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The nature of value
During a debate about Helen, the
Trojans—Paris, Hector, and Troilus—
discuss her in terms of worth:
“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” (2.2.50–55).
Troilus argues that something
becomes valuable when its cost
is high. Cressida understands that
Troilus thinks this way, so she
refuses his advances in order to
seem more valuable in his eyes.
However, Hector claims that
something has to have an intrinsic
value in order to be prized. It is
only Paris’s obsession with Helen
that makes her worthy of Troy’s
allegiance, rather than any inherent
THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN’S MAN
worth in herself. This sobering fact
makes the trauma of warfare in this
play seem entirely pointless. This
is doubly true for the Greek army,
which has no respect for its leader,
Menelaus, and his motivation for
seeking vengeance on Troy.
Despite Hector’s belief that
Helen is a disproportionately
expensive commodity, it is in
the interest of Troy to protect her
honor, and that of the men whose
lives were lost in her name. The
economics may be askew in this
city, but in Hector’s ideal world,
value and worth must be earned.
It is this that makes his death at
the hands of Achilles, whose
heroic worth is entirely unmerited,
especially tragic. Both Troilus and
Hector, who hold idealistic views
about love and war, respectively,
are disillusioned by the play’s end.
Neither Helen nor Cressida turns
out to be “worth” anything beyond
the tears and pain they cause to
others, and Hector’s own value is
desecrated by Achilles.
In the politically and morally
ugly world that Shakespeare shows,
the realist is the vulgar, illegitimate,In a 2006 production by German
director Peter Stein, the battle scenes
were staged on a steeply raked stage
that allowed the audience to follow
several fights simultaneously.
Our firebrand brother,
Paris, burns us all.
Cry, Trojans, cry! Ah Helen,
and ah woe!
Cry, cry ‘Troy burns!’—
or else let Helen go.
Cassandra
Act 2, Scene 2and deformed commentator,
Thersites, who understands the
real value and cost of war. He cuts
through the high rhetoric of honor,
and degree used by the Greek
generals with one fundamental
truth: “All the argument is a whore
and a cuckold. / A good quarrel to
draw emulous factions and bleed
to death upon” (2.3.71–73). Again,
“value” and “worth” are skewed
and corrupted by lust and
a hunger for war and glory.
The lovers and their go-between,
Pandarus, predict their own
reputations in posterity, in the ❯❯Words, words, mere words, no
matter from the heart.
Troilus
Act 5, Scene 3