Pandarus

Play

Troilus and Cressida

Summary

Cressida's uncle who arranges and facilitates the affair between Troilus and his niece, clucking and fussing over them with almost prurient delight. His name has given the English language the word "pander" and "pandering." By the play's end he is diseased and broken, and his final epilogue addressing the audience as fellow sufferers from venereal disease gives the play its most acidly cynical close.

Notable Quotations

"Let all constant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids, and all brokers-between Pandars!" *(III.ii)*

"A goodly medicine for my aching bones! O world, world, world! thus is the poor agent despised." *(V.x)*

Cross-references

• Troilus and Cressida — the play
• Tragedies
• character_troilus — the lover he serves as go-between
• character_cressida — his niece whose affair he arranges