At dawn, Troilus and Cressida part reluctantly after their first night together. Troilus urges her to sleep; Cressida resists leaving. Pandarus arrives and teases them both mercilessly. Aeneas arrives with urgent news: Cressida has been traded to the Greeks for the prisoner Antenor and must leave Troy immediately. Troilus hides his devastation, instructing Aeneas that they met by chance.
The scene's opening establishes the lovers' impossible position through physical and temporal pressure. Troilus begs Cressida to return to bed, but she resists, sensing the fragility of their happiness. Her question—'Are you a-weary of me?'—reveals her deepest fear: that their union is already dissolving. Troilus's poetry about time ('the lark,' 'the busy day') transforms natural dawn into a brutal separator, suggesting that external forces, not human choice, will tear them apart. Pandarus's crude jokes ('How now, how go maidenheads?') puncture the lovers' tenderness, introducing the reality of their situation in bawdy terms. The domestic scene becomes claustrophobic, intimate only to those inside, while the outside world prepares to invade.
Aeneas's arrival shatters the lovers' private world with state business. The news that Cressida is 'changed for Antenor'—traded like a commodity—confirms what the play has suggested all along: love and desire are subject to political calculation. Troilus's response ('We met by chance; you did not find me here') is a masterpiece of emotional suppression. He performs composure even as his world collapses, masking devastation behind politeness. This moment crystallizes the play's central tragedy: two people bound by genuine feeling cannot protect that feeling from the machinery of war and politics. Cressida's later desperation ('I will not go from Troy') becomes inevitable heartbreak when she is forced to leave. The scene's power lies in its collision of intimacy and interruption—Pandarus's laughter is still echoing when the state's gavel falls.
Here! what should he do here?
What’s going on here? What’s he doing here?
Pandarus · Act 4, Scene 2
Pandarus denies knowing where Troilus is, even as Troilus approaches from inside the house. The line works because it captures Pandarus playing dumb at the exact moment when pretense has become useless—Aeneas knows Troilus is there, and so does Pandarus. It shows how the play's characters cling to performance even when exposure is certain.
Is’t possible? no sooner got but lost? The devil take Antenor! the young prince will go mad: a plague upon Antenor! I would they had broke ’s neck!
Is it possible? He’s gotten her, then lost her? The devil Take Antenor! The young prince will go crazy: a Curse on Antenor! I wish they had broken his neck!
Pandarus · Act 4, Scene 2
Pandarus learns that Cressida is being traded to the Greeks and reacts with shock at the speed of ruin—gained and lost in a breath. The line matters because it shows how suddenly the game becomes real; what seemed impossible moments ago is now fact, and Pandarus sees his entire work collapse. His despair is real, even if his pity for himself outweighs his concern for the young prince.
Original Shakespeare alongside modern English. Synced read-along narration in the app.
