TROILUS & CRESSIDA. William Shakespeare

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       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 brainsick 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,

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