Page 2834 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

TROILUS

What should they grant? What makes this pretty abruption? What too curious
dreg espies my sweet lady in the fountain of our love? [65]

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 [70] the worst oft cures the worst.

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 [75] 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 [80] 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 [85] 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