Let’s shut our gates and sleep. Manhood and honour

Should have hare hearts, would they but fat their

thoughts

With this crammed reason. Reason and respect

Make livers pale and lustihood deject.

HECTOR

Brother, she is not worth what she doth cost

The holding.

TROILUS What’s 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

To make the service greater than the god;

And the will dotes that is inclinable

To what infectiously itself affects

Without some image of th’affected merit.

TROILUS

I take today a wife, and my election

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 judgement. How may I avoid—

Although my will distaste what it elected—

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 spoiled them; nor the remainder viands

We do not throw in unrespective sewer

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 touched the ports desired,

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

Whose price hath launched above a thousand ships

And turned crowned 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—

As you must needs, for you all clapped your hands

And cried, ‘Inestimable!’—why do you now

The issue of your proper wisdoms rate,

And do a deed that never fortune did:

Beggar the estimation which you prized

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.

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.

⌈Enter Cassandra raving, with her hair about her ears⌉

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 old,

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 Ilium stand.

Our firebrand brother, Paris, burns us all.

Cry, Trojans, cry! Ah Helen, and ah 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

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

Such and no other than the event doth form it,

Nor once deject the courage of our minds

Because Cassandra’s mad. Her brainsick raptures

Cannot distaste the goodness of a quarrel

Which hath our several honours all engaged

To make it gracious. For my private part,

I am no more touched 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.

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.

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

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.

You have the honey still, but these the gall.