Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines

 

 

Why keep we her? The Grecians keep our aunt:

Is she worth keeping? Why, she is a pearl,

Whose price hath launcht above a thousand ships,

And turn’d crown’d kings to merchants.

 

Troilus

Troilus And Cressida        Act II, Scene ii, Line 80

 

Okay, this scene is the Trojans discussing whether or not they should give Helen back to the Greeks. The Greeks have just sent someone to tell the Trojans that if they send Helen back now, the Greeks will forget all this ever happened and go home.

Well now, let’s recap a little, shall we?

Paris went to Greece and stole Menelaus’s wife, Helen. By some accounts she left willingly with Paris, but in any event, he took her back to Troy and that’s what started this whole imbroglio. The Greeks came to get her back and have now been laying siege to Troy for how many years?

Troilus, Hector, Helenanus, and Paris are all sons of Priam, the king of Troy. They’re considering this latest Greek proposal. Hector has started the discussion with the argument that they should surrender Helen to the Greeks. Today’s Totally Random Lines are in the middle of Troilus’s argument for doing no such thing. The first line about the Greeks keeping the aunt is a little confusing because it’s a bit of a red herring. Apparently, before the Paris/Helen thing ever happened the Greeks had kidnapped Hesione, a sister of Priam. Will is having Troilus throw that out as though it were a reason for the kidnapping of Helen, but it’s not and it’s got nothing to do with Helen. After that first line, Troilus is just talking about Helen. The famous launched a thousand ships line? That’s Christopher Marlowe’s from his play Doctor Faustus. It’s not Will’s creation.

How do I know all this? I don’t, or I didn’t. I found the bit about Aunt Hesione in Asimov’s Guide To Shakespeare and the Marlowe tidbit in the G.B. Harrison footnotes of my anthology.

Anyway, the Trojans decide, for better or worse, not to surrender Helen, and the fighting goes on. And on, and on, and on. I guess it still hasn’t stopped, has it?

Here is where I've been and why there have been no posts in the past week and a half. Where is this? The Galapagos Islands. Yes, I was visiting the iguanas and tortoises and sea turtles and blue footed boobies. It's an amazing place, and a place where the land and the animals are completely protected. It got me to thinking that those islands are better off without humans, and wondering if this whole planet might be better off without us. At the rate we're going, we may find out. 

Not a very pleasant thought, eh?