Troilus' godly jealousy.

The love of honour in a time of war.

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.

That’s Troilus talking at the Trojan council in Act II Scene II (so often a decisive point in Shakespeare: Hamlet and Polonius walking, the balcony scene, Malvolio returning the ring to Viola, Antony agreeing to marry Octavia, the Gadshill robbery, Don John’s plot). He is trying to persuade Paris that the honourable course is not to return Helen to the Greeks, but to fight for her.

He is hypothesising. His words mean something like this: if I take a wife, my choice is governed by my will, my will is governed by my eyes and ears, which have to navigate between impulse and judgement; if I end up disliking her, I am stuck. You don’t send back silks once you buy them from a merchant.

Obviously misogynistic and transactional, what is dramatically interesting about this speech is the way it foreshadows what Troilus actually does to Cressida. He argues that both the man and the woman’s feelings have to be subordinated to honour. When Cressida betrays him, that’s exactly what happens.

And we might think that Troilus betrays her first.

As soon as Troilus has slept with Cressida, he tries to leave. Cressida had earlier warned herself to “hold off” in order to keep his interest and now says, ruefully, “O foolish Cressid! I might have still held off,/ And then you would have tarried.”

Any doubts we have about Troilus as a lover must be intensified by his reaction to the news that Cressida is to be traded to the Greeks. He says “how my achievements mock me.” His speech to the Trojan council was too successful! Helen is not traded; honour is kept; Cressida must go to her father (who defected to the Greeks). Troilus chose war, so now he must lose love.

But note that his “achievement” was a speech about how men lose interest in the women they choose for themselves—and that he is now trying to leave. “Are you a-weary of me?” Cressida asks.

Troilus expresses only a muted regret at the news of Cressida being sent away. Compare her defiant grief, expressed to Pandarus.

I will not, uncle: I have forgot my father;
I know no touch of consanguinity;
No kin, no love, no blood, no soul so near me
As the sweet Troilus. O you gods divine!
Make Cressid's name the very crown of falsehood,
If ever she leave Troilus! Time, force, and death,
Do to this body what extremes you can;
But the strong base and building of my love
Is as the very centre of the earth,
Drawing all things to it. I'll go in and weep—

Next a parallel is draw between Troilus and Paris. Talking, briefly, of the planned exchange, they say,

Troilus: …when I deliver her,
Think it an altar, and thy brother Troilus
A priest there offering to it his own heart.
Exit

Paris: I know what ’tis to love;
And would, as I shall pity, I could help!

Paris argued at the council for keeping Helen and Priam told him “Paris, you speak
Like one besotted on your sweet delights”. He argued that “Well may we fight for her whom, we know well,/ The world's large spaces cannot parallel.” Clearly, this does not extend to Cressida.

What is clear is that Cressida sees love as love; Paris and Troilus see love as part of honour, or as inextricable from honour. Compared to Cressida, these men seem so insipid. They don’t even come close to her deep feelings.

Why tell you me of moderation?
The grief is fine, full, perfect, that I taste,
And violenteth in a sense as strong
As that which causeth it: how can I moderate it?

There is no council of honour for Cressida. But there is a moment when she realises that Troilus does not feel the same way as she does.

C: I must then to the Grecians?

T: No remedy.

C: A woful Cressid ’mongst the merry Greeks!
When shall we see again?

T: Hear me, my love: be thou but true of heart,—

C: I true! how now! what wicked deem is this?

Rene Girard says in Theatre of Envy, that this is a crucial moment. Look at the phrase “merry Greeks”. Cressida used that once before. When Pandarus was trying to persuade her how attractive Troilus was he tells her Helen might even prefer Troilus to Paris. Cressida replies, “Then she’s a merry Greek indeed.”

Why would she suddenly use such a provocative statement to Troilus, causing him to worry about the implications?