| |
Troy. A Room in PRIAM’S Palace. | |
| |
Enter PRIAM, HECTOR, TROILUS, PARIS, and HELENUS. | |
| Pri. After so many hours, lives, speeches spent, | |
| Thus once again says Nestor from the Greeks: | |
| ‘Deliver Helen, and all damage else, | 5 |
| As honour, loss of time, travail, expense, | |
| Wounds, friends, and what else dear that is consum’d | |
| In hot digestion of this cormorant war, | |
| Shall be struck off.’ Hector, what say you to ’t? | |
| Hect. Though no man lesser fears the Greeks than I, | 10 |
| As far as toucheth my particular, | |
| Yet, dread Priam, | |
| 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?’ | 15 |
| Than Hector is. The wound of peace is surety, | |
| Surety secure; but modest doubt is call’d | |
| 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, | 20 |
| Every tithe soul, ’mongst many thousand dismes, | |
| Hath been as dear as Helen; I mean, of ours: | |
| 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, | 25 |
| What merit’s in that reason which denies | |
| The yielding of her up? | |
| Tro. Fie, fie! my brother, | |
| Weigh you the worth and honour of a king | |
| So great as our dread father in a scale | 30 |
| Of common ounces? will you with counters sum | |
| The past proportion of his infinite? | |
| And buckle in a waist most fathomless | |
| With spans and inches so diminutive | |
| As fears and reasons? fie, for godly shame! | 35 |
| Hel. No marvel, though you bite so sharp at reasons, | |
| You are so empty of them. Should not our father | |
| Bear the great sway of his affairs with reasons, | |
| Because your speech hath none that tells him so? | |
| Tro. You are for dreams and slumbers, brother priest; | 40 |
| You fur your gloves with reason. Here are your reasons: | |
| 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 | 45 |
| A Grecian and his sword, if he do set | |
| 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 | 50 |
| Should have hare-hearts, would they but fat their thoughts | |
| With this cramm’d reason: reason and respect | |
| Make livers pale, and lustihood deject. | |
| Hect. Brother, she is not worth what she doth cost | |
| The holding. | 55 |
| Tro. What is aught but as ’tis valu’d? | |
| Hect. 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 inclinable | |
| To what infectiously itself affects, | |
| Without some image of the affected merit. | |
| Tro. 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 sink | 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 desir’d, | 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 cry’d ‘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 priz’d | 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 |
| Cas. [Within.] Cry, Trojans, cry! | |
| Pri. What noise? what shriek? | |
| Tro. ’Tis our mad sister, I do know her voice. | |
| Cas. [Within.] Cry, Trojans! | |
| Hect. It is Cassandra. | 105 |
| |
Enter CASSANDRA, raving. | |
| Cas. Cry, Trojans, cry! lend me ten thousand eyes, | |
| And I will fill them with prophetic tears. | |
| Hect. Peace, sister, peace! | |
| Cas. Virgins and boys, mid-age and wrinkled eld, | 110 |
| Soft infancy, that nothing canst but cry, | |
| 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; | 115 |
| Our firebrand brother, Paris, burns us all. | |
| Cry, Trojans, cry! a Helen and a woe! | |
| Cry, cry! Troy burns, or else let Helen go. [Exit. | |
| Hect. Now, youthful Troilus, do not these high strains | |
| Of divination in our sister work | 120 |
| Some touches of remorse? or is your blood | |
| So madly hot that no discourse of reason, | |
| Nor fear of bad success in a bad cause, | |
| Can qualify the same? | |
| Tro. Why, brother Hector, | 125 |
| We may not think the justness of each act | |
| 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 | 130 |
| Which hath our several honours all engag’d | |
| 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 | 135 |
| To fight for and maintain. | |
| Par. 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 | 140 |
| All fears attending on so dire a project: | |
| 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, | 145 |
| Were I alone to pass the difficulties, | |
| And had as ample power as I have will, | |
| Paris should ne’er retract what he hath done, | |
| Nor faint in the pursuit. | |
| Pri. Paris, you speak | 150 |
| Like one besotted on your sweet delights: | |
| You have the honey still, but these the gall; | |
| So to be valiant is no praise at all. | |
| Par. Sir, I propose not merely to myself | |
| The pleasure such a beauty brings with it; | 155 |
| But I would have the soil of her fair rape | |
| Wip’d 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, | 160 |
| On terms of base compulsion! Can it be | |
| 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 | 165 |
| When Helen is defended, nor none so noble | |
| Whose life were ill bestow’d or death unfam’d | |
| 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. | 170 |
| Hect. Paris and Troilus, you have both said well; | |
| And on the cause and question now in hand | |
| Have gloz’d, but superficially; not much | |
| Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought | |
| Unfit to hear moral philosophy. | 175 |
| The reasons you allege do more conduce | |
| 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 | 180 |
| Of any true decision. Nature craves | |
| 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, | 185 |
| And that great minds, of partial indulgence | |
| 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. | 190 |
| If Helen then be wife to Sparta’s king, | |
| 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, | 195 |
| But makes it much more heavy. Hector’s opinion | |
| 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 | 200 |
| Upon our joint and several dignities. | |
| Tro. 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 | 205 |
| Spent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector, | |
| 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; | 210 |
| For, I presume, brave Hector would not lose | |
| So rich advantage of a promis’d glory | |
| As smiles upon the forehead of this action | |
| For the wide world’s revenue. | |
| Hect. I am yours, | 215 |
| You valiant offspring of great Priamus. | |
| I have a roisting challenge sent amongst | |
| The dull and factious nobles of the Greeks | |
| Will strike amazement to their drowsy spirits. | |
| I was advertis’d their great general slept | 220 |
| Whilst emulation in the army crept: | |
| This, I presume, will wake him. [Exeunt. | |
| |
