”

3 From this passage a Fear appears to have been a personage in other pageants, or perhaps in our ancient moralities.

They that have the voice of lions, and the act of hares,

are they not monsters?

Praise us

Tro. Are there such? such are not we. 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.

Cres. Will you walk in, my lord?

Re-enter PANDARUS.

Pan. What, blushing still? have you not done talking yet?

Cres. Well, uncle, what folly I commit, I dedicate to you.

Pan. 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.

Tro. You know now your hostages; your uncle's word, and my firm faith.

Pan. 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 burs, I can tell you: they'll stick where they are thrown.

Cres. Boldness comes to me now, and brings me heart.

Prince Troilus, I have loved you night and day
For many weary months.

Tro. Why was my Cressid then so hard to win?
Cres. 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 not, till now, so much

1 Even malice (i. e envy) shall not be able to impeach his truth, or attach him in any other way, except by ridiculing him for his constancy.

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, from my weakness draws My very soul of counsel. Stop my mouth.

Tro. And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence. Pan. Pretty, i' faith.

Cres. My lord, I do beseech you pardon me; "Twas not my purpose thus to beg a kiss.

I am ashamed;-O Heavens! what have I done?—

For this time will I take my leave, my lord.

Tro. Your leave, sweet Cressid?

Pan. Leave! an you take leave till to-morrow morning,

Cres. Pray you, content you.

Tro.

What offends you, lady?

You cannot shun

Cres. Sir, mine own company.

Tro.

Yourself.

Cres.

Let me go and try:

I have a kind of self resides with

you;

But an unkind self, that itself will leave,

To be another's fool. I would be gone.

Where is my wit? I know not what I speak.

Tro. Well know they what they speak, that speak so wisely.

Cres. Perchance, my lord, I show more craft than love;

And fell so roundly to a large confession,

To angle for your thoughts. But you are wise;
Or else you love not. For to be wise, and love,
Exceeds man's might; that dwells with gods above.

Tro. O, that I thought it could be in a woman,
(As, if it can, I will presume in you,)
To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love;
To keep her constancy in plight and youth,
Outliving beauty's outward, with a mind
That doth renew swifter than blood decays!
Or, that persuasion could but thus convince me,—
That my integrity and truth to you

O virtuous fight,

Might be affronted' with the match and weight
Of such a winnowed purity in love;
How were I then uplifted! But, alas,
I am as true as truth's simplicity,
And simpler than the infancy of truth.
Cres. In that I'll war with you.
Tro.
When right with right wars who shall be most right!
True swains in love shall, in the world to come,
Approve their truths by Troilus; when their rhymes,
Full of protest, of oath, and big compare,
Want similes of truth, tired with iteration,
As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,3
As sun to day, as turtle to her mate,
As iron to adamant, as earth to the centre,
Yet, after all comparisons of truth,

As truth's authentic author to be cited,
As true as Troilus shall crown up the verse,
And sanctify the numbers.

Cres.

Prophet may you be!

If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,

When time is old and hath forgot itself,

When water-drops have worn the stones of Troy,
And blind oblivion swallowed cities up,

And mighty states characterless are grated

1 Met with and equalled.

2 In the old copy this line stands,—

"Wants similes truth tired with iteration."

The emendation was proposed by Mr. Tyrwhitt.

3 Plantage is here put for any thing planted, which was thought to depend for its success upon the influence of the moon.

4 i. e. conclude it.