Troilus and Cressida

Troilus and Cressida is a play by William Shakespeare, probably written around 1602. The play is set at Troy during the Trojan War where Troilus and Cressida begin a love affair. Cressida is forced to leave Troy to join her father in the Greek camp. Meanwhile the Greeks endeavour to lessen the pride of Achilles.It is called a history play in the Quarto edition (1609), and a tragedy in the First Folio (1623). Critics now often treat it as a "problem play."

Act I

• He that will have a cake out of the wheat must tarry the grinding.
  • Pandarus, scene i

• I have had my labour for my travail.
  • Pandarus, scene i

• Things won are done, joy's soul lies in the doing.
  • Cressida, scene ii, line 313

• The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre,
  Observe degree, priority, and place,
  Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
  Office, and custom, in all line of order.
  • Ulysses, scene iii

• Take but degree away, untune that string,
  And hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
  In mere oppugnancy:
  • Ulysses, scene iii (~line 115)

the bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores, And make a sop of all this solid globe.

• There is seen
  The baby figure of the giant mass
  Of things to come at large.
  • Nestor, scene iii

Act II

• Modest doubt is call’d
  The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches
  To the bottom of the worst.
  • Hector, scene ii

• The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance.
  • Thersites, scene iii

Act III

• 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.
  • Cressida, scene ii

• Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
  Wherein he puts alms for Oblivion,
  A great-siz'd monster of ingratitudes.
  • Ulysses, scene iii

• Perséverance, dear my lord,
  Keeps honour bright: to have done, is to hang
  Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
  In monumental mockery.
  • Ulysses, scene iii

• Time is like a fashionable host,
  That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand;
  And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly,
  Grasps-in the comer: the welcome ever smiles,
  And farewell goes out sighing.
  • Ulysses, scene iii

• One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
  • Ulysses, scene iii

• All, with one consent, praise new-born gawds,
  Though they are made and moulded of things past;
  And give to dust, that is a little gilt,
  More laud than gilt o’erdusted.
  • Ulysses, scene iii

• And, like a dew-drop from the lion's mane,
  Be shook to airy air.
  • Patroclus, scene iii

• A plague of opinion! a man may wear it on both sides, like a leather jerkin.
  • Thersites, scene ix

Act IV

• There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,
  Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out
  At every joint and motive of her body.
  • Ulysses, scene v

• His heart and hand both open and both free;
  For what he has he gives, what thinks, he shows;
  Yet gives he not till judgment guide his bounty.
  • Ulysses, scene v

• The end crowns all;
  And that old common arbitrator, Time,
  Will one day end it.
  • Hector, scene v