Chapter: ACT II. SCENE 2.
Troy. 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 consum'd
    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,
    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
    The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches
    To th' 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.
    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?
  TROILUS. Fie, fie, my brother!
    Weigh you the worth and honour of a king,
    So great as our dread father's, in a scale
    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!
  HELENUS. 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?
  TROILUS. You are for dreams and slumbers, brother priest;
    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
    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
    Should have hare hearts, would they but fat 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 keeping.
  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-I
    And the will dotes that is attributive
    To what infectiously itself affects,
    Without some image of th' affected merit.
  TROILUS. I take to-day 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 judgment: 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 soil'd them; nor the remainder viands
    We do not throw in unrespective sieve,
    Because we now are full. It was thought meet
    Paris should do some vengeance on the Greeks;
    Your breath with full consent benied his sails;
    The seas and winds, old wranglers, took a truce,
    And did him service. He touch'd the ports desir'd;
    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 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 worthy prize-
    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 never fortune did-
    Beggar the estimation which you priz'd
    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, Troyans, cry.
  PRIAM. What noise, what shriek is this?
  TROILUS. 'Tis our mad sister; I do know her voice.
  CASSANDRA. [Within] Cry, Troyans.
  HECTOR. It is Cassandra.

                  Enter CASSANDRA, raving

  CASSANDRA. Cry, Troyans, 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,
    Add to my clamours. Let us pay betimes
    A moiety of that mass of moan to come.
    Cry, Troyans, cry. Practise your eyes with tears.
    Troy must not be, nor goodly Ilion stand;
    Our firebrand brother, Paris, burns us all.
    Cry, Troyans, 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
    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 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 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
    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 of
    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;
    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
    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
    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
    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.
  HECTOR. 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 Aristode thought
    Unfit to hear moral philosophy.
    The reasons you allege do more conduce
    To the hot passion of distemp'red 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
    All dues be rend'red 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
    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-
    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
    Is this, in way of truth. Yet, ne'er the less,
    My spritely brethren, I propend to you
    In resolution to keep Helen still;
    For 'tis a cause that hath no mean dependence
    Upon our joint and several dignities.
  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 Troyan blood
    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;
    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.
  HECTOR. I am yours,
    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,
    Whilst emulation in the army crept.
    This, I presume, will wake him.
Exeunt

 In Troy, Priam and his sons talk about whether or not they should just give Helen back to the Greeks so they can end the war that's cost so much money and so many Greek lives. Gee, that actually sounds ... sensible. So, obviously it's not going to happen. Hector thinks they should let her go. He argues that every "soul" that's been killed during the war is just as valuable as Helen's, and Helen just isn't worth it. Helenus agrees with Hector, but not Troilus. They had Paris's back seven years ago when he took Helen from the Greeks. Now they're going to say they should give Helen back? No way. Now we find out that Paris stole Helen from Menelaus not because he was in lust with her so much as to get revenge because the Greeks took his "old aunt" and held her captive. Troilus calls Helen a "pearl, / whose price hath launch'd above a thousand ships." Brain Snack: This line is probably a shout-out to Christopher Marlowe's famous play, Doctor Faustus, in which a character asks "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?" Just as Troilus is explaining why the Trojans shouldn't give up the prize they stole from the Greeks--you know, Helen--his sister Cassandra comes running in ranting and raving about a prophesy. Cassandra's hair is a crazy mess. In Shakespeare, a woman's crazy hair = madness. Just ask Ophelia in Act 4, scene 5 of Hamlet. Cassandra warns her dad and brothers that if they keep Helen, Troy is totally going to burn. Hector thinks maybe they should listen to their sis but Troilus blows her off and says Cassandra is crazy, obviously. After the guys dismiss their sis, they get back to arguing about Helen. When Paris defends his right to keep Helen, his dad points out that, even though he gets to enjoy Helen's "honey," everybody else has to suffer for it. Gross, dad. Paris argues that keeping Helen will erase "the soil of her fair rape," meaning--he knows it was wrong to kidnap Helen, but he thinks that if he can fend off the Greeks and keep her, it will bring him honor. Troilus agrees and says that Helen's a great excuse to keep fighting so they can all gain "honor" on the battlefield. Fine. Hector agrees to keep fighting to keep Helen, since it's now a matter of honor.

