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Will you walk in, my lord?

Cressida
Will you walk in, my lord?
Troilus
O Cressid, how often have I wished me thus!
Cressida
“Wished,” my lord? The gods grant—O, my lord!
Troilus
What should they grant? What makes this
pretty abruption? What too-curious dreg espies
my sweet lady in the fountain of our love?
Cressida
More dregs than water, if my fears have eyes.
Troilus
Fears make devils of cherubins; they never
see truly.
Cressida
Blind fear, that seeing reason leads, finds
safer footing than blind reason, stumbling without
fear. To fear the worst oft cures the worse.
Troilus
O, let my lady apprehend no fear. In all
Cupid's pageant there is presented no monster.
Cressida
Nor nothing monstrous neither?
Troilus
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.
Cressida
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?
Troilus
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.
Cressida
Will you walk in, my lord?

Source:
Act 3
Scene 2
Line 61

Source Type:

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