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Home » Quotes » Troilus and Cressida » Mark him. Note him. O brave Troilus!

Mark him. Note him. O brave Troilus!

Pandarus
Mark him. Note him. O brave Troilus! Look
well upon him, niece. Look you how his sword is
bloodied and his helm more hacked than Hector's,
and how he looks, and how he goes. O admirable
youth! He never saw three and twenty.—Go thy
way, Troilus; go thy way!—Had I a sister were a
Grace, or a daughter a goddess, he should take his
choice. O admirable man! Paris? Paris is dirt to
him; and I warrant Helen, to change, would give
an eye to boot.
Enter Common Soldiers and cross the stage.
Cressida
Here comes more.
Pandarus
Asses, fools, dolts, chaff and bran, chaff and
bran, porridge after meat. I could live and die in
the eyes of Troilus. Ne'er look, ne'er look; the
eagles are gone. Crows and daws, crows and daws!
I had rather be such a man as Troilus than
Agamemnon and all Greece.
Cressida
There is amongst the Greeks Achilles, a better
man than Troilus.
Pandarus
Achilles? A drayman, a porter, a very camel!
Cressida
Well, well.
Pandarus
—Well, well? Why, have you any discretion?
Have you any eyes? Do you know what a man is? Is
not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood,
learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality and
such-like the spice and salt that season a man?
Cressida
Ay, a minced man; and then to be baked with
no date in the pie, for then the man's date is out.
Pandarus
You are such a woman a man knows not at
what ward you lie.
Cressida
Upon my back to defend my belly, upon my
wit to defend my wiles, upon my secrecy to defend
mine honesty, my mask to defend my beauty, and
you to defend all these; and at all these wards I lie,
at a thousand watches.
Pandarus
Say one of your watches.
Cressida
Nay, I'll watch you for that, and that's one of
the chiefest of them too. If I cannot ward what I
would not have hit, I can watch you for telling how
I took the blow—unless it swell past hiding, and
then it's past watching.
Pandarus
You are such another!

Source:
Act 1
Scene 2
Line 237

Source Type:

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