Click the button below to print this essay...	Then close the window to return to the rest of our site.

Biting Sharp at Reasons: The Trojan Debate – Act II, scene 2

The Trojan council scene in 2.2. exists as a carefully planned contrast with the Greek commanders' conference of 1.3.  Shakespeare's play throughout suggests telling points of opposition between the Trojans and Greeks, but the parallel council scenes, as each group of leaders considers the conduct of the ongoing war, sharply clarifies the differences between the two opponents. Modern audiences may be less sensitive to a distinction between Troy and Greece than would Shakespeare’s audience. Where we may see only two major powers of the ancient world in inevitable conflict, an audience of Shakespeare’s time might well see sharper oppositions.

England saw itself as the heir of Troy; London was often ceremonially imagined as "Troynovant" (New Troy).  The legendary history of Britain’s founding traces its settlement to Brut, Aeneas' grandson, and various retellings and continuations of the story of Aeneas’ escape from the flames of Troy to settle in Italy  (known best in Virgil’s Aeneid) circulated in Latin, Italian, French and English. Drawing on the myth of Trojan ancestry, most of the texts favor the Trojans in the accounts of the great ancient war with Greece, painting them as the truer adherents of classical ideals of honor, even as they are undone by Ulysses' trickery, Achilles' brutality and the treachery of the traitor Antenor.

Peter Hall has played upon this bias.  The lighting in the production has been recruited to help paint a sympathetic picture of the Trojan court.  The warm overhead lights of Troy create an inviting atmosphere whenever the scene shifts from the cold hard blue-greens of the lights that bath the Greek camp scenes.  The Trojan heroes in his production seem vigorous and virile young men, especially when compared with the aged Greek generals.  Even Paris, the most debauched of the clan, has the tanned, handsome lineaments of a body builder.

Most productions have generally been more sympathetic to the Trojans than to the Greeks.  Tyrone Guthrie, in his 1956 staging, presented the Trojans as citizens of a romantic Ruritania, besieged by ruthless Prussian or Austrian militarists. The first known attempt to place the action in an American setting cast the antagonists as adversaries in an earlier battle between irreconcilable sets of values, one old, one new, that Americans would easily understand.  At The American Stratford Festival in 1961, Jack Landau dressed Will Geer's Priam as an elegant Robert E. Lee and pictured Agamemnon as the vulgar, cigar-champing Ulysses S. Grant.  Two recent directors depicted the Asian court as more sensuous than the rugged Greeks and adopted similar means to do so.  Edward Payson Call in his 1976 production at San Diego's Old Globe set the scene in a steam bath.  Two years later, John Wood, directing Ottowa's Canadian National Theater, chose a sauna in which the Trojan princes were enjoying massages. Hall’s Trojans are less debauched than Wood’s or Call’s, though they are still notably more sensual than the rugged Greeks -- bare-footed and dressed in fresh, flowing eastern costumes in comparison to the Greek warriors’ worn, biker styles.

We see the warriors of the Trojan royal family pass over the stage in the parade of 1.2. to which Pandarus supplies a commentary to the eager Cressida. But is in this council scene that we meet them and they begin to take shape as characters.  The first impression we get of the Trojan court comes from the stage picture Hall has constructed.  The Greeks have been wrestling with the "neglection of degree" (1.3.127), but the Trojan court is a family affair; and the staging of this first court scene suggests that Priam is not troubled with the same threats to his authority that bedevil Agamemnon. He is enthroned in a chair that, though simple, dominates a stage devoid of other furnishings.  He is clothed in white, which catches the warm colors of the scene.  His sons are ranged before him, all kneeling respectfully in the sand.

The Greek commander presided over his war council from the strongest position on stage, up-center.  The other Greeks were ranged symmetrically about him in a circle.  Priam's position tells us that he wields a less coercive authority.  He is up-right of center stage and his sons kneel in an unregimented group to his left and downstage.  Hector locates himself in the closest, and most central, position.  Troilus is behind him stage left. Paris is upstage left, Helenus is down center and Deiphobus, who has no lines in the scene, is most remote.  Their eyes and their body positions direct all of the stage focus toward their father.  Frank Raiter's white-haired Priam wears his advanced age with more serene dignity than does Nicholas Kepros's Nestor.  Actors and directors usually know that authority registers on stage less in how the king acts than in how the other players act towards him.  Certainly Hall does.  Priam, in this staging, does not have the physical authority of some of the other players, but his quiet confidence, and the other actors' clear deference to him at the top of the scene, make his willingness merely to preside over weighty discussion amongst his sons seem, not an abdication of power, but a confirmation of his position.

The family has gathered in council to consider the Greek’s latest demand for the return of Helen.  The stage directions call for only Priam and four of his sons, without Deiphobus, but some directors fill out the stage with other Trojans, including Aeneas, or even add Helen or Andromache to the mix.  Miller's television set (1981) was crowded with courtiers, including a nervous, crouching Cassandra, poised to explode into prophecy.  Hall, however, opts for a clean uncluttered stage picture, more of a family meeting than an assembly of state.  Priam affirms his eldest son's priority, next only to his own, by addressing him first: "Hector what say you to't?" (2.2.7).

Hector [David Conrad] stands, poised and confident, and argues that, considered rationally, Helen is unworthy of the huge sacrifices the Trojans have made to keep their dubious prize. "What merit’s in that reason which denies/ The yielding of her up?" (2..2.23-4), he asks rhetorically. Like Ulysses in the Greek council scene, Troilus interrupts midline, but even more emphatically:  "Fie, fie, my brother!"  He is the youngest of the sons and is, in every sense, speaking out of turn. Hector’s dispassionate cost accounting enrages his aristocratic sense of honor: "Weigh you the worth and honour of a king / So great as our dread father in a scale / Of common ounces?" (2.26-7), he asks no less certain of the answer to the question he poses than was his brother with his.

The disagreement is not about what is valuable but actually over the nature of value itself.  How does one determine the "value" of a prize like Helen? Are values intrinsic in an object, or are all such values creations of those who hold or desire those objects? "She’s not worth what she doth cost/The holding," insists Hector, arguing that whatever is Helen’s value it is less than the cost of keeping her. But Troilus sees it differently. "What's aught but as 'tis valued," the younger brother replies (2.2.51-2 ), arguing, on the contrary, that she is as valuable as she is thought to be. "But value dwells not in particular will," responds Hector (2.2.53); but, of course, it does dwell exactly there for his younger brother.

The debate raises serious philosophical issues about the nature of value and serious social, even psychological ones, for the play. The commercial language of buying and selling run all through the play: "price" and "prize" can be seen, not only to be etymologically related but also to consolidate the play’s central issues. Helen "is a pearl/ Whose price," quite literally, "hath launched above a thousand ships" 92.2.82), as the Greek armies sail to Troy to reclaim Menelaus’ stolen bride. But that image clarifies the issue: is she (or is a pearl) of intrinsic value or is the value only a function of what a buyer is willing to pay.  For Hector, the matter is clear: Troy has paid too much for Helen.

Troilus tries to counter Hector’s logic with the familiar logical and legal tactic of setting forth a hypothetical.  "I take today a wife," he begins his account of why commitments must be kept, although the example is particularly inappropriate, since the war began as Paris "took," in a different sense, ‘a wife": Helen, the wife of Menelaus, for whom the war is now being fought. Troilus admits that Paris has stolen Helen from Menelaus, but recounts the Greek capture of their aunt, an  outrage that Helen's seduction was meant to avenge.  Fearing to fight for their prize, Troilus insists, would be a far greater disgrace than was the stealing of it in the first place.

At this point the debate is interrupted. In the 1609 quarto Cassandra intrudes upon the men's deliberations when she enters "raving."  The Folio employs a more pictorial stage direction:  "Enter Cassandra with her haire about her eares."  This disheveled appearance often signifies madness on the early modern stage.  Some directors, taking their cue from Priam's and Troilus' following lines, "What noise? What shriek is this? / ‘Tis our mad sister. I do know her voice" (2.297-8), place Cassandra offstage for her initial lines.  In Hall's production, we first hear Cassandra, not from backstage, but from overhead, from a gallery above the house and to the right, her intrusion all the more unnerving for its sudden demand that we look where we had not expected to see anyone.

Vivienne Benesch, as Cassandra, makes her way to the sandy arena by an invisible passage stage left.  Hall's decision not to have Andromache or Helen present for this gathering renders Cassandra all the more frail and isolated in the men's world of the Trojan council, much as Cressida will be when she arrives at the Greek camp, but far less welcome.  This lone female voice urges the simple argument that none of the men want to hear - if they keep to Troilus' path of "manhood and honor" there can be only one outcome: "Troy burns" (2.2.112)

Her prophetic warnings issued, Cassandra distractedly exits.  Hector asks Troilus if these "high strains / Of divination in our sister" (114-5) have swayed him.  True to legend, however, Cassandra's prophecies, always correct, fall on deaf ears.  Troilus and Paris continue to assail their older brother's arguments.  Priam makes his only contribution to the debate when he points out that Paris alone enjoys the prize for which the others suffer: "You have the honey still, but these the gall" (144)

Hector tells his belligerent brothers that they are "not much / Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought / Unfit to hear moral philosophy." (2.2.165-6) The obvious anachronism of Hector's reference ? Aristotle lived long after the legendary heroes of Troy and the poet who sang their deeds -  would not have bothered even Shakespeare's lettered contemporaries, but it does suggest that Aristotle was not a vital influence upon Shakespeare (this is one of only two references to Aristotle in all of Shakespeare; the other, as off-hand, in The Taming of the Shrew), and, incidentally, suggests also that Aristotle’s Poetics, often claimed as an influence upon Shakespeare, are not what Shakespeare identifies as the essence of the Greek philosopher; rather, as here, Shakespeare thinks of him as a moral authority.

Hector has argued powerfully against the destructive forces of desire championed by his young brothers Paris and Troilus and is certain that the Trojan cause is both unwise and unjust. The "moral laws/ Of nature and of nations" (2.2.183-4) argue for Helen’s return. Hector’s rational and civilized assessment exposes the sheer willfulness of Priam’s and Troilus’s position. But Hector suddenly abandons his ethical advantage and embraces his brothers’ chivalric enthusiasm.  "Ne’ertheless," he surprisingly concludes, "I propend to you/ In resolution to keep Helen still" (189-91). The family, divided on a point of principle, reunifies in Hector’s commitment to the family and to Troy: "‘tis a cause that hath no mean dependence/ Upon our joint and several dignities" (191-2).

 

Click the button below to print this essay...	Then close the window to return to the rest of our site.