| ACT II SCENE II | Troy. A room in Priam's palace. | |
| [Enter PRIAM, HECTOR, TROILUS, PARIS, and HELENUS] |
| PRIAM | After so many hours, lives, speeches spent, |
| Thus once again says Nestor from the Greeks: |
| 'Deliver Helen, and all damage else-- |
| As honour, loss of time, travail, expense, |
| Wounds, friends, and what else dear that is consumed | 5 |
| In hot digestion of this cormorant war-- |
| Shall be struck off.' Hector, what say you to't? |
| HECTOR | Though no man lesser fears the Greeks than I |
| As far as toucheth my particular, |
| Yet, dread Priam, | 10 |
| There is no lady of more softer bowels, |
| More spongy to suck in the sense of fear, |
| More ready to cry out 'Who knows what follows?' |
| Than Hector is: the wound of peace is surety, |
| Surety secure; but modest doubt is call'd | 15 |
| The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches |
| To the bottom of the worst. Let Helen go: |
| Since the first sword was drawn about this question, |
| Every tithe soul, 'mongst many thousand dismes, |
| Hath been as dear as Helen; I mean, of ours: | 20 |
| If we have lost so many tenths of ours, |
| To guard a thing not ours nor worth to us, |
| Had it our name, the value of one ten, |
| What merit's in that reason which denies |
| The yielding of her up? | 25 |
| TROILUS | Fie, fie, my brother! |
| Weigh you the worth and honour of a king |
| So great as our dread father in a scale |
| Of common ounces? will you with counters sum |
| The past proportion of his infinite? | 30 |
| And buckle in a waist most fathomless |
| With spans and inches so diminutive |
| As fears and reasons? fie, for godly shame! |
| HELENUS | No marvel, though you bite so sharp at reasons, |
| You are so empty of them. Should not our father | 35 |
| Bear the great sway of his affairs with reasons, |
| Because your speech hath none that tells him so? |
| TROILUS | You are for dreams and slumbers, brother priest; |
| You fur your gloves with reason. Here are |
| your reasons: | 40 |
| You know an enemy intends you harm; |
| You know a sword employ'd is perilous, |
| And reason flies the object of all harm: |
| Who marvels then, when Helenus beholds |
| A Grecian and his sword, if he do set | 45 |
| The very wings of reason to his heels |
| And fly like chidden Mercury from Jove, |
| Or like a star disorb'd? Nay, if we talk of reason, |
| Let's shut our gates and sleep: manhood and honour |
| Should have hare-hearts, would they but fat | 50 |
| their thoughts |
| With this cramm'd reason: reason and respect |
| Make livers pale and lustihood deject. |
| HECTOR | Brother, she is not worth what she doth cost |
| The holding. | 55 |
| TROILUS | What is aught, but as 'tis valued? |
| HECTOR | But value dwells not in particular will; |
| It holds his estimate and dignity |
| As well wherein 'tis precious of itself |
| As in the prizer: 'tis mad idolatry | 60 |
| To make the service greater than the god |
| And the will dotes that is attributive |
| To what infectiously itself affects, |
| Without some image of the affected merit. |
| TROILUS | I take to-day a wife, and my election | 65 |
| Is led on in the conduct of my will; |
| My will enkindled by mine eyes and ears, |
| Two traded pilots 'twixt the dangerous shores |
| Of will and judgment: how may I avoid, |
| Although my will distaste what it elected, | 70 |
| The wife I chose? there can be no evasion |
| To blench from this and to stand firm by honour: |
| We turn not back the silks upon the merchant, |
| When we have soil'd them, nor the remainder viands |
| We do not throw in unrespective sieve, | 75 |
| Because we now are full. It was thought meet |
| Paris should do some vengeance on the Greeks: |
| Your breath of full consent bellied his sails; |
| The seas and winds, old wranglers, took a truce |
| And did him service: he touch'd the ports desired, | 80 |
| And for an old aunt whom the Greeks held captive, |
| He brought a Grecian queen, whose youth and freshness |
| Wrinkles Apollo's, and makes stale the morning. |
| Why keep we her? the Grecians keep our aunt: |
| Is she worth keeping? why, she is a pearl, | 85 |
| Whose price hath launch'd above a thousand ships, |
| And turn'd crown'd kings to merchants. |
| If you'll avouch 'twas wisdom Paris went-- |
| As you must needs, for you all cried 'Go, go,'-- |
| If you'll confess he brought home noble prize-- | 90 |
| As you must needs, for you all clapp'd your hands |
| And cried 'Inestimable!'--why do you now |
| The issue of your proper wisdoms rate, |
| And do a deed that fortune never did, |
| Beggar the estimation which you prized | 95 |
| Richer than sea and land? O, theft most base, |
| That we have stol'n what we do fear to keep! |
| But, thieves, unworthy of a thing so stol'n, |
| That in their country did them that disgrace, |
| We fear to warrant in our native place! | 100 |
| CASSANDRA | [Within] Cry, Trojans, cry!
|
| PRIAM | What noise? what shriek is this? |
| TROILUS | 'Tis our mad sister, I do know her voice. |
| CASSANDRA | [Within] Cry, Trojans!
|
| HECTOR | It is Cassandra. | 105 |
| [Enter CASSANDRA, raving] |
| CASSANDRA | Cry, Trojans, cry! lend me ten thousand eyes, |
| And I will fill them with prophetic tears. |
| HECTOR | Peace, sister, peace! |
| CASSANDRA | Virgins and boys, mid-age and wrinkled eld, |
| Soft infancy, that nothing canst but cry, | 110 |
| Add to my clamours! let us pay betimes |
| A moiety of that mass of moan to come. |
| Cry, Trojans, cry! practise your eyes with tears! |
| Troy must not be, nor goodly Ilion stand; |
| Our firebrand brother, Paris, burns us all. | 115 |
| Cry, Trojans, cry! a Helen and a woe: |
| Cry, cry! Troy burns, or else let Helen go. |
| [Exit] |
| HECTOR | Now, youthful Troilus, do not these high strains |
| Of divination in our sister work |
| Some touches of remorse? or is your blood | 120 |
| So madly hot that no discourse of reason, |
| Nor fear of bad success in a bad cause, |
| Can qualify the same? |
| TROILUS | Why, brother Hector, |
| We may not think the justness of each act | 125 |
| Such and no other than event doth form it, |
| Nor once deject the courage of our minds, |
| Because Cassandra's mad: her brain-sick raptures |
| Cannot distaste the goodness of a quarrel |
| Which hath our several honours all engaged | 130 |
| To make it gracious. For my private part, |
| I am no more touch'd than all Priam's sons: |
| And Jove forbid there should be done amongst us |
| Such things as might offend the weakest spleen |
| To fight for and maintain! | 135 |
| PARIS | Else might the world convince of levity |
| As well my undertakings as your counsels: |
| But I attest the gods, your full consent |
| Gave wings to my propension and cut off |
| All fears attending on so dire a project. | 140 |
| For what, alas, can these my single arms? |
| What Propugnation is in one man's valour, |
| To stand the push and enmity of those |
| This quarrel would excite? Yet, I protest, |
| Were I alone to pass the difficulties | 145 |
| And had as ample power as I have will, |
| Paris should ne'er retract what he hath done, |
| Nor faint in the pursuit. |
| PRIAM | Paris, you speak |
| Like one besotted on your sweet delights: | 150 |
| You have the honey still, but these the gall; |
| So to be valiant is no praise at all. |
| PARIS | Sir, I propose not merely to myself |
| The pleasures such a beauty brings with it; |
| But I would have the soil of her fair rape | 155 |
| Wiped off, in honourable keeping her. |
| What treason were it to the ransack'd queen, |
| Disgrace to your great worths and shame to me, |
| Now to deliver her possession up |
| On terms of base compulsion! Can it be | 160 |
| That so degenerate a strain as this |
| Should once set footing in your generous bosoms? |
| There's not the meanest spirit on our party |
| Without a heart to dare or sword to draw |
| When Helen is defended, nor none so noble | 165 |
| Whose life were ill bestow'd or death unfamed |
| Where Helen is the subject; then, I say, |
| Well may we fight for her whom, we know well, |
| The world's large spaces cannot parallel. |
| HECTOR | Paris and Troilus, you have both said well, | 170 |
| And on the cause and question now in hand |
| Have glozed, but superficially: not much |
| Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought |
| Unfit to hear moral philosophy: |
| The reasons you allege do more conduce | 175 |
| To the hot passion of distemper'd blood |
| Than to make up a free determination |
| 'Twixt right and wrong, for pleasure and revenge |
| Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice |
| Of any true decision. Nature craves | 180 |
| All dues be render'd to their owners: now, |
| What nearer debt in all humanity |
| Than wife is to the husband? If this law |
| Of nature be corrupted through affection, |
| And that great minds, of partial indulgence | 185 |
| To their benumbed wills, resist the same, |
| There is a law in each well-order'd nation |
| To curb those raging appetites that are |
| Most disobedient and refractory. |
| If Helen then be wife to Sparta's king, | 190 |
| As it is known she is, these moral laws |
| Of nature and of nations speak aloud |
| To have her back return'd: thus to persist |
| In doing wrong extenuates not wrong, |
| But makes it much more heavy. Hector's opinion | 195 |
| Is this in way of truth; yet ne'ertheless, |
| My spritely brethren, I propend to you |
| In resolution to keep Helen still, |
| For 'tis a cause that hath no mean dependance |
| Upon our joint and several dignities. | 200 |
| TROILUS | Why, there you touch'd the life of our design: |
| Were it not glory that we more affected |
| Than the performance of our heaving spleens, |
| I would not wish a drop of Trojan blood |
| Spent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector, | 205 |
| She is a theme of honour and renown, |
| A spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds, |
| Whose present courage may beat down our foes, |
| And fame in time to come canonize us; |
| For, I presume, brave Hector would not lose | 210 |
| So rich advantage of a promised glory |
| As smiles upon the forehead of this action |
| For the wide world's revenue. |
| HECTOR | I am yours, |
| You valiant offspring of great Priamus. | 215 |
| I have a roisting challenge sent amongst |
| The dun and factious nobles of the Greeks |
| Will strike amazement to their drowsy spirits: |
| I was advertised their great general slept, |
| Whilst emulation in the army crept: | 220 |
| This, I presume, will wake him. |
| [Exeunt] |
Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida: Scenes and Commentary