When Troilus asks her why she was so hard to get, she says she was ‘Hard to seem won’ and then adds that if she confesses too much he ‘will play the tyrant.’ She says that she had often ‘wish’d myself a man, /Or that we women had men’s privilege/Of speaking first. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue/ For, in this rapture I shall surely speak/The thing I shall repent... She pleads with herself to ‘Stop my mouth’ at which point Troilus kisses her. Cressida says that she hadn’t intended to beg a kiss, and in her growing confusion, attempts to flee the scene.

Troilus wonders what offends her and she says it is ‘‘mine own company’’ Her later lines show that she is already divided within herself. Hers is a moral and intellectual confusion. She desires Troilus, and yet wishes still to keep the tactical advantage of uncertainty. ‘I have a kind self resides with you, /But an unkind self, that itself will leave/To be another’s fool. I would be gone: Where is my wit? I know not what I speak.’ Here, she is questioning her good sense, for being uncertain, and makes incoherent speech her reason for going.

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