Troilus And Cressida

1 Enter Priam, Hector, Troilus, Paris and Helenus.
2 PRIAM.
3 After so many hours, lives, speeches spent,
4 Thus once again says Nestor from the Greeks:
5 ‘Deliver Helen, and all damage else—
6 As honour, loss of time, travail, expense,
7 Wounds, friends, and what else dear that is consum’d
8 In hot digestion of this cormorant war—
9 Shall be struck off.’ Hector, what say you to’t?
10 HECTOR.
11 Though no man lesser fears the Greeks than I,
12 As far as toucheth my particular,
13 Yet, dread Priam,
14 There is no lady of more softer bowels,
15 More spongy to suck in the sense of fear,
16 More ready to cry out ‘Who knows what follows?’
17 Than Hector is. The wound of peace is surety,
18 Surety secure; but modest doubt is call’d
19 The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches
20 To th’ bottom of the worst. Let Helen go.
21 Since the first sword was drawn about this question,
22 Every tithe soul ’mongst many thousand dismes
23 Hath been as dear as Helen—I mean, of ours.
24 If we have lost so many tenths of ours
25 To guard a thing not ours, nor worth to us,
26 Had it our name, the value of one ten,
27 What merit’s in that reason which denies
28 The yielding of her up?
29 TROILUS.
30 Fie, fie, my brother!
31 Weigh you the worth and honour of a king,
32 So great as our dread father’s, in a scale
33 Of common ounces? Will you with counters sum
34 The past-proportion of his infinite,
35 And buckle in a waist most fathomless
36 With spans and inches so diminutive
37 As fears and reasons? Fie, for godly shame!
38 HELENUS.
39 No marvel though you bite so sharp of reasons,
40 You are so empty of them. Should not our father
41 Bear the great sway of his affairs with reason,
42 Because your speech hath none that tells him so?
43 TROILUS.
44 You are for dreams and slumbers, brother priest;
45 You fur your gloves with reason. Here are your reasons:
46 You know an enemy intends you harm;
47 You know a sword employ’d is perilous,
48 And reason flies the object of all harm.
49 Who marvels, then, when Helenus beholds
50 A Grecian and his sword, if he do set
51 The very wings of reason to his heels
52 And fly like chidden Mercury from Jove,
53 Or like a star disorb’d? Nay, if we talk of reason,
54 Let’s shut our gates and sleep. Manhood and honour
55 Should have hare hearts, would they but fat their thoughts
56 With this cramm’d reason. Reason and respect
57 Make livers pale and lustihood deject.
58 HECTOR.
59 Brother, she is not worth what she doth cost the keeping.
60 TROILUS.
61 What’s aught but as ’tis valued?
62 HECTOR.
63 But value dwells not in particular will:
64 It holds his estimate and dignity
65 As well wherein ’tis precious of itself
66 As in the prizer. ’Tis mad idolatry
67 To make the service greater than the god,
68 And the will dotes that is attributive
69 To what infectiously itself affects,
70 Without some image of th’affected merit.
71 TROILUS.
72 I take today a wife, and my election
73 Is led on in the conduct of my will;
74 My will enkindled by mine eyes and ears,
75 Two traded pilots ’twixt the dangerous shores
76 Of will and judgement: how may I avoid,
77 Although my will distaste what it elected,
78 The wife I chose? There can be no evasion
79 To blench from this and to stand firm by honour.
80 We turn not back the silks upon the merchant
81 When we have soil’d them; nor the remainder viands
82 We do not throw in unrespective sieve,
83 Because we now are full. It was thought meet
84 Paris should do some vengeance on the Greeks;
85 Your breath with full consent bellied his sails;
86 The seas and winds, old wranglers, took a truce,
87 And did him service. He touch’d the ports desir’d;
88 And for an old aunt whom the Greeks held captive
89 He brought a Grecian queen, whose youth and freshness
90 Wrinkles Apollo’s, and makes stale the morning.
91 Why keep we her? The Grecians keep our aunt.
92 Is she worth keeping? Why, she is a pearl
93 Whose price hath launch’d above a thousand ships,
94 And turn’d crown’d kings to merchants.
95 If you’ll avouch ’twas wisdom Paris went—
96 As you must needs, for you all cried ‘Go, go’—
97 If you’ll confess he brought home worthy prize—
98 As you must needs, for you all clapp’d your hands,
99 And cried ‘Inestimable!’—why do you now
100 The issue of your proper wisdoms rate,
101 And do a deed that never Fortune did—
102 Beggar the estimation which you priz’d
103 Richer than sea and land? O theft most base,
104 That we have stol’n what we do fear to keep!
105 But thieves unworthy of a thing so stol’n
106 That in their country did them that disgrace
107 We fear to warrant in our native place!
108 CASSANDRA.
109 [_Within_.] Cry, Trojans, cry.
110 PRIAM.
111 What noise, what shriek is this?
112 TROILUS.
113 ’Tis our mad sister; I do know her voice.
114 CASSANDRA.
115 [_Within_.] Cry, Trojans.
116 HECTOR.
117 It is Cassandra.
118 Enter Cassandra, raving.
119 CASSANDRA.
120 Cry, Trojans, cry. Lend me ten thousand eyes,
121 And I will fill them with prophetic tears.
122 HECTOR.
123 Peace, sister, peace.
124 CASSANDRA.
125 Virgins and boys, mid-age and wrinkled eld,
126 Soft infancy, that nothing canst but cry,
127 Add to my clamours. Let us pay betimes
128 A moiety of that mass of moan to come.
129 Cry, Trojans, cry. Practise your eyes with tears.
130 Troy must not be, nor goodly Ilion stand;
131 Our firebrand brother, Paris, burns us all.
132 Cry, Trojans, cry, A Helen and a woe!
133 Cry, cry. Troy burns, or else let Helen go.
134 [_Exit_.]
135 HECTOR.
136 Now, youthful Troilus, do not these high strains
137 Of divination in our sister work
138 Some touches of remorse? Or is your blood
139 So madly hot, that no discourse of reason,
140 Nor fear of bad success in a bad cause,
141 Can qualify the same?
142 TROILUS.
143 Why, brother Hector,
144 We may not think the justness of each act
145 Such and no other than event doth form it;
146 Nor once deject the courage of our minds
147 Because Cassandra’s mad. Her brain-sick raptures
148 Cannot distaste the goodness of a quarrel
149 Which hath our several honours all engag’d
150 To make it gracious. For my private part,
151 I am no more touch’d than all Priam’s sons;
152 And Jove forbid there should be done amongst us
153 Such things as might offend the weakest spleen
154 To fight for and maintain.
155 PARIS.
156 Else might the world convince of levity
157 As well my undertakings as your counsels;
158 But I attest the gods, your full consent
159 Gave wings to my propension, and cut off
160 All fears attending on so dire a project.
161 For what, alas, can these my single arms?
162 What propugnation is in one man’s valour
163 To stand the push and enmity of those
164 This quarrel would excite? Yet I protest,
165 Were I alone to pass the difficulties,
166 And had as ample power as I have will,
167 Paris should ne’er retract what he hath done,
168 Nor faint in the pursuit.
169 PRIAM.
170 Paris, you speak
171 Like one besotted on your sweet delights.
172 You have the honey still, but these the gall;
173 So to be valiant is no praise at all.
174 PARIS.
175 Sir, I propose not merely to myself
176 The pleasures such a beauty brings with it;
177 But I would have the soil of her fair rape
178 Wip’d off in honourable keeping her.
179 What treason were it to the ransack’d queen,
180 Disgrace to your great worths, and shame to me,
181 Now to deliver her possession up
182 On terms of base compulsion! Can it be,
183 That so degenerate a strain as this
184 Should once set footing in your generous bosoms?
185 There’s not the meanest spirit on our party
186 Without a heart to dare or sword to draw
187 When Helen is defended; nor none so noble
188 Whose life were ill bestow’d or death unfam’d,
189 Where Helen is the subject. Then, I say,
190 Well may we fight for her whom we know well
191 The world’s large spaces cannot parallel.
192 HECTOR.
193 Paris and Troilus, you have both said well;
194 And on the cause and question now in hand
195 Have gloz’d, but superficially; not much
196 Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought
197 Unfit to hear moral philosophy.
198 The reasons you allege do more conduce
199 To the hot passion of distemp’red blood
200 Than to make up a free determination
201 ’Twixt right and wrong; for pleasure and revenge
202 Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice
203 Of any true decision. Nature craves
204 All dues be rend’red to their owners. Now,
205 What nearer debt in all humanity
206 Than wife is to the husband? If this law
207 Of nature be corrupted through affection;
208 And that great minds, of partial indulgence
209 To their benumbed wills, resist the same;
210 There is a law in each well-order’d nation
211 To curb those raging appetites that are
212 Most disobedient and refractory.
213 If Helen, then, be wife to Sparta’s king—
214 As it is known she is—these moral laws
215 Of nature and of nations speak aloud
216 To have her back return’d. Thus to persist
217 In doing wrong extenuates not wrong,
218 But makes it much more heavy. Hector’s opinion
219 Is this, in way of truth. Yet, ne’ertheless,
220 My spritely brethren, I propend to you
221 In resolution to keep Helen still;
222 For ’tis a cause that hath no mean dependence
223 Upon our joint and several dignities.
224 TROILUS.
225 Why, there you touch’d the life of our design.
226 Were it not glory that we more affected
227 Than the performance of our heaving spleens,
228 I would not wish a drop of Trojan blood
229 Spent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector,
230 She is a theme of honour and renown,
231 A spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds,
232 Whose present courage may beat down our foes,
233 And fame in time to come canonize us;
234 For I presume brave Hector would not lose
235 So rich advantage of a promis’d glory
236 As smiles upon the forehead of this action
237 For the wide world’s revenue.
238 HECTOR.
239 I am yours,
240 You valiant offspring of great Priamus.
241 I have a roisting challenge sent amongst
242 The dull and factious nobles of the Greeks
243 Will strike amazement to their drowsy spirits.
244 I was advertis’d their great general slept,
245 Whilst emulation in the army crept.
246 This, I presume, will wake him.
247 [_Exeunt_.]