this curtain, and let's see your picture. Alas the day, how loath you are to offend day-light! an 'twere dark, you'd close sooner. So, so; rub on, and kiss the mistress*, How now? a kiss in feefarm? build there, carpenter; the air is sweet. Nay, you shall fight your hearts out, ere I part you. The falcon as the tercelt, 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 to, if she call your activity in question. What, billing again? Here's -In witness whereof the parties interchangeablyCome in, come in ; I'll go get a fire.

[Erit Papdarus. Cres. Will you walk in, my lord ?

Tro. O Cressida, how often have I wished me thus?

Cress. 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 niy 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;

* The allusion is to bowling; what is now called the jack was formerly termed the mistress,

+ The tercel is the male and the falcon the female hawk.

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 per. fection 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 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 dedi. cate 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 mo

heart: Prince Troilus, I have lov'd 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
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 blabb'd? who shall be true to us,
When we are so upsecret to ourselves?
But, though I lov'd you well, I woo'd you not;
And yet, good faith, I wish'd 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 : Siop my mouth.

Tro. And shall, albeit sweet musick 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 asham'd ;-0 heavens! what have I doue ?
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?
Cres. Sir, mine own company.
Tro.

You cannot shun 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
Might be affronted t with the match and weight
Of such a winnow'd 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.

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 truths by Troilus: when their rhymes,
Full of protest, of oath, and big compare I,
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 the centre,
Yet, after all comparisons of truth,
As truth's authentick author to be cited,
As true as Troilus shall crowo upo the verse,
And sanctify the numbers.

Approve their love shall, in the worlde most right?

* Ever.

Comparison. VOL. VI.

+ Met with and equalled.

Conclude it.

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 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 they have said-as

false As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth, As fox to lamb, as wolf to beifer's calf, Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son ; Yea, let thenı say, to stick the heart of falsehood, As false as Cressid.

Pan. 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 called to the world's end after my name, call them all-Pandars; let all inconstant men be Troiluses, all false women Cres. sids, and all brokers-between Pandars! say, amen.

Tro. Amen. Cres. Amen.

Pan. Amen. Whereupon I will show you a cham. ber 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, Pandar, to provide this geer!

(Excunt.