Diomedes begs Cressida for the scarf which Troilus has given her.
"Diomedes. I had your heart before, this follows it.
Troilus (aside). I did swear patience.
Cressida. You shall not have it, Diomed, faith you shall not: I'll give you something else.
Diomedes. I will have this: whose was it?
Cressida. It is no matter.
Diomedes. Come, tell me whose it was?
Cressida. 'Twas one that loved me better than you will' But, now you have it, take it."
And the bit of feminine psychology which Shakespeare has given in Cressida's farewell to Diomedes:
"Good-night: I prithee, come.
Troilus, farewell! one eye yet looks on thee,
But with my heart the other eye doth see.
Ah, poor our sex! This fault in us I find,
The error of our eye directs our mind."
And the terrible words Shakespeare puts into Troilus's mouth when he tries so desperately to shake off the impression, and deny the possibility of what he has seen:
"Ulysses. Why stay we, then?'
Troilus. To make a recordation to my soul
Of every syllable that here was spoken.
But if I tell how these two did co-act,
Shall I not lie in publishing this truth?
Sith yet there is a credence in my heart
An esperance so obstinately strong,
That doth invert the attest of eyes and ears,
As if those organs had deceptious functions
Created only to calumniate.
Was Cressid here?
Ulysses. I cannot conjure, Trojan.
Troilus. She was not, sure.
Ulysses. Most sure she was.
Troilus. Why, my negation hath no taste of madness.
Ulysses. Nor mine, my lord. Cressid was here but now.
Troilus. Let it not be believed for womanhood!
Think, we had mothers: do not give advantage
To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme,
For depravation, to square this general sex
By Cressid's rule; rather think this not Cressid.
Ulysses. What hath she done, prince, that can soil our
mothers?
Troilus. Nothing at all, unless that that were she."
Not only Troilus, but the whole play has here become permeated by Ulysses' conception of Cressida, and in this despairing outburst, "Think, we had mothers," is the pith of the piece uttered forth with terrible clearness.
Yet Troilus and Cressida by no means represent the whole of the play. In order to counterbalance the slightness of the action, the bombastic speech, the railing abuse, and the heavy bitter Juvenal-like satire of his drama, Shakespeare has interpolated some serious and thoughtful utterances in which some of the fruits of his abundant experience are expressed in weighty and concise form.
Achilles, and more especially Ulysses, give vent to profound political and psychological reflections, entirely regardless of the fact that the one is a thoughtless blockhead, and the other is a crafty and unsympathetic nature, the mere negative pole of Troilus, cold as he is warm, cunning as he is naïve. These remarkable and thoughtful utterances, not in the least in harmony with their characters, stand in direct contradiction to the whole play and its farcical treatment, but they are none the less notable for that. This singular inconsistency is one of the many in which this incongruous play is so rich, and it is these very contradictions which make it attractive, insomuch as they reveal the conflicting moods from which it sprang. They arrest the attention like the irregular features of a face whose expression varies between irony, satire, melancholy, and profundity.
Ulysses, who is represented as the sole statesman among the Greeks, degrades himself by low flattery of the idiotic Ajax, servilely referring to him as "this thrice worthy and right valiant lord," who should not soil the victory he has won by going as messenger to Achilles' tent, and he persuades the princes to pass Achilles by without greeting him. On this occasion Achilles, who is otherwise but a braggart, dolt, coward, and scoundrel, surprises us by a succession of outbursts, in each of which he gives voice to as deep and bitter knowledge of human nature as does Timon of Athens himself.