Imatges de pàgina
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Pan. You spy! what do you spy?- Come, give me Now, sweet queen.

an instrument.

Helen. Why, this is kindly done.

Pan. My niece is horribly in love with a thing you have, sweet queen.

Helen. She shall have it, my lord, if it be not my lord Paris.

Pan. He! no, she'll none of him; they two are twain. Helen. Falling in, after falling out, may make them three.

Pan. Come, come, I'll hear no more of this; I'll sing you a song now.

Helen. Ay, ay, pr'ythee now. By my troth, sweet lord, thou hast a fine forehead.

Pan. Ay, you may, you may.

Helen. Let thy song be love: this love will undo us all. O, Cupid, Cupid, Cupid!

Pan. Love! ay, that it shall, i̇'faith.

Par. Ay, good now, love, love, nothing but love.
Pan. In good troth, it begins so:

Love, love, nothing but love, still more!

For, oh, love's bow

Shoots buck and doe:
The shaft confounds,
Not that it wounds,

But tickles still the sore.

These lovers cry· Oh! oh! they die!
Yet that which seems the wound to kill,
Doth turn oh! oh! to ha! ha! he!
So dying love lives still:

Oh! oh! a while, but ha! ha! ha!
Oh! oh! groans out for ha! ha! ha!

Hey ho!

Helen. In love, i'faith, to the very tip of the nose.

Par. 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.

Pan. Is this the generation of love? hot blood, hot thoughts, and hot deeds? - Why, they are vipers: Is love a generation of vipers? Sweet lord, who's a-field, to-day?

Par. Hector, Deiphobus, Helenus, Antenor, and all the gallantry of Troy: I would fain have armed to-night, † 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.

Pan. Not I, honey-sweet queen. I long to hear how they sped to-day. -You'll remember your brother's

excuse?

Par. To a hair.

Pan. Farewell, sweet queen.

Helen. Commend me to your niece.

Pan. I will, sweet queen.

[Exit.

[A Retreat sounded.

Par. They are 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 touch'd, 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,

Give us more palm in beauty than we have;
Yea, overshines ourself.

Par. Sweet, above thought I love thee.

+"To-day," — STEEVENS, edit. 1793, 15 vol.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II.

The same. Pandarus' Orchard.

Enter PANDARUS and a Servant, meeting.

Pan. How now? where's thy master? at my cousin Cressida's?

Serv. No, sir; he stays for you to conduct him thither.

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Tro. 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

Propos'd for the deserver! O gentle Pandarus,
From Cupid's shoulder pluck his painted wings,
And fly with me to Cressid!

Pan. Walk here i'the orchard, I'll bring her straight.

[Exit PANDArus.

Tro. I am giddy; expectation whirls me round.

The imaginary relish is so sweet

That it enchants my sense; What will it be,
When that the watry palate tastes indeed
Love's thrice-reputed nectar? death, I fear me;
Swooning destruction; or some joy too fine,
Too subtle-potent, tun'd 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.

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 encount'ring
The eye of majesty.

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Enter PANDARUS and CRESSIDA.

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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 watched ere you be made tame, must you? Come your ways, come your ways; an you draw backward, we'll put you i'the fills. Why do you not speak to her?- Come, draw this 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 I part you. The falcon as the tercel, for all the ducks i'the river: go to, go to.

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'the fills.] That is, in the shafts. Fill is a provincial word used in some counties for thills, the shafts of a cart or waggon. 5 So, so; rub on, and kiss the mistress.] The allusion is to bowling. What we now call the jack, seems, in Shakspeare's time, to have been termed the mistress. A bowl that kisses the jack, or mistress, is in the most advantageous situation. Rub on is a term at the same game.

6 The falcon as the tercel-] Pandarus means, that he'll match his niece against her lover for any bett. The tercel is the male hawk; by the falcon we generally understand the female.

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 - Come 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.

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.

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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. They that have the voice of lions, and the act of hares, are they not monsters?

Tro. 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

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