TROILUS & CRESSIDA. William Shakespeare

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       What offends you, lady?

       CRESSIDA.

       Sir, mine own company.

       TROILUS.

       You cannot shun yourself.

       CRESSIDA.

       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.

       TROILUS.

       Well know they what they speak that speak so wisely.

       CRESSIDA.

       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.

       TROILUS.

       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

       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.

       CRESSIDA.

       In that I’ll war with you.

       TROILUS.

       O virtuous fight,

       When right with right wars who shall be most right!

       True swains in love shall in the world to come

       Approve their truth by Troilus, when their rhymes,

       Full of protest, of oath, and big compare,

       Want similes, truth tir’d with iteration—

       As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,

       As sun to day, as turtle to her mate,

       As iron to adamant, as earth to th’ 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.

       CRESSIDA.

       Prophet may you be!

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

       When time is old and hath forgot itself,

       When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,

       And blind oblivion swallow’d cities up,

       And mighty states characterless are grated

       To dusty nothing—yet let memory

       From false to false, among false maids in love,

       Upbraid my falsehood when th’ have said ‘As false

       As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth,

       As fox to lamb, or wolf to heifer’s calf,

       Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son’—

       Yea, let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood,

       ‘As false as Cressid.’

       PANDARUS. Go to, a bargain made; seal it, seal it; I’ll be the witness. Here I hold your hand; here my cousin’s. If ever you prove false one to another, since I have taken such pains to bring you together, let all pitiful goers-between be call’d to the world’s end after my name—call them all Pandars; let all constant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids, and all brokers between Pandars. Say ‘Amen.’

       TROILUS.

       Amen.

       CRESSIDA.

       Amen.

       PANDARUS.

       Amen. Whereupon I will show you a chamber and a bed; which bed,

       because it shall not speak of your pretty encounters, press it to

       death.

       Away! And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here,

       Bed, chamber, pander, to provide this gear!

       [Exeunt.]