Troilus and Cressida Study Guide

Troilus and Cressida is a play by William Shakespeare, probably written around 1602. 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

• There is seenThe baby figure of the giant mass

  Of things to come at large.

  • Nestor, scene iii

Act II

• Modest doubt is call’dThe 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